Book of the Week: Flow
02 Jul 2016
This week I read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, because I want to avoid psychic entropy and focus my psychic energy to bend spoons. I originally thought the book was just going to be about flow, a subject I’ve heard plenty of times in other contexts, but was pleasantly surprised when the book talked about happiness, consciousness, experience and meaning. Reading this book made me feel at peace with my life. I feel a greater understanding of people.
While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make use happy.
Wealth, status and power are symbols are cultural symbols for happiness, but cannot make you happy if you do not have it within yourself. Culture Protection
The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call ontological anxiety, or existential dread. Basically, it is a fear of being, a feeling that there is no meaning to life and that existence is not worth going on with. Nothing seems to make sense.
Cultures develop religion, philosophy, arts and comforts to occupy people’s minds when thoughts of survival are no longer occupying it fully. These distractions may cause temporary relief, but they don’t address the core issue. Bernard Roth pointed in The Achievement Habit, it is only through our own mind that we give things value. We must practice mind control. Consciousness
The function of consciousness is to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body.
There is so much sensory information around us. What we do with it and how we internalize affects how we feel in relation to the world around us. It is impossible to perceive everything. Some take magic mushrooms to enhance their perceptions. Pleasure and Enjoyment
Pleasure is a feeling of contentment that one achieves whatever information in consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have been met.
When people think about happiness, they first think about experiencing pleasure. When you go beyond pleasure and attain a novel sense of accomplishment, you have enjoyment. Enjoyment has eight major components.
- experience occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing
- we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing
- concentration is usually possible because the tasks undertaken has clean goals
- and provides immediate feedback
- one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
- enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions
- concert for self disappears, but emerges stronger after the flow experience is over
- sense of the duration of time is altered
Don’t aim at success—the more you at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended is side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself. –Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Flow
The purpose of flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow.
There are 5 characteristics of the optimal experience.
- Clarity
- Centering
- Choice
- Commitment
- Challenge
Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim. –Democritus
Body and Mind Yoga and the martial arts are types of physical activities that are highly correlated with flow. Not everyone can be a yogi or a martial artist, but you can convert different activities to flow by:
- Setting goals
- Becoming immersed in the activity
- Paying attention to what is happening
- Learning to enjoy the immediate experience.
Purchase Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience on Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.