Flow

"Each year sees hundreds of titles published with advice on how to stay trim, how to avoid stress, how to grow rich when the market crashes, or how to develop self-confidence. While these self-help books do occasionally, help the reader, in the long run they are likely to be unsatisfying, for, in fact, they do little to enhance the quality of experience: It is all too common an occurrence in our culture that success leads only to frustration, to anxiety, to further disillusionment. What, then, does make people glad to be alive? What are the inner experiences that make life worthwhile? For more than two decades Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been studying states of "optimal experience," or those times when people report feelings of enjoyment, concentration, and deep involvement. Systematic studies on happiness by other psychologists have confirmed his research findings that involve not only determining what people really mean when they say they are enjoying themselves but also learning how they reach that state of contentment - and how some fortunate individuals are able to maintain themselves in that peak state. These investigations have revealed that what makes experience genuinely enjoyable is a state of consciousness that Csikszentmihalyi calls flow - a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. Everyone experiences flow from time to time and will recognize its characteristics: People typically feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and as if they were performing at the peak of their abilities. Both the sense of time and emotional problems seem to disappear. There is an exhilarating feeling of transcendence, of breaking out of the boundaries of identity. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience reveals how this pleasurable state can, in fact, be controlled and not just left to chance. The key is to set challenges for ourselves, tasks that are neither too difficult nor too simple for our abilities. With such goals, we learn to order the information that enters consciousness and thereby improve the quality of our lives. While flow is most often achieved in leisure settings, such as when listening to music, playing a sport, or pursuing a hobby, Professor Csikszentmihalyi explains how every activity or situation can be enhanced if one understands the principle of the flow experience. The pleasures of our senses, whether they are used in enjoying the sight of a beautiful landscape or our own sexuality, interactions with family members and friends, work, and even solitude can become sources of flow. Ultimately, a person who has learned to maximize flow within everyday existence may succeed in turning life as a whole into a unified flow experience and thus achieve harmony and meaning in existence. Flow is expected to become one of the most productive areas of psychological research during th next decade, with practical applications ranging from the treatment of autistic children to management training to the design of museums. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is the ideal introduction to this remarkable subject and a book that can lead its readers to discover the true richness of everyday life." --