#454: SPOTLIGHT: Greg Parsons

#454: Greg Parsons

Feb 3, 2026

A Backbeat of Community

Question for Greg: 

What has SURPRISED you about the conditions under which you feel you are in a "flow state" and operating most in alignment with your true self? What allows that version of you to emerge?

Greg's Response: 

I remember feelings of flow from early in life when I was designing and building a city on a large hillside. The hillside was a pile of dirt, and I was about 6, but I remember the feelings I know now as purpose, focus, creativity, timelessness, joy. They are all components of flow.

They’re also components of play, which is what was really going on, but what I loved doing then for play –– something like imagining and describing a fascinating new world–– is the essence of what I do professionally today. It’s the arena and the foundation of a flow state to me. 

Other flow experiences to learn from since that first: drawing and painting, of course; a good SWOT analysis, oddly; crafting a beautifully moving and market-savvy organizational mission; drawing a new company strategy with a CEO in sharpie and paper from his copy machine; moving a team from stuck to flow through four category columns on a white board, some markers, careful listening, and some room to move, physically and spiritually.

Considering those, flow state today seems to add some performance pressure to the foundation of play. Just enough, defined right, supercharges the joy and outcomes. Too much, or defined fearfully, turns them into anxiety and inaction. That’s a whole story and investigation on its own.

What has surprised me about the conditions of flow? That the foundation of flow for me was built-in, seemingly from the beginning. That flow is so like play, and that adding performance pressure can be so fully empowering or debilitating. That flow can occur, or not, as an individual, as a duo, and as a group. That fluid information input and physical expression are critical. That the experience is holistic and authentic: lying at the intersection of things like genuine understanding and creating, feeling and thinking. And that it’s ultimately about imagining and ordering something better and more interesting. 

Most surprising, as I consider this now: I think of flow today in professional terms and experiences. That probably makes sense given its element of performance pressure and my recent life focus, but maybe it shouldn’t so much in the future.