Practice mind control with livestreaming
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
The last week, I have been experimenting with livestreaming instead of vlogging. I have played various musical instruments on FB live. When I play music on a livestream, I have noticed that my mind runs the same program as when I am playing a concert in front of an audience. Time stops. I am so hyper-focused that I am not aware of my surroundings anymore. The best example is when I did a livestream and decided to play Bleed in the original tempo (230 bpm). Bleed is arguably one of the most difficult songs there is. I have been practicing the song for over a year on drums and now guitar, so I knew it well, but I have never been able to play it in the proper speed, only slower. I started the livestream and just played. And I got through the whole song with only minor mistakes. I was NOT expecting that! But because I did it as a livestream, I activated the “live concert program” in my mind which gave me access to untapped potential. I can still hardly grasp that I managed to pull that off.
When you “enter the zone”, it feels as if your whole brain shuts down every program and devotes all possible brain power to the task at hand. I listened to a podcast with Eddie Hall, the world’s strongest man who did a 500 kg deadlift, and he spoke about something similar. I can’t remember the exact percentages - check the podcast to get the real numbers - but he said something like this. A normal guy uses like 5-10 % of their muscle mass. A trained bodybuilder can use 20-25 %. And a mother whose child is under a car can use 100 % of her muscle mass to lift the car. That’s how these legends about super-human strength in awful situations come about. And I am convinced that the mind works in a similar way. Well, actually it’s exactly the same thing. Your mind, your muscles, everything is connected. When we align our whole body and focus on one specific task, we can achieve the impossible. Eddie Hall used the same technique to do his 500 kg deadlift. He transported himself to a very dark place and aligned every cell in his body to do that deadlift. It’s one of the most amazing things I have seen.
I think most of us know what it feels like to “enter the zone”. The challenge is to stay inside the zone. At least my mind tend to drift off in a tangent pretty quick and loose it. The key is to do something that is just on the border between order and chaos. Something that is a beyond your abilities, but not by too much. That’s where the magic happens. And that is precisely what happened when I managed to play Bleed at full tempo, a lot faster than what I had ever done before. The song was beyond my abilities, but when I managed to focus and align my whole body (including picking hand and fingers), I could do it on a razor-thin edge. If there is too much order, then you are inside your comfort zone and it becomes near impossible to enter the zone. Your growth stagnates as a result. This will happen if you only do things that you already know and that is within your abilities. If you go too far outside your comfort zone, there is too much chaos. That also makes it impossible to enter the zone, because then your mind runs the fight or flight program. I have done several other livestreams by now, where I messed up badly and lost control of my instrument. That is embarrassing and thus very scary. But also inevitable for growth! When the balance is just right, magic happens.
When I started riding motorcycles, I had a similar experience. Every time I rode the bike, I entered the zone, because I was so focused on survival. Riding a motorcycle is difficult. However, several years down the path and a LOT of practice I noticed that I only entered the zone when doing extreme riding, like track days or adventure riding. When doing normal commuting, my mind wandered off and started to think about what I should have for dinner, or job problems or stuff like that. A logical consequence, because my comfort zone was now much larger and included normal riding and commuting. Activities that was just on the border for my past-self beginner motorcyclist.
The conclusion is that I believe that livestreaming is a fantastic way to practice the skills needed to enter the zone, especially if you are a musician. And more importantly, it is a powerful tool to detect and find exactly where that razor-thin border between chaos and order is. And then stay there.