Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”

Three decades ago, a term was born in psychology and quickly gained popularity that evokes associations with anything but academic science – “flow” (flow). This is the state of the optimal experience of a person – complete merging with one’s work, absorption by it, when one does not feel time, oneself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy …

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered it while researching the lives of creative people, but “flow” is not the exclusive property of some special people. The “stream” does not descend on us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands. And the state of “flow” is one of the most beautiful things in our lives.

Dominion over destiny

We all have experienced moments when we feel not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, dominance over our own destiny. In these rare moments, we feel inspiration, a special joy. These feelings remain in our heart for a long time and serve as a guide for our life.

When a sailor on the right course feels the wind whistling in his ears, the sailboat glides over the waves, sails, sides, wind and waves merge into harmony that vibrates in the sailor’s veins. When the artist feels that the colors on the canvas, having come to life, are attracted to each other and a new living form is suddenly born before the eyes of the astonished master. When a father sees his child for the first time responds to his smile with his own.

This, however, does not only happen when external circumstances are favorable. Those who survived the concentration camps or faced mortal danger say that often, despite the seriousness of the situation, they somehow perceived ordinary events, for example, the singing of a bird in the forest, the completion of hard work, or the taste of a loaf of bread shared with a comrade. .

Happiness

Happiness is not something that happens to us at all. This is not the result of luck or a happy accident. It cannot be bought with money or achieved by force. It does not depend on the events taking place around us, but on how we interpret them.

Happiness is a state for which everyone must prepare, grow it and keep it within themselves. People who have learned to control their experiences will be able to influence the quality of their lives themselves. Only in this way can each of us come closer to being happy.

Optimal Experience

Contrary to popular belief, the best moments of our lives do not come to us in a state of relaxation or passive acceptance. Of course, relaxation can also be pleasurable, for example, after hard work. But the best moments usually happen when the body and mind are strained to the limit in an effort to achieve something difficult and valuable.

We ourselves create the optimal experience: when a child places the last cube with trembling fingers on top of the tallest tower he has ever built, when a swimmer makes a last effort to break his record, when a violinist masters the most difficult musical passage.

For each of us, there are thousands of opportunities, tasks through which you can reveal yourself. The immediate sensations experienced in these moments do not have to be pleasant. During the decisive swim, the athlete’s muscles may ache from exertion, his lungs burst from lack of air, he may pass out from fatigue – and yet these will be the best moments of his life.

Favourite buisness

The first surprise was the high similarity of sensations experienced by people during the time when they were doing their favorite thing and they did it well. Thus, a swimmer crossing the English Channel experienced feelings very similar to those experienced by a chess player during an intense tournament, or those experienced by a climber, overcoming a difficult section of rock on his way to the top.

A musician working on a complex musical passage, a black teenager from the poor neighborhoods of New York participating in the basketball championship finals, and many, many others spoke about such impressions.

The second surprise was that, regardless of the difference in cultural levels, degree of economic well-being, social class, gender, age of these people, they all described the state of joy in approximately the same way. At the same time, their activities were very different: an elderly Korean meditated, a young Japanese rushed on a motorcycle with a gang of rockers, a resident of an alpine village cared for animals, but the description of experiences almost coincided.

Moreover, when explaining why this activity brings them joy, people pointed to similar reasons. It can be said with confidence: both the optimal experience itself and the conditions for its occurrence are the same for all cultures and peoples.

Joy in everyday life

In the course of the development of mankind, each culture has developed certain protective mechanisms that make it easier for a person to exist. This includes religion, art, and philosophy. One of their tasks was to help a person cope with the destructive effects of universal chaos, to help believe that a person can control what happens to him, to help him feel satisfied with life and destiny.

However, such mechanisms provide only temporary protection. Over time, established religious beliefs wear out, losing their ability to provide the peace of mind we need.

Deprived of spiritual support, people often find a solution to life satisfaction in collecting all sorts of pleasures and entertainments based on genetic programs or determined by society. Many today go through life driven by a desire for wealth, power, or sex.

However, the quality of life cannot be improved in this way. The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.

Give meaning

In order to turn your whole life into one vivid and exciting “streaming” experience, it is not enough just to learn to control the content of your consciousness in every given moment. It is also necessary to have a global system of interconnected life goals that can give meaning to each specific business that a person is engaged in.

If you simply switch from one type of flow activity to another without any connection between them and without any global perspective, then it is very likely that, looking back at your life, you will not find meaning in it. The task of the “flow” theory is to teach a person to achieve harmony in all his endeavors.

Goals are in yourself

An “autotelic personality” is what we call a person who is able to turn real or potential threats into joyful tasks. This is a person who never gets bored, rarely worries, pays attention to what is happening around him, and, having taken up any business, is easily carried away by it, entering into a state of flow.

The term “autotelic personality” itself means “a personality whose goals are in itself”, it reflects the self-sufficiency, autonomy of the personality, its ability to independently set goals. For most people, goals are usually set by biological instincts or shaped by society, that is, the sources of goals are “outside”.

In an autotelic personality, most of the goals stem from a conscious evaluation of their experiences and reflect their true needs. The autotelic personality is able to transform the chaos of the external environment into an experience of “flow”.

Live “against”

Examples of how people find “flow” in life, despite the misfortunes that have fallen to them, have been collected and processed by Fausto Massimini, a professor at the University of Milan. One of the groups he studied included young people who, as a result of injuries or accidents, received paralysis of the limbs. One of the most unexpected results of his research was that even years after the misfortune that happened to them, these people ambiguously assessed the tragic event that changed their lives.

On the one hand, it was a tragedy. But on the other hand, it was she who opened for them an unknown, much more perfect world – the world of “limited choice”. Those patients who were able to cope with the new challenges and problems that arose as a result of their injury spoke of having clear and distinct goals in life that they did not have before. At the same time, young people felt real pride from the fact that they had learned to live not “thanks” but “despite”.

The Eight Components of “Flow”

When people describe their experiences in moments of joy, they mention at least one of the following components (and often all eight):

• Feasibility of activities, attainability of the goal, solvability of the problem.
• The ability to concentrate on what the person is doing.
• Clear goals.
• Clear and immediate feedback to correct movement towards the goal.
• Complete preoccupation with the problem, freeing consciousness from the worries and anxieties of everyday life.
• Feeling of complete control over what is happening.
• The absence of a person in the stream of thoughts about himself (however, after a person has been in the “stream”, his individuality becomes stronger, more vivid).
• The feeling of the passage of time in the process of “flow” can vary widely: seconds stretch like hours, hours fly by like seconds.

The combination of all these conditions causes that feeling of deep joy, for which people who have experienced it are ready to spend an incredible amount of effort and time again and again.