|
| > Return to Relationship Repairs |
| |
|
Happiness |
| |
| “More than anything else, people seek happiness,” says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow. The author spent 20 years researching topics related to the psychology of optimal experience.
Happiness is sought for its own sake, but all our other goals?health, beauty, money or power?are valued because we expect they will make us happy. Mihaly began his happiness research by studying hundreds of “experts”?artists, athletes, musicians, chess masters, and surgeons--in other words people who spend their time doing the activities they prefer. From their accounts he developed a theory of optimal experience based on what he calls flow?-”the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
Further research indicated that flow wasn’t limited to experts. Men and women, rich and poor, young and old, regardless of culture, can experience flow. The flow research included old women in Korea, adults in Thailand and India, teenagers in Tokyo, Navajo sheepherders, and people working on assembly lines in Chicago. And the research concludes that the happiest people spend much time in a state of flow.
When psychic energy (attention) is invested in realistic goals and when your skills match the opportunities for action, flow results. The pursuit of your goals brings such intense concentration that you momentarily forget everything else. Time disappears. In so doing you achieve control over your psychic energy, and by stretching skills and reaching toward higher challenges, you become an increasingly extraordinary individual.
The flow research clearly states that people who regularly experience flow are stronger people who can more easily handle life’s ups and down without caving in. To fully enjoy your life, learn to transform your activities into flow.
See the next repair: Happiness II.
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
