The moments we are in the most internal conflict can usually be narrowed down to being tired, hungry or facing our own existence. You know this last moment: when everything is a possibility and so the world starts imploding, your anxiety starts rearing its ugly head and you feel like you want to throw up.

When I get into this funk, I usually go back to my lists. I see what I can cross off so I can see what I am achieving. We think definitions, borders, structure and to-do lists all decipher the bigger picture for us. We want linear and so these self-imposed rules are supposed to help us achieve linear. But what we miss from pursuing linear is the ability to flow. And flow has the ability to heal our heaviness.

Flow doesn’t need to survive on straight trajectories and easy solutions. It subsists on the knowledge that you put your work down on the page each and every day and eventually something will come of it. It lives in the unfinished business of today and the mystery of what could be tomorrow. It doesn’t care about straight lines and narrow paths, but lives fluidly from one moment to the next.

Your flow state is your power. Your flow state is your anti-anxiety medication. Your flow state is your energy and nourishment.

What’s real, what’s absolutely true, what’s been proven through history and neuroscience, is that when you do something slightly difficult but matched appropriately with your skill level to the point where all your abilities have to come to attention to creatively solve or conquer your beast, you feel good. Your brain releases dopamine. Have you ever felt runner’s high? A moment where your body feels suspended and easy even as it performs a difficult task? That’s flow. Ever get into a really clever, funny, popping conversation where you’re not considering what to say next but you’re just allowing a natural riff to take you forward? That’s flow. Ever get new direction in an audition room or have to cold read a side (performing material you’ve never seen before) and feel more connected to that material than your over-rehearsed monologue? That’s flow. You want to get high? You want to heal? Get to work. Get to flow.