From the author: The world is changing and in this cycle of changes only those who adequately perceive reality and have a reliable point of support can feel confident. What kind of “support” I will try to tell in this article. In Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book “Alice in Wonderland” the Cheshire cat says to the main character: “To stay in one place you need to run as fast as you can, and to get somewhere you need to run at least twice as fast! In the next book, “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” the following dialogue takes place between Alice and the Red Queen: “With us,” said Alice, barely catching her breath, “when you run as fast as you can for a long time, you will certainly end up in another place.” - What a slow country! - cried the Queen. - Well, here, you know, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. Actually, this is where the term “Black Queen Theory” was born, denoting a concept, the essence of which can be formulated as follows: “With respect to the evolutionary system, a species needs constant change and adaptation to maintain its existence in the surrounding biological world, constantly evolving with it.” When an “old horse” spoils the furrow..What does this mean for us? Yes, everything is very simple - in the modern world everything changes very quickly and an attempt to live your whole life “on the same wavelength,” in youth parlance, “doesn’t work.” In other words, if you are used to working “in the old way” and do not want to learn “new tricks,” then most likely “the wind of change will knock you to the sidelines of history.” The fact is that, being in a static position, we do not stand still, but confidently and with song we roll back, that is, we degrade. This is again easy to see in the example of excess weight - if you stop controlling your eating habits (i.e. “staying in place”), then you won’t even notice how you gain a dozen or two or three extra “fat” kilograms. If you live a day, Having done nothing to move forward even a millimeter, it seems that nothing terrible has happened. Ten days - it also seems like nothing special (although he could already be at least a centimeter ahead, but it turns out that he has rolled back a centimeter) A hundred days - it’s probably worth worrying about (after all, it’s already -10 cm) A thousand days - it’s getting scary (rolled back by meter ago) It’s still not far from the “hole” from which you can’t get out... Discovery of Csikszentmihalyi From all these nightmarish horrors there is one reliable recipe - this is to be in a “state of flow”. That flow into which we enter when we are engaged in our work in life (our favorite thing), i.e. self-actualization (the concept of flow was proposed by the American psychologist of Hungarian origin Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). The “state of flow” is a very strong thing and it is in it that famous artists and athletes get their outstanding results and set records. This, I am not afraid to say, is a state of achieving the highest mastery. A person who moves towards his Great Goal is able to enter the “state of flow” faster and easier than everyone else. For him, this is almost a natural process that he can plunge into whenever he wants. And this allows him to get ahead of external circumstances and “win against the Black Queen.” As part of the “Building a New Life” program, special emphasis is placed on teaching a person to enter a state of flow and stay in it for as long as possible. This is necessary to get “above average” results. Flow state vs. procrastination One of the painful problems of modern man is procrastination or, in simpler terms, constant putting things off and internal self-sabotage. It seems like you have to do things, and you understand how important and necessary it is, and not what you want! People try to fight procrastination by inventing all sorts of tricks, tricks, tricks and techniques. All of this is, by and large, complete bullshit. And it works over very short distances. In order not to suffer from procrastination, a person must be able to stay in a “state of flow,” and for!