Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience
The book is as brilliant, as it is complex. No easy read....almost like his name I'd say. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Seemingly impossible, but you crack it and you know it :)
The term 'flow' is now an oft used word.... used to denote that experience of, of....well 'flow' . And to see it elucidated from all perspectives, was like getting to meet the guru. A thrilling experience.
He talks of 'flow' as an 'optimal experience'. Nothing alien. Everyone of us has experienced it at some point, and will recognize its characteristics.....a state of deep concentration, fully involved, alert, where time gets distorted, and you lose all sense of not just time, but also of self.
It's not about pleasure or happiness that's happening through the experience, but the sense of exhilaration and achievement you experience after.
He says after each instance of flow the person is more than the person they were before. He uses the term 'more put together'.
And what he says he 'discovered' is that this does not always just happen. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. Not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but on what we make happen and more significantly how we interpret them.
The book is as brilliant, as it is complex. No easy read....almost like his name I'd say. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Seemingly impossible, but you crack it and you know it :)
The term 'flow' is now an oft used word.... used to denote that experience of, of....well 'flow' . And to see it elucidated from all perspectives, was like getting to meet the guru. A thrilling experience.
He talks of 'flow' as an 'optimal experience'. Nothing alien. Everyone of us has experienced it at some point, and will recognize its characteristics.....a state of deep concentration, fully involved, alert, where time gets distorted, and you lose all sense of not just time, but also of self.
It's not about pleasure or happiness that's happening through the experience, but the sense of exhilaration and achievement you experience after.
And what he says he 'discovered' is that this does not always just happen. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. Not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but on what we make happen and more significantly how we interpret them.
It is a circuitous path that begins with achieving control over the contents of our consciousness.
He talks of the best moments not as the normal or leisure moments which are passive, receptive, relaxing but moments when your body or mind are stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile, not so difficult that it builds anxiety, but also not so easy that it can get boring, its the band in between...... and they are the moments that add up to 'magnifying ones spirit'.
Magnifying ones spirit....what a lovely phrase.
And that's where we grow and enhance the quality of our lives.
Magnifying ones spirit....what a lovely phrase.
And that's where we grow and enhance the quality of our lives.
He talks of the universe as 'order' and 'entropy (chaos), and how flow enables bringing order to consciousness.....and is therefore the key to growth and happiness.
It is not necessarily about being involved with the known creative spaces, or art or sports, it's about learning to transform jobs and relationships into flow producing activities.
A concept he brings in here that had me intrigued was 'increasing complexity'. Increasing complexity not just in the external challenges and thus the required skills, but also in how we capture and expand our consciousness.
The experience of flow does not need an explanation for those who enjoy it; we are simply aware that it gives us the two things vital to happiness: a sense of purpose and self-knowledge.
Each piece of knowledge absorbed, each new refinement of a skill, enlarges the self and makes it more highly ordered, forming, in his words, ‘an increasingly extraordinary individual.’
This is why opportunities to create flow can be addictive. Flow makes you feel more alive, certainly, and it has another, perhaps surprising effect: the growth in complexity entails both awareness of your uniqueness simultaneously with renewed understanding of how you fit into your world and your relationships with other people.
He explains this complexity in terms of two psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement towards uniqueness, towards separating oneself from others. It's opposite, Integration refers to a union with others, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these two opposite tendencies.
This double effect has tremendous implications for the rejuvenation of communities and nations. The author suggests that the most successful nations and societies of the 21st century will be those that make sure people have the maximum opportunities to be involved in flow-inducing activity.
As the German philosopher Nietzsche put it, maturity is ‘the rediscovery of the seriousness we had as a child – at play.’
“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Experience is in harmony. And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but with respect to other people and the world in general." — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I'd say just reading the book can enable a 'flow' experience. I'm just so glad and grateful that the book landed in my hands....reading it twice wasn't enough, I'm going to go buy myself a copy :)
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