Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi: Flow
A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.
Happiness does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness.
Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue... as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.
Our best experiences aren’t necessarily pleasant at the time they occur.
The swimmer’s muscles may have ached and he may have been dizzy with fatigue—yet these could have been the best moments of his life.
In the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of participation in determining the content of life—and that comes as close to happiness as anything we could conceivably imagine.
The optimal state of inner experience is one where there is order in consciousness:
- attention is invested in realistic goals
- skills match the opportunities for action
Deprived of the shields of culture—patriotism, ethnic traditions, religious beliefs—most will flounder in a morass of anxiety and apathy.
Inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that those extra pounds are not about to leave; inevitably eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains shoot through the body.
Religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with a lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers.
The ostrich’s strategy for avoiding bad news is hardly productive; better to face facts and take care to avoid becoming one of the statistics.
Civilization is built on the repression of individual desires (otherwise it would be impossible to maintain any kind of social order)
Aristotle’s “virtuous activity of the soul” is similar to the control of desire and the presentness of consciousness which creates happiness.
Control over consciousness cannot be institutionalized.
We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the forces of their personalities.
This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well.
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.
In this sense, it functions as a clearinghouse for sensations, perceptions, feelings, and ideas, establishing priorities among the information.
With consciousness we can deliberately weigh what the senses tell us, so we don’t have to react instinctively.
Step 1: Allocate your limited attention by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy, not by diffusing it in desultory, random movements.
Step 2: Invest your focused attention in a rich way.
Sleep, food, rest, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur.
Difference between pleasure and enjoyment:
Everyone takes pleasure in eating.
To enjoy food is more different, it requires paying attention to the various sensations provided by a meal.
We can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention.
Without enjoyment, life can be endured, and even pleasant. But it can be so only precariously, depending on the luck and cooperation of the external environment.
Eight components of phenomenological enjoyment:
- Occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing
- We can concentrate on what we are doing
- Task has clear goals
- Task provides immediate feedback
- One acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
- The experience allows you to exercise a sense of control over your actions
- The concern for self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over
- The sense of the duration of time is altered—hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch by like hours.
One of the most frequently mentioned enjoyable events is reading.
P51-52 Leibnitz’ innocent game for thinking/boredom
Interesting:
Finding satisfaction in caring for plants—seeing the plants one has cared for grow provides powerful feedback and beauty.
Autotelic experience - an activity which is done without expectation of future benefit because the doing itself is the reward.
Developing a discriminating palate requires the investment of psychic energy.
But the energy invested returns many times over in a more complex and enjoyable experience.
The body is like a probe full of sensitive devices that tries to obtain what information it can from the awesome reaches of space.
Entropy is the normal state of the mind—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
Unless a person knows how to give order to his thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic in the moment: it will focus on some real or imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations.
While others need external stimulation—TV, reading, conversation, or drugs—to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained.
How can one find mode value in memory?
The most natural to begin is to decide what subject one is really interested in—poetry, fine cuisine, the history of the Civil War, or baseball—and then start paying attention to key facts and figures in that chosen area.
A person who becomes familiar with the conventions of poetry, or the rules of calculus, can subsequently grow independent of external stimulation.
They can generate ordered trains of thought regardless of what is happening in external reality.
When a person has learned a system well enough to use it, they have attained a portable, self-contained world within the mind.
P130 interesting note on teaching children puns/double meanings.
It is never a waste to write for intrinsic reasons.
- Writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression
- It allows one to record events and experiences so that they can be easily recalled, and relived in the future
- It is a way to analyze and understand experiences.
The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” -Francis Bacon
What you do in your free time shaped your life.
If being alone is seen as a chance to accomplish goals that cannot be achieved in the company of others, then instead of feeling lonely, a person will enjoy solitude and learn new skills in the process.
To be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has been said, to know when one must stay silent.
The peak in the development of coping skills is reached when you have achieved a strong enough sense of self, based on personally selected goals, so that no external disappointment can entirely undermine who you are.
3 main steps to be able to gain strength from stress:
1. Unconscious self-assurance
The recognition that one’s goals may have to be adapted to the system in which he must operate.
One must trust oneself, one’s environment, and one’s place in it.
2. Focusing attention on the world.
You must spend much less time thinking about yourself, and spend your time being alert. The focus is on your goal when you process information from your surroundings, but you are open enough to adapt to external events.
Focusing outward allows you to be aware of alternate possibilities.
3. The discovery of new solutions
You can either focus on obstacles to achieving your goals and then move them out of the way or you can focus on the entire situation to discover whether alternative goals/solutions may be more appropriate.
Create meaning out of life by having an ultimate goal, having order between your smaller goals, and establishing order in the contents of your mind.
“He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence” -Blake
In Arendt’s opinion, ultimate goals must accommodate the issue of mortality.
Greeks sought mortality through heroic deeds.
Christians sought mortality through saintly deeds.
Dante’s Divina Commedia - midlife crisis