Flow-the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The author defines flow as the positive aspect of human experience that encompasses joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life.
In his search to understand what conditions are necessary for someone to experience flow he has come to a rather profound answer that perhaps we always really knew but often reject as it is too easy to get distracted by the pressures and temptations of modern life.
Flow comes from focus and total immersion in the experience, it may involve hard work, but it yields great rewards.
in itself.
The book explores the conditions necessary for Flow to take place. Flow is experienced when a person is totally immersed in a task, activity or passtime that time seems to fly by and there is smooth and easy achievement. It comes from understanding the balance between challenge and ability. So flow is not an easy day dreaming activity, it is achieved during striving to achieve, both through work, through thought, the body and through relationships with other people.
The book finishes with a look at how the idea of Flow can become central in a person’s life and gives guiding pointers to how a person’s goals may evolve over their life in the search for meaning.
At its heart the book offers a cognitive framework to explore the meaning of life, at least the enjoyment and quality of life.
I recommend the book as it gives the reader plenty to think about. Its down side perhaps is that it takes work to understand the concepts explained and the text can be heavy in parts as it shows its academic
research based background.
However, the uplifting conclusion is the pursuit of happiness is central to the human experience and can be obtained in many different circumstances where we can experience Flow, which comes from a deep connection with our undertakings when we can carry them out with effortless craft.
You will find more about flow and the pursuit of happiness in our Goal Setting Course in the Achieving Focus e-learning series, which naturally we hope you will…..enjoy.
No related posts.
