Title: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Writer: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Year: 2011
Publisher: Alpina Digital
Age limit: 0+
Volume: 520 pages 1 illustration
Genres: General psychology, Foreign psychology

About Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Often people who seem to have everything feel completely unhappy. The material goods with which they are fully provided do not fill the void in their soul. Often this comes from boredom and the inability to fill their free time with something useful. The author of this book recommends that you always be involved in any activity, give yourself to it without a trace. So all sad and dreary thoughts will soon disappear, because there will simply be no time left for them.

The theory of this famous psychologist says: only by being in a flow state, one can achieve happiness. The flow is a kind of Zen state, the complete unity of a person with the activity being performed. With such unity, a person receives a lot of positive emotions: he feels joy, pride from the work done. The state of flow is also a great incentive for self-motivation. The author has a negative attitude towards the cult of mass culture in society and even more criticizes the glamorous, luxurious life of one day, which in fact has no value. Wealth, the brilliance of fame, an important position in society - these are not at all the things that can make a person happy. After all, the ability not to be loaded, to spit on problems, to spend big money to pay off and forget about them, will not solve the issue of the lack of harmony and tranquility in your life. And soon the time will come when you will completely lose the taste for your life.

The state of flow, according to the author, is expressed when our true essence is reflected in our activity. We must love the work we do. Only in this way can a harmonious existence be achieved. For many years, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that the main desire of a person is to be happy. Any goals, be it beauty, health, wealth or love, are of interest to us precisely in connection with this question: are these things capable of making us happy?

The author of this psychological manual claims (and we fully agree with him) that when you love what you do, you always want to further develop in this direction: improve your skills, reach a new level. It was the ability to master new skills and techniques that allowed the caveman to turn into a reasonable homo sapiens.

This book will be useful to all readers, but especially to those who are disappointed in their lives and are busy searching for themselves. The author will help you change for the better, find the right life guide, teach you how to have fun during boring, routine things, tell you how to maximize your inner potential, enter the stream and learn to constantly be in this state, because it is with this technique you will feel happy.

On our literary site, you can download Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always follow the release of new products? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern science fiction, literature on psychology and children's editions. In addition, we offer interesting and informative articles for beginner writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Description from the publisher

Quote

The book "Flow" is a very non-trivial approach to the problems of the emotional life of a person and the regulation of behavior. The joy of flow is the highest reward that nature can bestow on us for striving to solve more and more complex problems. Unlike the standard of living, the quality of experience can be increased by paying with only one currency - the investment of attention and organized effort; the other currency in the flow realm is not quoted. Csikszentmihalyi reminds us: happiness is not something that just happens to us, it is both an art and a science, it is something that requires effort and a kind of qualification. “The key to happiness lies in the ability to control oneself, one’s feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.”
Dmitry Leontiev, Doctor of Psychology.

What is this book about

While researching creative individuals, the author found in his research that they are happy due to the fact that in the process of insight they experience a state of flow. But the flow is not the exclusive property of some special people. The author builds a detailed, coherent and experimentally confirmed theory, in the center of which is the idea of ​​a flow. This is a state of complete merging with your work, absorption by it, when you do not feel time, yourself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy.

Why the book is worth reading

The state of flow is one of the most beautiful things in our life. And the book will lead the reader to that state.
It turns out that happiness does not descend on us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands.
A rare example of the service of high science to an ordinary person.

Who is this book for?

For everyone who wants to truly live this life happily. For those who are interested in psychology as a discipline, who, in principle, are attracted by the phenomenon of happiness, and for all those who lack this happiness so much in their own lives. Indeed, in the state of flow, pleasure merges with effort and meaning, giving rise to an energizing boundless state of joy.

about the author

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - psychologist, emeritus professor and director of the Center for Quality of Life Research at Claremont University (USA), member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Sciences and Arts and the National Academy of Leisure Studies, author of about 20 books, the most famous of which - "Flow" - translated into 30 languages. Lives and works in the USA.

• Flow is a state of optimal human experience, complete merging with one's work. Brings a feeling of inspiration and special joy.
• Regardless of the difference in cultural levels, all people describe the state of joy in approximately the same way.
• People who have learned to control their experiences can themselves influence the quality of their lives.

Three decades ago, a term was born in psychology and quickly gained popularity, which evokes associations with anything but academic science - “flow” (flow). This is the state of optimal experience of a person - complete merging with one's work, absorption by it, when one does not feel time, oneself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy ...

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered it while researching the lives of creative people, but “flow” is not the exclusive property of some special people. The "stream" does not descend on us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands. And the state of “flow” is one of the most beautiful things in our lives.

Dominion over destiny

We all have experienced moments when we feel not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, dominance over our own destiny. In these rare moments, we feel inspiration, a special joy. These feelings remain in our heart for a long time and serve as a guide for our life.

When a sailor on the right course feels the wind whistling in his ears, the sailboat glides over the waves, sails, sides, wind and waves merge into harmony that vibrates in the sailor's veins. When the artist feels that the colors on the canvas, having come to life, are attracted to each other and a new living form is suddenly born before the eyes of the astonished master. When a father sees his child for the first time responds to his smile with his own.

This, however, does not only happen when external circumstances are favorable. Those who survived the concentration camps or faced mortal danger say that often, despite the seriousness of the situation, they perceived ordinary events somehow fully and vividly, for example, the singing of a bird in the forest, the completion of hard work, or the taste of a loaf of bread shared with a comrade. .

Happiness

Happiness is not something that happens to us at all. This is not the result of luck or a happy accident. It cannot be bought with money or achieved by force. It does not depend on the events taking place around us, but on how we interpret them.

Happiness is a state for which everyone must prepare, grow it and keep it within themselves. People who have learned to control their experiences will be able to influence the quality of their lives themselves. Only in this way can each of us come closer to being happy.

Optimal Experience

Contrary to popular belief, the best moments of our lives do not come to us in a state of relaxation or passive acceptance. Of course, relaxation can also be pleasurable, for example, after hard work. But the best moments usually happen when the body and mind are strained to the limit in an effort to achieve something difficult and valuable.

Both the optimal experience itself and the conditions for its occurrence are the same for all cultures and peoples.

We ourselves create the optimal experience: when a child places the last cube with trembling fingers on top of the tallest tower he has ever built, when a swimmer makes a last effort to break his record, when a violinist masters the most difficult musical passage.

For each of us, there are thousands of opportunities, tasks through which you can reveal yourself. The immediate sensations experienced in these moments do not have to be pleasant. During the decisive swim, the athlete's muscles may ache from exertion, his lungs burst from lack of air, he may pass out from fatigue - and yet these will be the best moments of his life.

Favourite buisness

The first surprise was the high similarity of sensations experienced by people during the time when they were doing their favorite thing and they did it well. Thus, a swimmer crossing the English Channel experienced feelings very similar to those experienced by a chess player during an intense tournament, or those experienced by a climber overcoming a difficult section of rock on his way to the top.

A musician working on a complex musical passage, a black teenager from the poor neighborhoods of New York participating in the finals of the basketball championship, and many, many others spoke about such impressions.

Regardless of the difference in cultural levels, the degree of economic well-being, people described the state of joy in the same way.

The second surprise was that, despite the difference in cultural levels, degree of economic well-being, social affiliation, gender, age of these people, they all described the state of joy in approximately the same way. At the same time, their activities were very different: an elderly Korean meditated, a young Japanese rushed on a motorcycle with a gang of rockers, a resident of an alpine village cared for animals, but the description of experiences almost coincided.

Moreover, when explaining why this activity brings them joy, people pointed to similar reasons. It can be said with confidence: both the optimal experience itself and the conditions for its occurrence are the same for all cultures and peoples.

Joy in everyday life

In the course of the development of mankind, each culture has developed certain protective mechanisms that make it easier for a person to exist. This includes religion, art, and philosophy. One of their tasks was to help a person cope with the destructive effects of universal chaos, to help believe that a person can control what happens to him, to help him feel satisfied with life and destiny.

However, such mechanisms provide only temporary protection. Over time, established religious beliefs wear out, losing their ability to provide the peace of mind we need.

The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions.

Deprived of spiritual support, people often find a solution to life satisfaction in collecting all sorts of pleasures and entertainments based on genetic programs or determined by society. Many today go through life driven by a desire for wealth, power, or sex.

However, the quality of life cannot be improved in this way. The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.

Give meaning

In order to turn your whole life into one vivid and exciting “streaming” experience, it is not enough just to learn to control the content of your consciousness at any given moment. It is also necessary to have a global system of interconnected life goals that can give meaning to each specific business that a person is engaged in.

If you simply switch from one type of flow activity to another without any connection between them and without any global perspective, then it is very likely that, looking back at your life, you will not find meaning in it. The task of the "flow" theory is to teach a person to achieve harmony in all his endeavors.

Goals are in yourself

An "autotelic personality" is what we call a person who is able to turn real or potential threats into joyful tasks. This is a person who never gets bored, rarely worries, pays attention to what is happening around him, and, having taken up any business, is easily carried away by it, entering into a state of flow.

The term “autotelic personality” itself means “a personality whose goals are in itself”, it reflects the self-sufficiency, autonomy of the personality, its ability to independently set goals. For most people, goals are usually set by biological instincts or shaped by society, that is, the sources of goals are "outside".

In an autotelic personality, most of the goals stem from a conscious evaluation of their experiences and reflect their true needs. The autotelic personality is able to transform the chaos of the external environment into an experience of "flow".

Live "against"

Examples of how people find “flow” in life, despite the misfortunes that have fallen to them, have been collected and processed by Fausto Massimini, a professor at the University of Milan. One of the groups he studied included young people who, as a result of injuries or accidents, received paralysis of the limbs. One of the most unexpected results of his research was that even years after the misfortune that happened to them, these people ambiguously assessed the tragic event that changed their lives.

On the one hand, it was a tragedy. But on the other hand, it was she who opened for them an unknown, much more perfect world - the world of "limited choice". Those patients who were able to cope with the new challenges and problems that arose as a result of their injury spoke of having clear and distinct goals in life that they did not have before. At the same time, young people felt real pride from the fact that they learned to live not "thanks" but "despite".

The Eight Components of "Flow"

When people describe their experiences in moments of joy, they mention at least one of the following components (and often all eight):

• Feasibility of activities, attainability of the goal, solvability of the problem.
• The ability to concentrate on what the person is doing.
• Clear goals.
• Clear and immediate feedback to correct movement towards the goal.
• Complete preoccupation with the problem, freeing consciousness from the worries and anxieties of everyday life.
• Feeling of complete control over what is happening.
• The absence of a person in the stream of thoughts about himself (however, after a person has been in the "stream", his individuality becomes stronger, more vivid).
• The feeling of the passage of time in the process of "flow" can vary widely: seconds stretch like hours, hours fly by like seconds.

The combination of all these conditions causes that feeling of deep joy, for which people who have experienced it are ready to spend an incredible amount of effort and time again and again.

About the expert

The author of the term and theory of "flow", one of the most authoritative and respected psychologists in the world. Professor at Claremont College, author of a dozen and a half books, including the famous "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience" ("Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience", Harper and Row, 1990).

In this iconic book, the eminent scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presents a completely new approach to the topic of happiness. Happiness for him is akin to inspiration, and Csikszentmihalyi calls the state when a person is completely absorbed in an interesting business, in which he realizes his potential to the maximum, a flow. The author analyzes this state on the example of representatives of various professions and finds that the emotional upsurge experienced by artists, artists, musicians is available in any business. Moreover, it is necessary to strive for it.

It is curious that the book was included in the version of Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. - M .: Alpina Non-fiction, 2013 - 464 p.

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Chapter 1

Even 2300 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle came to the conclusion that more than anything in the world, a person wants happiness. We strive only for happiness for its own sake, and any other goals - health, wealth, beauty or power - are important to us only to the extent that we expect them to make us happy.

I "discovered" that happiness is not something that happens to us at all. This is not the result of luck or a happy accident. It cannot be bought with money or achieved by force. It does not depend on the events taking place around us, but on our interpretation of them. Happiness is a state for which everyone must prepare, grow it and keep it within themselves. People who have learned to control their experiences will be able to influence the quality of their lives themselves. Only in this way can each of us come closer to being happy.

Happiness cannot be found by consciously setting such a goal. The famous Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl brilliantly expressed this idea in the preface to his book: “Do not strive for success at any cost - the more you are fixed on it, the more difficult it is to achieve it. Success, like happiness, cannot be achieved, they come by themselves<… >as a side effect of a person's focus on something greater than himself.

But we all had to experience moments when we felt not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, domination over our own destiny. In these rare moments, we feel inspiration, a special joy. These feelings remain in our heart for a long time and serve as a guide in our life. This is what we call optimal experience.

The best moments usually happen when the body and mind are stretched to the limit in an effort to achieve something difficult and valuable. We ourselves generate the optimal experience. For each of us, there are thousands of opportunities, tasks to reveal ourselves through them.

I developed the theory of optimal experience. This theory was based on the concept flow- a state of complete absorption in activity, when everything else recedes into the background, and the pleasure from the process itself is so great that people will be willing to pay just to do it.

Roots of dissatisfaction. The main reason why happiness is difficult to achieve is that the universe was created without taking into account the wishes of the comfort of the day of people. Even J. Holmes noted: “The Universe is not hostile and not friendly to us. She's just indifferent." The feeling of happiness depends on inner harmony, and not on the ability to control the forces of the universe. Most people fall prey to the inflation of pleasure that accompanies the escalator of rising expectations, some manage to avoid it. These are those who, regardless of their financial situation, were able to improve the quality of their lives, gain satisfaction, and also make those around them a little happier. Perhaps their main strength lies in the fact that they are able to manage their own lives.

Protective functions of culture. In the process of evolution, each human society gradually came to the realization of its loneliness in the world space and the unreliability of its life. In order to make the chaotic forces of the surrounding nature available for control or at least understanding, people created myths and beliefs. One of the main functions of every culture is to protect members of society from chaos, to help them believe in their own importance and in the ultimate success of their existence.

The defense mechanisms developed in the past - the order that religion, patriotism, folk traditions and social norms brought to the world - are becoming ineffective for an increasing number of people who feel thrown into a maelstrom of chaos. The lack of internal order manifests itself in a subjective state called by some ontological anxiety, or existential horror.

People react differently to this realization. Some try to ignore it, continuing the pursuit of what should make life more enjoyable - for expensive cars, prestigious positions, luxury. But with each new success, it becomes more and more obvious that money, power, status and luxuries alone cannot improve the quality of life.

Religion has traditionally dealt with existential problems, so it's not surprising that today more and more disillusioned people are trying to find answers through religion. But nowadays it is already more difficult to recognize the concepts of the world order proposed by religions as final. The form in which religion presents its truths to people - myths, revelations, sacred texts - does not inspire the confidence of the broad masses of the population living in the era of scientific progress, despite the fact that the essence of these truths has remained the same.

Return to experience. There is no way out of this trap unless you take the initiative into your own hands. If the existing institutions and value system no longer fulfill their supportive functions, everyone must use all available means to fill their lives with meaning and joy. To overcome the anxieties and troubles that await him in life, a person must become so independent of the social environment that he does not think exclusively in terms of social rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, the individual must learn to find rewards within himself, develop the ability to experience joy regardless of external circumstances.

We grow up in the belief that the most important events of our lives are ahead of us in the future. “We are always preparing for life,” said the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “but we never live.”

Pleasure seeking is a response built into our genes for the survival of the species, not for our personal gain. The pleasure we experience from food is a guarantee that our body will receive the nutrients it needs. The same can be said about the joy of sex, which expresses the attitude inherent in our genes to procreate. When a man and a woman are physically attracted to each other, they usually think that this desire is a manifestation of their own intentions. In fact, in most cases, their "intention" comes from an invisible genetic code that has a purpose of its own. Since attraction is a reflex based on purely physical reactions, it must be thought that the conscious plans of the individual play a minimal role in what is happening. But unconditionally following the genetic and social instructions, we lose control over consciousness and become helpless toys of external forces. A person who is unable to resist the temptation of delicious food or drink, or who is constantly focused on thoughts of sex, cannot freely dispose of his psychic energy.

Undoubtedly, in order to survive in modern society, a person needs to work for external goals and learn to save rewards for later. However, he is not at all obliged to turn into a puppet, wholly controlled by society. The solution to this problem is to gradually free ourselves from the rewards offered by society, stop striving for them and replace them with pleasures that are in our own power. This does not mean that we should reject all of society's proposed goals; it is enough to build our own system of goals that can supplement or replace the one with which the society is trying to bribe us. If a person learns to enjoy and see meaning in the process of life itself, society will no longer be able to control it.

Paths to Liberation. The simple truth that the ability to control the mind determines the quality of life has been known to mankind for a long time. Freud argued that two tyrants representing "others" were fighting for control of the mind: the id (biological drives) and the superego (social control). They are opposed by the Ego, which embodies the true needs of the individual, connected with his immediate environment.

Chapter 2. ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Like all human behavior, the functioning of consciousness is the result of biological processes. The function of consciousness is to collect and process information about what is happening outside and inside the body, on which further reactions are based. Without consciousness, we would continue to receive knowledge from the senses about what is happening around, but we would be able to react to the information received only reflexively, instinctively. Thanks to consciousness, we can synthesize new information that did not exist before, we gain the ability to dream, tell lies, compose beautiful poems and scientific theories.

I believe that of all existing models, the “phenomenological model of consciousness based on information theory” most fully covers the aspects of the work of consciousness that are of interest to us and can bring the greatest benefit for practical purposes. Phenomenological this model is called because it deals directly with the phenomena of consciousness - the events that we are aware of and interpret, and not with the anatomical structures, neurochemical reactions or unconscious intentions that caused these events. The model we propose also borrows information theory principles that can help us understand what happens in the mind. These principles include knowledge about the processes of processing, storing and reading sensory information, that is, about the work of attention and memory. “To be aware” in the framework of the proposed model means to recognize that there are certain conscious events (sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions) and that we can direct them. Consciousness is purposefully ordered information.

Consciousness, like a mirror, reflects what our senses tell us about what is happening around and in the nervous system, but it does this selectively, actively interpreting events and imposing its own reality on them. The forces that order information in the mind, we can call intentions, or intentions. They arise whenever a person consciously wants something. We often label manifestations of intentionality with other words, such as "instinct," "need," "drive," or "desire." But all these concepts contain an attempt to explain why people behave in a certain way. "Intention" is a more neutral and descriptive word, it doesn't say why the individual wants something, but only states that he wants. All of our intentions, whether genetically acquired or ingrained in us, are organized into a hierarchical structure of goals that determines the order of preference.

The boundaries of the possibilities of consciousness. Modern science is close to accurately assessing the information processing capabilities of our central nervous system. Today it is considered proven that the human brain can simultaneously process an average of about seven bits of information. We also learn how to compress and rationalize information with symbols, a function that languages, mathematics, abstract concepts and conventional images perform.

Attention as mental energy. Information enters our minds because we deliberately focus on it. It is attention that selects the relevant information from the great variety of available information; it is also responsible for retrieving the necessary memories from memory, participating in the evaluation of the event, and then in making the right decision. It seems to us appropriate to represent attention in the form of psychic energy: no work is possible without attention, and in the process of work it is wasted. How we spend our attention, what thoughts, feelings, memories we let into our consciousness, determines our personal development. This amazing energy is completely subject to us, and it is in its power to make of us what we want. That is why we have the right to consider attention as the most important tool in improving the quality of our experience.

Enter yourself. Consciousness is not a linear system, but a system with cyclic causal relationships. Attention shapes personality, and personality directs attention. So, our experiences depend on where we direct our psychic energy - on the structure of attention, which, in turn, affects our goals and intentions. Now we must analyze what happens after attention brings new information into consciousness. Only once we understand this can we move on to the difficult question of how to control experiences and change them for the better.

Disordered Mind: Psychic Entropy. One of the main forces adversely affecting consciousness is the so-called mental disorder - information that comes into conflict with existing intentions and distracts us from their implementation. We call these situations different words depending on what we are experiencing: pain, fear, rage, anxiety, or jealousy. All these types of disorder cause attention to divert to unwanted objects, depriving us of the freedom to use it as we please.

Whenever incoming information disturbs the orderliness of our consciousness, endangering the existing structure of goals and priorities, we find ourselves in a state of internal disorder, or mental entropy. Prolonged stay in this state can weaken the personality so much that a person loses the ability to control his attention and achieve goals.

Ordered Consciousness: The State of Flow. Opposite to the state of psychic entropy discussed above is optimal experience. If the information entering our consciousness is in agreement with the internal structure of goals, psychic energy flows without any obstacles. If a person is able to organize his consciousness in such a way that the flow state arises as often as possible, the quality of his life will inevitably begin to improve, because in this case even the most boring activities will acquire meaning and begin to bring joy.

Complication and growth of personality. After experiencing the state of flow, personal organization becomes more complex than it was before. It is in increasing complexity that personal growth lies. Complexity is the result of two large-scale psychological processes: differentiation and integration. The first involves movement towards uniqueness, separation from others, the second strives for the opposite - to unity with other people, to the transpersonal unity of ideas and concepts. complex we call the person who manages to successfully combine both of these processes. We develop precisely when we act freely, for the sake of the activity itself, and not guided by external impulses.

Chapter 3. JOY AND QUALITY OF LIFE

There are two main strategies for improving the quality of life. The first is to try to adjust external conditions to suit our goals. The second involves changing our perception of external conditions so that they are better suited to our goals. For example, an important component of happiness is a sense of security. It can be increased by buying a weapon, installing a secure lock on the front door, moving to a safer area, or trying to influence the city authorities to increase police work. All of these actions are aimed at bringing external conditions in line with our goals. Another approach: if we accept that some risk is unavoidable, and learn to enjoy an unpredictable world, then thoughts of potential threats will not so noticeably poison our well-being. None of these strategies will be effective if used alone.

People continue to believe that the solution to the problem can be found by changing external circumstances. If only they could get a little richer, or build more muscle or find a more caring life partner, then everything would be fine.

Wealth, power, position in society have become accepted in our culture symbols happiness. In reality, the quality of life does not directly depend on our reputation and the size of our wallet. The most important thing is that we ourselves think about ourselves and what is happening to us. To improve our lives, we need to change the quality of our experiences.

Pleasure and the ability to experience joy. Although pleasure is one of the important components of the quality of life, it does not in itself bring happiness. Nutrition, sleep, rest, sex return us to a state of homeostatic balance, restore order in consciousness after the needs of the body that cause mental entropy have been satisfied. But these processes do not contribute to psychological growth and complexity of the personality. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself it cannot create it; take your mind to the next level.

If we continue to think about what makes our life worthwhile, then from pleasant memories we will move on to other events and experiences that are somewhat similar to pleasure, but belong to a different category and therefore deserve a separate name. Let's call it the experience of joy. We are talking about a joyful event in the event that a person not only satisfied his needs or desires, but also managed to go beyond the usual patterns of action, achieved something unusual, which before, perhaps, could not even be imagined.

Getting pleasure does not require an investment of psychic energy, while joy is achieved only as a result of a special concentration of attention. A person can experience pleasure without any effort if an electric current is applied to certain centers in his brain or a drug is given to him. But it is impossible to experience the joy of playing tennis, reading a book or talking, if you do not focus all your attention on your activity.

What is the experience of joy? There are eight main components of the experience of joy. First, the task that a person sets himself must be feasible for him. Secondly, he must be able to concentrate. Third and fourth, concentration is usually possible because the task allows you to clearly formulate goals and get immediate feedback. Fifthly, in the process of activity, the subject's enthusiasm is so high that he forgets about everyday worries and problems. Sixth, activities that bring joy allow a person to feel in control of their actions. The seventh feature of this state is that the awareness of one's Self at the moment of the action seems to disappear, but after the end of the flow episode, it becomes stronger than before. Finally, the perception of the passage of time changes: hours turn into minutes, and minutes can stretch into hours.

Usually we constantly interrupt our activities with doubts and questions: “Why am I doing this? Should I do something else?" We again and again evaluate the reasons that prompted us to take certain actions, and their expediency. And in the state of flow, there is no need to reflect, because the action itself, as if by magic, carries us forward.

Autotelic experience. The most important property of optimal experience is its self-sufficiency; in other words, its main purpose lies in itself. The term "autotelic" is derived from two Greek words: auto meaning "in itself" and telos meaning "goal". In other words, it is an activity that is performed not for the sake of a future reward, but for its own sake. When a person is engaged in an autotelic matter, his attention is focused on the activity itself, and not on its consequences. Most of our activities cannot be considered purely autotelic or exotelic (as we will call activities performed only for external reasons), they contain both features.

Unfortunately, so much of what we do has no value in itself, and we do these things only because we have to, or because we expect to be rewarded in the future. Autotelic experience, or the state of flow, elevates the personality to a qualitatively different level. When a feeling of inner satisfaction arises, a person begins to appreciate the present and ceases to be a hostage to a brighter future. But we must not forget that the state of the stream can cause dependence. Optimal experiences are energy that can be used for good or for evil. Depending on what goals it is directed to, life becomes an inexhaustible storehouse of wealth or suffering.

Much of what we call juvenile delinquency—car theft, vandalism, disorderly conduct in general—is driven by the need to experience a state of flow not available by other means. The state of flow, like everything in the world, is not something "good" in the absolute sense. It is good only insofar as it can make our life richer, more joyful and full of meaning. It is good because it strengthens and expands our Self. And the consequences of each particular episode of the state of flow must be discussed and evaluated separately and in terms of broader social criteria. Jefferson's famous aphorism "Constant vigilance is the true price of freedom" is true not only within the framework of politics. Its meaning is that we must constantly re-evaluate the value of our achievements, otherwise habits and outdated wisdom will hide new opportunities from us.

Chapter 4. FLOW CONDITIONS

Stream lessons. Basic meaning streaming activities is to find joy. Examples of such activities are games, arts, sports, and various ceremonies and rituals. Due to their structure, they help participants and spectators achieve an ordered state of consciousness that brings joy.

The French psychologist and anthropologist Roger Calois divided the games existing in the world (he uses the word "game" in a broad sense, denoting by this word any form of activity that brings pleasure) into four main classes, depending on the experiences they cause. In the group called "agon" he included games built on the principle of competition. It includes, for example, most sports. The “alea” group included activities based on the game of chance (for example, loto or dice). The designation "ilinx", or "vertigo", was given to games that disrupt our normal perception, such as riding rides or skydiving. Finally, Roger Calois referred to "mimicry" activities that create an alternative reality, such as theater, dance and art in general.

Using the proposed classification, it is easy to see that each of the four classes of games offers its own ways to go beyond the boundaries of everyday life. In agony games, a person is required to improve certain skills in order to surpass the opponent. Aleatic games are pleasurable because they give a person the illusion of being able to influence the course of future events. Dizziness is the fastest way to change the state of consciousness. Mimicry exercises allow us to change our individuality through fantasy, imitation and disguise.

We have found one common characteristic that unites the many varieties of flow experience. All of them, as it were, transfer a person to a new reality that has not yet been explored by him, filling him with the spirit of pioneering, expanding the horizons of his abilities. In other words, they change the personality, making it more complex. In the development of personality lies the key to understanding the meaning of flow activity (Fig. 1). The diagram explains why this is so. Suppose the graph below describes an activity, such as playing tennis. On its axes, the levels of development of skills and the complexity of tasks are plotted. The letter A stands for Alex, a boy who is learning to play tennis. It is depicted in the diagram at four time points. At the time of the start of training, he has practically no skills whatsoever (A1). He just needs to hit the ball. This, in general, is not difficult, but Alex trains with great pleasure. After all, the level of complexity of the task just corresponds to his elementary skills. So at this level he is likely to experience a sense of flow.

Rice. 1. Why the Complexity of Consciousness Increases as a Result of Flow Experience

Over time, if he continues to train, his fitness will improve. He will be bored just hitting the ball over the net (A2). Perhaps he will find himself a more experienced partner and realize that there are more difficult tasks than just kicking the ball. At this point (A3) he will feel anxious about not handling the situation well.

Because neither boredom nor anxiety are pleasurable states, Alex wants to experience flow again. How to achieve this? It can be seen from the figure that if he is bored (A2) and wants to be in the flow again, he has only one way out - to increase the complexity of the tasks performed. By setting himself a new, more difficult goal, corresponding to his skill level - for example, defeating a stronger opponent - Alex will again be in the flow (A4).

If he is anxious (A3), he needs to further improve his skills in order to return to the state of flow.

The state in A4 can be considered more "advanced" compared to A1, because it involves more complex tasks and requires more skill from the player. However, the A4 situation, despite the complexity and joy it brings, is also not stable. If Alex continues to play, he will face either boredom due to tasks that have lost their novelty, or anxiety and frustration due to the realization of his relatively weak capabilities. The desire to have fun will again push him into the flow, but at a level of complexity exceeding A4.

This dynamic explains why flow promotes personal development. A person cannot enjoy for a long time doing the same thing. To avoid boredom, he must set himself new goals and, achieving them, improve his skills.

Flow and culture. In recent decades, social scientists have been extremely reluctant to make value judgments about a particular culture. It is considered bad form to say that one or another cultural practice, religion or way of life is better than others. The ideology of the unconditional superiority of Western industrial civilizations over technologically less developed cultures has remained in the distant past. Of course, we condemn the young Arab suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with explosives into a foreign embassy, ​​but we can no longer feel our moral superiority over his belief that heaven awaits all warriors who sacrifice themselves. We have come to understand that our ideas of good and evil are worthless outside of our culture. Thus, a direct comparison of the cultural values ​​of different societies turns out to be practically impossible. However, if we assume that the achievement of a state of flow is the main goal of man, then every social system can be evaluated. One society will be considered "better" than another if it enables more people to follow their goals.

The purpose of culture is to protect a person from the destructive action of chaos, to reduce the influence of chance on his experience. It is a system of adaptive reactions that have arisen in the course of evolution. Cultures prescribe norms, set goals, create principles that help us cope with life's problems. At the same time, alternative goals and beliefs are inevitably cut off, and opportunities are limited.

autotelic personality. Is everyone equally capable of controlling their minds? Attention deficit hinders not only effective learning, but also the ability to experience the state of flow. When a person cannot control his psychic energy, neither learning nor true pleasure is possible for him. A lesser obstacle to experiencing flow is over-focusing on the self. A person who is constantly worried about what others think of him, afraid of making a bad impression or doing something wrong, loses the ability to feel the joy of being. The same applies to people with overly pronounced egocentrism. The consciousness of such a person is completely closed to everything that does not meet the main criterion for selecting information - personal gain.

Violations of attention prevent the achievement of a state of flow due to excessive "fluidity" of psychic energy; overly developed reflection and egocentrism, on the contrary, make attention too rigid. Both extremes do not allow a person to control his attention; because of this, he cannot enjoy his activities, experiences learning difficulties and loses opportunities for personal growth. Paradoxically, a person who is excessively self-centered cannot reach a higher level of development, because all of his mental energy is directed towards achieving goals already set, instead of discovering new ones.

The obstacles to achieving a state of flow are not only within the personality itself. They are also put to us by our environment. Some of them are of natural, some are of social origin.

There are two types of social pathology that interferes with the achievement of the state of flow - this is anomie and alienation. Anomie, which literally means "absence of rules", the French sociologist Emile Durkheim called the state of society in which established norms of behavior cease to fulfill their functions. When it becomes unclear what is allowed and what is not, when there is no certainty about what deserves public approval, people's behavior becomes chaotic and meaningless. The state of alienation is in many respects the opposite situation. It occurs when society forces people to act against their own goals. In the socialist countries, one of the most serious reasons for this was the need to spend most free time in lines for food, clothes, tickets and in endless bureaucratic institutions.

It is interesting to note that these two social obstacles to achieving the state of flow are functionally similar to the forms of personality pathology we have already considered: impaired attention and excessive focus on oneself. On both an individual and a collective level, achieving a state of flow is prevented by fragmentation of attention (anomia and disorder of attention) or its excessive rigidity (alienation and focus on oneself). At the level of an individual, anxiety corresponds to anomie, and boredom to alienation.

The personal qualities of an adult are largely determined by his relationship with his parents in early childhood. The family situation that stimulates the development of the ability to achieve a state of flow has five characteristics. The first is clarity in relationships. Adolescents know exactly what their parents expect from them; feedback in the family is unambiguous. The second is the parents' interest in what their child thinks and feels at the moment, and not concern about which college he will go to and whether he will be able to get a well-paid job. The third feature is the opportunity given to children to choose: they feel that they can do as they please, including breaking parental rules, if they are ready to deal with the consequences. The fourth distinctive characteristic is a sense of community, trust between family members, which allows a teenager to discard psychological protection and immerse himself in activities that interest him. Finally, parents should provide their children with worthwhile tasks, the complexity of which is constantly increasing, thus creating opportunities for self-improvement.

In less ordered families, a lot of energy is spent on endless negotiations and showdown, and children try to protect their individuality from the pressure of goals and attitudes imposed by adults.

Flow people. When hostile circumstances threaten us, it is necessary to regain a sense of control over situations by finding a new direction for our psychic energy - a direction not subject to external forces. The source of the inner strength of people in extremely difficult circumstances can be "unegocentric individualism", i.e. the presence of an important goal that is above personal interests. With enough free psychic energy to analyze the situation objectively, they are more likely to discover new opportunities for action. The narcissistic individual, concerned primarily with how to protect his self, is lost at the first sign of danger. The approaching panic does not allow him to do what he should; attention rushes inward in an attempt to restore order in consciousness, and there is no psychic energy left for interaction with external reality.

Bertrand Russell described his path to happiness in this way: “Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my shortcomings. My attention was increasingly focused on external objects: world events, various fields of knowledge, people to whom I felt affection ”(see for more details). It is perhaps difficult to find a more succinct description of how one can become an autotelic person.

Chapter 5. BODY AND FLOW

Everything our body can do has the potential for joy. However, many neglect this and use their physical form to a minimum, depriving themselves of numerous opportunities to experience the flow state. As a result, the untrained body moves clumsily, the undeveloped eye gives us ugly or uninteresting images, the unmusical ear hears noise instead of music, and we can only taste the gross taste of food. If bodily functions are allowed to atrophy, life becomes substantially less enjoyable. But if you learn to control the abilities of your body and streamline physical sensations, entropy in the mind will give way to joyful harmony.

Higher, faster, stronger. Sport in its purest form is overcoming the limits of your bodily capabilities. The flow sensations obtained by using physical skills do not only occur in professional athletes. The joy of overcoming the limits of one's own abilities is not the privilege of Olympic champions. Everyone, regardless of their physical form, can jump a little higher, run a little faster and get a little stronger. The joy of discovering new, unexplored limits of one's own abilities is available to everyone.

The joy of movement. Physical education and sports are not the only ways to get joy from the body; a huge variety of activities based on rhythmic or harmonious movements allows you to achieve a state of flow. Perhaps the most ancient and significant among them is dance, since it combines accessibility with great opportunities for self-improvement.

Sex is like a stream. Sexuality is definitely one of the most versatile ways to get satisfaction. Just like in any other activity, relationships in a couple, in order to bring joy, must become more and more difficult, partners must learn to find new opportunities in themselves and in each other.

Ultimate control - yoga and martial arts. We can turn our eyes to the East in order to learn from him the ability to control our own consciousness. One of the oldest and most diverse Eastern methods of body training is the set of practices known as hatha yoga. We can consider yoga to be one of the oldest systematic methods for achieving the state of flow. The specific details of how flow experiences are achieved are unique to yoga, just as they are unique to any other flow activity, from hang-gliding to auto racing. Being the product of a specific unique culture, the path of yoga, of course, bears the stamp of its time and place of its creation. Whether yoga is the "best" way to generate optimal experiences is not only determined by its merits - one must consider the price to be paid and alternative possibilities. Is the control that yoga promises worth the expenditure of psychic energy that is required to practice it?

Another group of Eastern practices that have become very popular in the West are the so-called martial arts. These martial arts are influenced by Taoism and Zen Buddhism and are all based on the mastery of mind control. It is appropriate to consider martial arts as a specific form of flow.

Flow through the senses: the enjoyment of sight. Sports, sex, and even yoga can be pleasurable. But few go beyond these bodily pursuits to explore the almost limitless potential of other organs in the human body, although any information that our nervous system can recognize can lead to rich and varied flow experiences.

Flow in music. All cultures known to us, in order to improve the quality of life, actively used the ordering of sounds in sequences pleasant to the ear. Music as ordered sound information helps to streamline the listener's consciousness and thereby reduces mental entropy, that is, the disorder that is introduced into the consciousness by random information that is not related to current goals. Thus, music can not only relieve us of boredom and anxiety, but, if taken seriously, can generate flow experiences. Creating harmony with the help of sounds not only gives us joy, but, like the achievement of mastery in any difficult business, strengthens the personality.

The joy of taste sensations. Just like music, food can affect our feelings, and the knowledge of this lies at the heart of the high culinary arts of different countries. Food, like sex, is one of the fundamental pleasures embedded in our nervous system. In every culture, the simple process of eating calories has evolved over time into an art that brings not only the natural pleasure of satisfying a need, but also the joy of the process. In our culture, despite the recent rise in interest in haute cuisine, many people still barely notice what they put in their mouths, thereby depriving them of the richest source of joy.

Like other body-related flow activities, such as sports, sex, or visual aesthetic experiences, the development of taste sensations can give us joy only when we control the process. If a person wants to become a gourmet or connoisseur of fine wines only for fashion reasons, he essentially becomes a slave to an externally imposed goal, risking quickly losing interest in food and leaving his taste skills undeveloped. But if he approaches eating or cooking as an interesting adventure, a field for new experiments and discoveries, loves food for the sake of sensations, and not for the opportunity to impress others, he will have a lot of pleasure and many opportunities to achieve a state of flow.

Another danger that awaits a person who wants to use the sense of taste to have flow experiences is the possibility of becoming dependent on their desires. It is no coincidence that gluttony is among the seven deadly sins.

Chapter 6

The joy of life can be experienced not only through sensations. Some of our most exciting experiences originate in our minds, triggered by information that challenges our intelligence rather than our ability to experience sensations. Just as for any physical ability of our body you can find the corresponding flow activity, so each mental operation can bring a special, characteristic joy for it. Among the many intellectual pursuits available these days, perhaps the most frequently cited streaming activity around the world is reading.

The division of flow activity into "bodily" and "mental" is somewhat artificial, since any physical activity that brings pleasure must include a mental component. It makes sense to single out a special class of activities that bring joy precisely because they streamline consciousness directly, and not through bodily sensations. These activities are symbolic in nature because they rely on everyday language, mathematics, or other abstract sign systems like programming languages ​​to achieve this ordering effect. In order to enjoy intellectual pursuits, the same conditions are necessary as in the case of physical activity. You need to have skills in this symbolic area; there must be certain rules, purpose and feedback. Also important is the ability to concentrate and the correspondence of the complexity of tasks to the existing level of capabilities.

Left to its own devices, the mind tends to switch attention randomly, lingering on unpleasant or disturbing thoughts. If a person does not know how to arbitrarily arrange consciousness, attention will inevitably stop at some problem that torments him, at real or imagined pain, recently happened or long-lasting troubles.

To avoid this, people tend to occupy their minds with whatever information is available, so long as it diverts their attention from turning inward and fixating on unpleasant thoughts. That is why a huge amount of time is spent in front of the TV. In front of the TV screen, a person may not be afraid that his freely drifting consciousness will linger on some painful problems. It is quite understandable that such a strategy of overcoming psychic entropy quickly becomes a habit and can become addictive. A much better way to deal with chaos in the mind is to control your own mental processes.

In analyzing the conditions that contribute to the ordering of consciousness, we will first of all pay attention to the most important role in this memory, and then we will consider three symbolic systems that, if you know their rules, can give a lot of pleasure: history, science and philosophy.

"Mother of knowledge". Memory is one of the oldest mental functions underlying all other mental processes. All forms of mental flow activity are directly or indirectly dependent on memory. The oldest way of organizing information was the remembrance of one's ancestors, a genealogy that helped a person find his place in a tribe or family. It is no coincidence that the Old Testament contains so much genealogical information. The memory of departed relatives places a person in a chain that began in the mysterious past and goes into an incomprehensible future. Even though genealogy has lost its usefulness in our culture, people still enjoy thinking and talking about their roots.

For a person who has nothing to remember, life becomes significantly poorer. This fact was ignored by educational reformers who, armed with research, proved that rote learning was not effective.

If others need external stimulation - television, reading, socializing or drugs - to keep their minds from plunging into chaos, then a person with a rich memory is autonomous and self-sufficient. How can you develop your memory? The most natural way is to pick a field that really interests you—poetry, food, Civil War history, or baseball—and start paying attention to key facts and figures.

Mind games and their rules. Memory is not the only tool needed to give form to the content of consciousness. Words play an extremely important role in managing experience. As the building blocks of most symbolic systems, they enable abstract thinking and enhance the mind's ability to store information. This is followed by numbers and concepts and the basic rules for their combinations.

Philosophy and science arose and flourished because thinking brings pleasure. If the thinkers of antiquity did not enjoy the order created in the mind by numbers and syllogisms, such sciences as mathematics or physics, perhaps, would not have arisen at all.

A person who has become acquainted with the basics of mathematical analysis has taken a step towards independence from external stimuli. He can give rise to ordered chains of thoughts, no matter what happens around. When an individual masters the symbol system well enough to start using it, he creates his own world in his mind.

Wordplay. Where does the mastery of the system of symbols begin? The oldest and perhaps the most basic system of rules is that which governs the use of words. To this day, words carry many opportunities to experience the state of flow at different levels of complexity. A striking example of this possibility is the compilation of crossword puzzles. More potential opportunities to improve the quality of life brings with it the almost lost art of conversation.

Friendship with Clio. History studies, i.e. collecting, recording and storing information about a variety of great and small events is one of the oldest pleasant ways to streamline the mind. Having organized records of the past can improve our quality of life. It is they who free us from the tyranny of the present, allowing consciousness to travel to the old times. Too often we think of history as a dry list of dates and events to remember. This subject is studied in order to appear educated, but most often without any desire. With such an attitude, history can hardly improve the quality of life. Knowledge imposed from outside meets resistance and does not bring joy. But as soon as a person takes the trouble to figure out which aspects of the past are of interest to him, and decides to explore them deeper, focusing on details that have personal meaning for him, the study of history becomes an inexhaustible source of flow experiences.

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I was somewhat taken aback by the meaning in which the authors (or translators?) use the term entropy. Entropy - in the natural sciences measure of disorder system consisting of many elements. The authors use the term entropy as a synonym for the word disorder, chaos.

Rigidity - unwillingness to change the program of action in a new situation

What is it about? About much. If approached formally - about happiness, about the quality of life, about optimal experiences. The category of experience is really one of the central ones for Csikszentmihalyi (under the influence of the famous American philosopher of the beginning of the last century, John Dewey), and he convincingly shows the emptiness and meaninglessness, on the one hand, of the brilliance of fame and material prosperity, on the other hand, of noble slogans and goals, if they do not give rise to a feeling of inner uplift, inspiration and fullness of life. And vice versa, the presence of such experiences may well make a person happy, deprived of many material goods and pleasures familiar to us.

Happiness and pleasure are different things, and in this Csikszentmihalyi repeats the revelations of many prominent philosophers, from Aristotle to Nikolai Berdyaev and Viktor Frankl. But he does not just repeat, but builds a detailed, coherent and experimentally confirmed theory, at the center of which is the idea of ​​"autotelic experiences" or, simply put, flow experiences. This is a state of complete merging with your work, absorption by it, when you do not feel time, yourself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy ... Csikszentmihalyi discovered it in his studies of creative personalities, but the flow is not the exclusive property of some special people. For three decades now, research and discussion around this phenomenon has continued, new books are being published, but one thing is clear: the state of flow is one of the most beautiful things in our life. And most importantly - unlike other similar states that from time to time fell into the focus of attention of psychologists (for example, peak experiences, happiness, subjective well-being) - the flow does not descend on us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands. In it, pleasure merges with effort and meaning, giving rise to an energizing active state of joy.

Therefore, the flow is directly related to the characteristics of the personality, the level of its development and maturity. Csikszentmihalyi recalls that when he was a child, he found himself in exile, while in his native Hungary everything was collapsing, one system and way of life was replaced by another. In his own words, he witnessed the disintegration of the world in which he was quite comfortably rooted at the beginning of his life. And he wondered how many adults he had previously known as successful and self-confident people suddenly became helpless and lost their presence of mind, having lost the social support that they had in the old stable world. Deprived of work, money, status, they literally turned into some kind of empty shells. But there were also people who retained their integrity, purposefulness, despite all the chaos surrounding them, and they in many ways served as an example for others, a support that helped others not to lose hope. And the most interesting thing is that these were not the men and women from whom this could be expected. It was impossible to predict which people would save themselves in this difficult situation. They were neither the most respected, nor the most educated, nor the most experienced members of society. Since then, he wondered what are the sources of strength of those people who are stable in this chaos. He considers his whole subsequent life as a search for an answer to these questions, which he could not find either in too subjective and faith-based philosophical and religious books, or in psychological research too simplified and limited in its approach. These were people who maintained their resilience and dignity in the storms of World War II, who did something impossible, and in this could be found the key to what a person is capable of at his best.

The book "Flow" is a very non-trivial approach to many problems of general psychology, primarily to the problems of the emotional life of a person and the regulation of behavior. There is no need to retell the content of the book that is in your hands, but I will note the main thing, in my opinion. Csikszentmihalyi, with convincing historical and experimental psychological material in his hands, methodically, step by step, refutes the myths of mass consumer culture and its offshoots in a higher price category - glamor. These myths are known: you don’t have to be loaded, you don’t have to take a steam bath, all the main answers to life’s tasks are simple, in order to be happy, you don’t have to think about difficulties and troubles and have more money so as not to deny yourself anything.