A grieving artist goes viral finding flow | Josie Lewis | TEDxMinneapolis

After years of devastating pregnancy losses that mirrored a lackluster art career, Josie Lewis gave up. She gave up trying to grow her family and gave up trying to be an artist. She began to focus on the most elementary elements of art, like color and texture, and learned that the resulting flow state helped her work through the grief. When she put process videos of her work online, she discovered a global audience. Learn more about art, grief, and flow in this beautiful and inspirational talk. Josie Lewis is an artist working in sculpture, painting, mixed media, and video. Her artwork can be found in the St Paul Union Depot, the Minneapolis/St Paul Airport, and in the private collections of General Mills, University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis Public Schools. In 2017, she began sharing videos of her daily art practice on Instagram, sparking a conversation around what is (and is not) art on the internet. To date, her videos have more than 1 billion views, and her social media audience has grown to over 1.3 million followers. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I am an artist.

I make process videos of my work.

On the internet, my videos
have had more than a billion views.

(Cheers)

My work looks rainbowy and bright

and colourful and joyful,

but I made it out of the darkest
time of my life.

I made this work to process my grief
when my baby died.

It took a massive personal tragedy

for me to totally change
the way I made art.

And as an accidental byproduct,

I uncovered a phenomenon
that resonated with millions of people.

It became clear that for me,
the process of making art

is far more important than the results.

A few years ago I was in a magical
but also difficult stage of transition.

I was newly married and a new mom.

I was adjusting to family life

while simultaneously
trying to push forward an art career

that was feeling increasingly lackluster.

I had been an artist my whole life.

I did all the things you are 'supposed
to do' to have a successful art career.

I went to grad school and got an MFA,

I was exhibiting art, I was selling art,
but something didn't feel quite right.

I didn't feel like I was fully
resonating with my audience.

On a more personal front,
after our first daughter was born,

my husband and I
decided to expand our family.

And I descended into several years
of devastating pregnancy losses.

Our daughter Esther was stillborn,

and then I made the scariest,
possible decision to try again,

and I went on to have four miscarriages.

There is a parallel
between creating a human life

and creating an expression of art.

And for me it felt like
my unfulfilling professional life

was mirroring my inability
to sustain a pregnancy.

So after a few years of losses
and disappointments and sorrows,

I quit.

I gave up.

I gave up trying to have another child,
and I gave up on my art career.

I stopped trying to make work
that I thought was 'important',

either in support
of my cutting edge art career

or even just something nice
to put on the wall.

But, I did not stop making things.

I found myself needing
to make art just to survive.

I found that when
I was working very simply,

just with colours and repeated shapes,

it was the only time I felt normal.

There was nothing that compared

to the feeling of relief I had
when I was painting.

The effect was so powerful
it verged on pharmacological

because I felt like I was high.

It felt like an altered state.

I did not have any idea what was going on.

As we often do in times
of turmoil and confusion,

I turned to the internet.

(Laughter)

And the internet led me
to some scholarly articles,

which led me
to some excellent books,

and I found out
that what I was experiencing

was something called 'flow'.

Flow is a pleasurable state
of deep concentration.

It's a heightened focus.

It's a documented neurological condition.

There's actual brain changes

that they can track
in your brain during flow.

There's amazing research on flow

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
out of the University of Chicago.

What Csikszentmihalyi will tell us
is that we will know we've been in flow

when we lose track of time.

Have you ever been engrossed in something
only to pop up and discover,

to your surprise,
that four hours have passed,

and your neck hurts,
and you're hungry, and you have to pee?

Congratulations, you've just been in flow.

Everyone finds flow in different ways.

There are as many different flow channels
as there are unique individuals.

For me, painting gets me there.

For some people it could be
needlepoint or snowboarding.

It could be accounting.
It could be recreational auto repair.

I have even heard it said,
it's been told to me,

although it certainly
has never happened to me,

that a common flow channel
for people is cooking.

(Applause)

There are some amazing
brain changes during flow.

I actually had a brain scan done,

and the medical team told me

that I had a very common
but frequently under-diagnosed problem.

You might have it too.

(Laughter)

It's called harebrained.

(Laughter)

Okay, for real, I'm going to
give you a little brain anatomy.

There's a part of our brain
called the prefrontal cortex.

It's often called the executive brain.

It's in charge of high-level human stuff.

We need it; it's very important.

It's in charge of judging, and
self-awareness and high-level planning.

I like to think of this part of the brain
as the strict librarian of the brain.

She is hyperaware, super diligent;

she's a big fan of lists
and time management.

She's also our inner critic.

She wants to keep us convergent,
conventional, and unremarkable

because that's
the safest course of action.

This is our brain without flow.

But, here is the magic of flow.

When you experience the brain changes
of flow, the strict librarian goes dark.

She goes quiet.

Dr. Arne Dietrich, out of
the American University of Beirut,

calls this transient hypofrontality.

It’s a well-known marker of flow,
very well documented.

What happens is, when you’re in flow,

the activity in your
prefrontal cortex slows down,

it just winks out and other parts
of the brain light up.

What this meant for me,
practically speaking,

is that the Twitter feed
that's constantly going on

of fears, and shopping lists,
and worries, and to-dos,

and rehashing the stupid thing I said
at a party four months ago, melt away.

In flow, I have an out-of-self experience.

It’s a complete loss of ego.

And let me just say,
it’s a welcome change.

I deeply appreciate
getting a break from me.

I had always enjoyed flow as an artist,

but I had not needed it
until my baby died.

I had a friend who suffered a major loss,

and she was very offended

when someone suggested
that she 'craft' to manage her pain.

And indeed, crafting
or watercolour painting or whittling

sounds hopelessly trite as a way
to manage the crushing losses of life.

What I can offer you
is my deeply lived experience

that finding flow through painting,

created a space for healing
that nothing else could provide.

Flow is also addictive.

The pleasurable qualities of flow

make us want to return to it
again and again.

When somebody achieves
something extraordinary,

we like to think they must have
remarkable self-discipline.

But I think they found their flow state,
and they'll do anything to stay there.

Achievement is a natural byproduct
of an addiction to flow.

However, in my dark hours,
I did not care about achievement.

I cared about survival.

When I went through those years of loss,

I had to revert my art practice

down to the simplest possible
exercises of colour and pattern

because that was all I had in me.

It is not just about trying to zone out.

A certain level of active engagement
is required to get into flow.

So, sorry, Netflix doesn’t cut it.

(Laughter)

Flow requires moderate difficulty,

but, the challenge
must be well within our abilities.

Steven Kotler of the Flow Genome Project

has actually calculated an exact
'flow-inducing' difficulty percentage.

[0%, BORED]

If your difficulty -

(Laughter)

If your difficulty is 0%,

you will be bored -
you won't get into flow.

If the difficulty is 100%,

you'll be very frustrated
and angry and enraged.

We've all been there.

When I ask people what they think
that difficulty target might be,

people usually say 50%, 60, 85?

But it turns out, it is four!

(Laughter)

[FLOW! 4%]

Four percent difficulty, friends!

That is the level that we are targeting
to get ourselves into flow.

If you are doing something
and you're frustrated,

you're probably trending
towards a 10 or 11% difficulty,

and you need to dial it back down!

My friend says that the only difference

between wrestling and dancing
is cooperation.

(Laughter)

Cooperation is what's required in flow.

If you’re at 15% difficulty,
you are likely wrestling.

A few years ago, I had a couple
hundred Instagram followers,

all of whom I knew personally.

I posted a simple time-lapse video

of making a painting,
fully expecting it would get 37 views.

To my surprise, it got 20,000 views!

So I thought that must be a fluke.

So I posted another one,
and the same thing happened.

So then I started
posting a video every day.

And now more than a billion views later,

I guess it’s safe to say
I was onto something.

When people watch my videos,
they tell me that they lose track of time.

They lose themselves in my feed.
Their anxiety diminishes.

In fact, the people who watch my videos
are showing all the markers of flow,

just by watching my flow videos.

I also hear that my videos
give people the courage

to follow the tiny and terrifying dream
to pursue their own creative spark.

My videos seem to introduce people
to their own creative hearts.

I also have what I consider to be
the ultimate pinnacle of internet success.

And that is: I have haters!

(Laughter)

My haters’ main complaint seems to be
that I am wasting art supplies.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

And that I'm 'doing it wrong'.

(Laughter)

The thing that's most interesting
about the haters -

by the way, I love the haters.

I don’t cry myself to sleep.
I invite them in. I love dissent.

But the thing that's
most interesting about the haters

is that the things they say to me

sound an awful lot
like the things we say to ourselves

when we’re considering a creative risk.

Hmmm? Hmmm? Hmmm?

We are reared to be results-oriented
achievers in a merit-based society.

When we start something new,
and we're learning a new skill,

the results will be kind of lame.

When we’re so focused on the results,

we will immediately lose heart
when the results are mediocre.

When we’re feeling
self-conscious and perfectionistic,

it’s important to remember
that that is the strict librarian on duty.

She is here to remind us

that we do not have time
for these shenanigans,

and as soon as anybody
sees what we’re up to,

we will be revealed as complete imposters.

That is her job and she does it well.

We can’t just turn off
the strict librarian with willpower,

but we call lull her with flow.

We can calm and soothe
the prefrontal cortex in flow.

When we’re in flow, we'll stop
trying to monitor our 'progress'

and lose ourselves in the process.

Then we’ll be able to access our creative,
intuitive, and spiritual selves,

and we will also be able to heal.

Mysteriously, like a wound
covered by a bandage,

healing the trauma of grief and loss
is possible in the background of flow.

For me, healing happened gradually

as I continually searched
for that 4% sweet spot

while exploring colour and pattern.

We do not need to produce
something of lasting permanent value

every second of the day.

We also do not need
to be 'practical' all of the time.

Sometimes, the value is the minutes
that we give ourselves to the flow.

I think the flow is the mechanism

that can introduce ourselves
to our deeper selves.

I would argue that those
ephemeral moments in flow

are some of the most fulfilling
and valuable of our lives.

Thank you

(Applause) (Cheers)