These peak experiences are associated with physiological changes in the body—there may be a release of endorphins in the brain and of adrenaline through the body. There may be an increase in alpha wave activity and changes in our metabolic rates and in the patterns of our breathing and heartbeats. The specific nature of these physiological changes depends on the sorts of activities that have brought us to the zone and on what we’re doing to keep ourselves there.
However we get there, being in the zone is a powerful and transformative experience. So powerful that it can be addictive, but an addiction that is healthy for you in so many ways.
Reaching Out
When we connect with our own energy, we’re more open to the energy of other people. The more alive we feel, the more we can contribute to the lives of others.
Hip‐hop poet Black Ice learned at a very young age that his words could bring out emotions in himself and others. “My mom used to make me write about everything,” he told an interviewer. “When I got in trouble, when I was happy or even when I was scared. I was a giddy little kid. When I started liking little girls, I used to write letters for my friends. Mine were better than the ‘circle yes, no, maybe so.’ I came upon spoken word as an adult. I went to a poetry spot, looking to meet women. It was ‘open mic’ night and when this cat messed up, the audience gave him lots of love and support. I was blown away. Being the aggressive person that I am, it surprised me to see what I would talk about everyday in the barbershop in spoken word form at the club. I was able to release what was on my chest and people would understand what I was saying.”
Black Ice, born Lamar Manson, moved from those early performances to increasingly bigger stages. He appeared for five consecutive seasons on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, was a lead cast member in the Tony Award–winning Def Poetry on Broadway, released his first album on a major label, and appeared in front of millions at the Live 8 concert. His message is life‐affirming and motivating, speaking of the importance of family and the power of youth. To back up his words, he started the Hoodwatch Movement Organization to help inner‐city kids stay on the right track and understand the extent of their potential. Critics laud his work and audiences respond passionately, and when you see him on‐stage, you can sense that he is very much in the zone.
For Black Ice, though, this entry into the zone comes from a sense of mission. “My life has been so meaningful I have to write something that touches folks,” he said in another interview. “I have a legacy to uphold. I grew up around great men. My father, my uncles, and my grandfather are my heroes and just in that alone, there are some things I could never say. I could never look my father in his face knowing I have something that’s playing on the radio that’s absolutely asinine.
“My voice is my gift,” Black Ice says. “It’s pointless if I’m not going to say anything. It’s mad important. I can see in society now, how important it is. Sometimes I’m discouraged, but I definitely know what I can contribute. We are who we are, but I want to get at the kids and stay in the seven‐ and eight‐year‐old’s ears. Telling them, ‘you’re going to be something… there is no other compromise, there is no if or you might; you are going to be something.’ ”
This is another secret of being in the zone—that when you are inspired, your work can be inspirational to others. Being in the zone taps into your most natural self. And when you are in that place, you can contribute at a much higher level.
One of the ideas we’ve already discussed—and which we will come back to again (no point using a good idea only once)—is that intelligence is distinct for every individual. This is an especially important point to recognize when exploring the concept of being in the zone. Being in the zone is about using your particular kind of intelligence in an optimal way. This is what Ewa Laurance touches on when she talks about pool and geometry. It’s what Monica Seles connects with when her physical intelligence and her mental acuity become one, what Black Ice conjures when he weaves his words born of both careful observation and a refined ear for rhythm.
Being Yourself
When people are in the zone, they align naturally with a way of thinking that works best for them. I believe this is the reason that time seems to take on a new dimension when you are in the zone. It comes from a level of effortlessness that allows for such full immersion that you simply don’t “feel” time the same way. This effortlessness has a direct relationship to thinking styles. When people use a thinking style completely natural to them, everything comes more easily.
It’s obvious that different people think about the same things in different ways. I saw a great example of this a few years ago with my daughter. Kate is very visual in her approach to the world. She’s extremely bright, articulate, and well read, but she loses interest quickly during lectures (of all types, not simply the ones involving the need for her to clean her room). Not long after we moved to Los Angeles from England, her history teacher began a section on the Civil War. Not being American, Kate knew little about this period in American history, and she got little out of her teacher’s recitation of dates and events. This approach—filling students’ heads with bullet points—had little impact on her. With a test coming up on the subject, though, she couldn’t simply ignore the topic.
Knowing that Kate had a very strong visual intelligence, I suggested that she consider creating a mind map. Mind mapping, a technique created by Tony Buzan, allows a person to create a visual representation of a concept or piece of information. The primary concept sits at the center of the map, and lines, arrows, and colors connect other ideas to that concept. I had the feeling that, as someone who tends to think visually, Kate would benefit from looking at the Civil War from this perspective.
A few days later, Kate and I went out to lunch, and I asked her if she’d had a chance to try out the mind map. As it turned out, she’d done much more than try it. Through this technique, she’d created such a strong visual representation of the Civil War in her mind that she spent the next forty minutes telling me about the major events and the consequences of those events. By looking at it from this new perspective—one that made use of one of the primary ways in which she thinks—Kate was able to understand the war in a way that bullet points never would have provided. Because she’d produced a mind map, she was seeing the images in her mind clearly, as if she had photographed them.
Getting Out of the Box
There have been various attempts to categorize thinking styles, and even whole personality types, so that we can understand and organize people more effectively. These categories can be more or less helpful, as long as we remember that they are just a way of thinking about things and not the things themselves. These systems of personality types are often speculative and not very reliable because our personalities often refuse to sit still and tend to flutter restlessly between whatever boxes the testers devise.
Anyone who has ever taken a Myers‐Briggs test knows about the various box‐placing tools out there. The Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is something that human resource departments seem to enjoy using to “type” people. More than two and a half million people take the MBTI annually, and many of the companies in the Fortune 100 use it. It’s essentially a personality quiz, though more sophisticated than what you might find in the pages of a pop magazine. People answer a series of questions in four basic categories (energy attitude, perception, judgment, and orientation to life events), and their answers indicate whether they are more one thing or another in each of these categories (for example, more extroverted or introverted). From the four categories and the two places in which people fall in these categories, the test identifies sixteen personality types. The underlying message of the test is that you and each of the other six billion people on the planet fit into one of these sixteen boxes.