“First of all, 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, a self-communication that brings order to them. “
This is an interesting excerpt from the book which I read recently. This is quite possibly one of the most important books I have ever read. Flow: The Psychology of Happiness — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The content is heavy and a must read if you are interested in Psychology and ‘Real’ happy life. Took too much time and focus to complete the book.
The content touches all the areas like Culture, Religion, Countries, Sports, Festivals, Creativity, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Sex etc. His research results, which he explained in this book, are really convincing because those people who participated in the interviews are from different domains. From Artists to Scientists, Welder to Entrepreneur, Farmer to Minister.
We all have encountered the moments where we forget ourselves in between doing something. We were too much intrigued in that process where we forget ourselves. We forget everything else. This is called Flow.
“The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy — or attention — is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else.”
This book gives detailed tools which demand an intellectual effort, a commitment to reflect and think hard about your own experience.
Few quotes from the book.
“There is no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications. But a person does not have to be turned into a puppet jerked about by social controls. The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one’s own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.”
“differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies.”
“A lot of pieces that you deal with are very straightforward…and you don’t find anything exciting about them, you know, but there are other pieces that have some sort of challenge…. those are the pieces that stay in your mind, that are the most interesting.”
“But in Flow, there is no room for self-scrutiny. Because enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules, and challenges well matched to skills, there is little opportunity for the self to be threatened. When a climber is making a difficult ascent, he is totally taken up in the mountaineering role. He is 100 per cent a climber, or he would not survive. There is no way for anything or anybody to bring into question any other aspect of his self. Whether his face is smudged makes absolutely no difference. The only possible threat is the one that comes from the mountain — but a good climber is well trained to face that threat, and does not need to bring the self into play in the process.”
“Great thinkers have always been motivated by the enjoyment of thinking rather than by the material rewards that could be gained by it.”
“Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness. When we see people who are rich, famous, or good- looking, we tend to assume that their lives are rewarding, even though all the evidence might point to their being miserable. And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be much happier.”
“The difference between someone who enjoys life and someone who is overwhelmed by it is a product of a combination of such external factors and the way a person has come to interpret them — that is, whether he sees challenges as threats or as opportunities for action.”
You will have more clarity and context on those quotes if you read the book. I recommend this book.
See you next week with another book. Stay tuned.
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