The flow of real-experience technology. Control over the situation

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Translation from English by Elena Perova

Scientific editing and foreword by Dmitry Leontiev

Moscow 2011

Dedicated to Isabella, Mark and Christopher

How to forge happiness: the secrets of craftsmanship (foreword by the editor of the Russian edition)

He is truly a wise man. Slow, though sometimes resolute. Immersed in himself, although periodically blooming with a radiant smile. Weighing words and avoiding categorical judgments, but speaking and writing surprisingly clearly and transparently. More interested in others than in himself, but loving life in its most diverse manifestations.

Today he is one of the most authoritative and respected psychologists. He is known and appreciated all over the world, and not only by his colleagues. A few years ago, the popular anthology How to Make a Life came out in the United States, offering lessons in wisdom from the lives of prominent thinkers and writers, past and present, starting with Plato and Aristotle. Csikszentmihalyi is among the heroes of this book, positioned between Salinger and Disney. the business community treats him with great attention and respect; his main place of work now is the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont University, California. At the turn of the century, Csikszentmihalyi, together with his colleague Martin Seligman, became the founder of positive psychology - a new trend in psychology, which is aimed at studying the laws of a good, meaningful and dignified life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in 1934 on the shores of the Adriatic, on the territory that then belonged to Italy, and now it is part of Croatia. His father was a Hungarian consul, after the collapse of fascism he became ambassador to Italy, and when the communists who seized power in Hungary in 1948 dismissed him, he decided to stay with his family in Italy, where Mihai spent his childhood and school years. Having become interested in psychology and not finding a suitable university in Italy, he flew across the ocean to get a psychological education in the United States, and after graduating from the University of Chicago, he remained to live and work in this country, where he spent his entire professional career. He is the author of one and a half dozen books, including: “The Meaning of Things: Home Symbols of Our Self”, “Creative Vision: The Psychology of Aesthetic Attitude”, “Personality in Evolution”, “Being a Teenager”, “Becoming an Adult”, “Creativity”, etc. .

However, the most important book that brought him worldwide fame is precisely the “Stream”. Some time after its release in 1990, it received brilliant publicity from readers as impressed by it as US President Bill Clinton, Speaker of Congress Newt Gingrich, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It is included in lists such as "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time". It belongs to the rare category of "long-running" bestsellers. Having gained popularity among the mass audience immediately after its release, it continues to be reprinted almost annually and has already been translated into 30 languages.

This is an amazing book. Before I undertook to edit its translation, I read it at least twice, used it in lectures and publications, certainly appreciated it, which was facilitated by both personal acquaintance with the author and joint work with him. But only now, slowly and painstakingly going over word by word, I experienced a genuine, incomparable pleasure from the way it was written - there are no gaps between thought and word, each word is fitted to the next, each phrase stands in its place , and in this text there is not a single slit where a knife blade could be inserted. This is a sign of that rare book, the words of which do not play their game, leading a cheerful dance or, on the contrary, folding into a reinforced concrete structure, but directly and accurately express a clear and well-thought-out picture of the world. Each word is not accidental, it has the pulse of a living thought, and therefore this whole book is like a living organism: it has structure, order, unpredictability, tension, tone and life.

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, noble slogans and goals, if they do not generate in a person 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 speaking, 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, research and discussion around this phenomenon has continued, more and more books are being published, but one thing is clear: the state of flow is one of the most beautiful things in our lives. 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 ended up 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 knew earlier 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 too simplified and limited in their approach psychological research. 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 well 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.

Csikszentmihalyi's book, like his other works, leaves no stone unturned from this sweet lie. He claims that humanity is evolving. The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex, and the human response to this challenge of complexity is not to bury our heads in the sand, but to become more complex, more unique, and at the same time more connected to other people, ideas, values, and social groups. The joy of the flow is the highest reward that nature can give us for striving to solve more and more complex meaningful problems, and which cannot be obtained in any other way. 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 has no value. "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."

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

(ratings: 1 , the average: 5,00 out of 5)

Title: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

About Flow Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Human psychology is a very fascinating science. We act in one way or another for a reason, because in our body and subconscious there are very complex processes that affect our actions and decisions.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noticed a very interesting detail: when a person is passionate about something, he does not feel tired or lack of imagination. At this moment, a second wind opens, we stop noticing time and the world around us as a whole. We are completely absorbed in what we do. The author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience called this phenomenon flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi began to study such human behavior and came up with very unusual results, which he describes in his work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. There are people who own this flow of almost birth itself, and there are those who cannot “catch the wave”, but at the same time, each of us has the opportunity to learn not only to give 100% to the cause, but also to love it, to do better, improve yourself and improve everything around. And it is not surprising that after such work on yourself, you will feel that you are truly happy.

Happiness does not come just like that, you need to work very hard to know it. We ourselves decide what to do and how, so you can only blame yourself for your failures. But if you want to change and become much better, you will love the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. You will find here a lot of useful and exciting things for yourself, you will be able to understand your psychology, understand what you are doing wrong and how to change it.

We all like to do something, but not something, but at the same time we never think about what is in the first thing that we enjoy. But what if this "something" is added to the work that we do not like? Then we will begin to enjoy any business that we start, therefore, we will get the result faster, and at the same time, neither our emotional condition, nor physical.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gives a lot of real life examples in his book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” and analyzes and explains everything very clearly. You won't have to rack your brains to understand complex definitions or incomprehensible thoughts of the author. Here everything is clear and simple, and very simple. After all, we ourselves are used to complicating everything, ceasing to notice simple things that could make our lives much easier.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is a book for anyone who wants to change and develop and wants to achieve maximum success. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi makes us think about how we live and why we do certain things. After reading, you will look at yourself in a completely different way and begin to act differently and relate to things that previously only caused you longing and disgust.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book "Flow Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.

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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 lives. 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.

Despite numerous articles and books on flow for professionals, this book represents the first attempt to introduce it to the general reader by discussing the implications for everyone's life that flow from this research. However, it does not belong to the category of "do it yourself" publications. Thousands of such publications fill the shelves of bookstores today, explaining how to become rich, find love or lose weight. These books, like cookbooks, tell you how to solve a single, narrow problem. Even if the recipes given there work, what will happen to a person who has incredibly managed to lose weight, get rich and become attractive? He usually finds himself back at the starting position with a new list of desires, but the steel is unsatisfied. Neither the weight lost nor the wealth gained will lead to satisfaction - the problem is in the general attitude towards one's life. In the search for happiness, partial solutions do not bring success.

Strictly speaking, books, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, are not capable of giving us recipes for happiness. Since the most important condition for optimal experience is the ability to constantly, at every moment of time, control what is happening in the mind, this can only be achieved through personal effort and creativity. The book, however (and this book strives for this), can only give examples inscribed in the theory of how to make life more joyful, help readers reflect on what has been said and draw their own conclusions.

This book is not a list of instructions, but a journey into the realm of the mind, not easy, like any exciting adventure. Without some mental effort, without a willingness to reflect and puzzle over one's own experience, it is unlikely to be useful. The concept of flow will accompany us throughout the book, through the long process of gradually gaining control over our own lives. First, we will find out how the mind works and what are the possibilities of its control (Chapter 2). This is important, because if we understand how this or that state of our consciousness is formed, we will take the first step towards managing it. Everything that we experience - joy, enthusiasm, pleasure, pain, longing, boredom - is represented in our minds in the form of information. If we learn to identify this information, we will be able to decide for ourselves what our life will be like.

The optimal state of consciousness is internal order. Such a state occurs when our mental energy (attention) is directed towards solving a specific realistic task and when our skills meet the requirements of this task. The process of achieving the goal streamlines consciousness, since a person is forced to concentrate his attention on the implementation of the current task, cutting off everything that is not relevant. Moments of overcoming difficulties and struggling with them give rise to experiences that give a person the greatest joy (Chapter 3). Having achieved control over his psychic energy, spending it on the fulfillment of consciously chosen goals, a person becomes a more complex, more multifaceted personality. Improving his skills, challenging more and more complex tasks, he is constantly evolving.

To understand why some of our activities bring us more joy than others, we will take a closer look at the conditions necessary for the emergence of a state of flow (Chapter 4). People experiencing the flow describe it as a special state of mind, when inner harmony reigns in the mind, when this or that activity becomes interesting and significant in itself, regardless of the importance of the result standing somewhere at the end. To understand what exactly makes people feel happy, it is necessary to consider some of the human activities that often cause flow, such as sports, games, art, and various hobbies. However, devoting all his time exclusively to games or art, a person cannot count on a serious improvement in the quality of his life.

The ability to control one's own mind can be developed by improving both physical and sensory skills - athletics, music, yoga (Chapter 5), and the ability to operate with symbols, which underlies such fields of activity as poetry, philosophy, or, for example, mathematics (Chapter 6 ). A person spends most of his life working or socializing with friends, colleagues, or family. Therefore, the ability to experience the state of flow in professional activities (Chapter 7) and in relationships with parents, spouses, children and friends (Chapter 8) becomes an extremely important ability that determines the quality of life.

Human life is not immune from tragic events. Even those who give the impression of being happy and content with life often face serious problems. Nevertheless, the blows of fate themselves do not deprive a person of the opportunity to be happy. Whether a person can ultimately benefit from his position or be crushed by failure depends on his reaction to them. Chapter 9 describes how a person can enjoy life despite the blows of fate.

Finally, the conclusion will describe how a person can combine all kinds of experiences into one meaningful picture (Chapter 10). A person who has succeeded in this begins to feel like a true master of his life. From now on, it does not matter that he is not rich, does not have power and is overweight. Expectations and unmet needs no longer disturb him, and even the most boring activities begin to bring pleasure.

This book explores what it takes to achieve that goal. How to control consciousness, how to streamline it in order to receive joy? How to become a more complex person? And finally, how to fill life with meaning? The answers to these questions look simple in theory, but they are not easy to implement. The guide to action is clear and accessible to anyone, but many obstacles, both internal and external, stand in the way. This path is somewhat similar to the fight against excess weight: everyone knows how to do it, everyone wants it, but not everyone achieves the result. The goals we are talking about are, of course, more significant. It's not about shedding a few extra pounds, but about not missing the chance to live a worthwhile life.

Before proceeding to describe the ways to achieve the state of flow, let us briefly touch on some of the difficulties, in particular those that originate in the characteristics of human nature. In old fairy tales, on the way to eternal happiness and immortality, the hero must go on a campaign and defeat fire-breathing snakes and evil wizards. This metaphor is quite applicable to the study of the psyche. I believe that happiness is so difficult to achieve, in the first place, because, contrary to the myth invented by mankind, the Universe was not created at all in order to satisfy our needs. Frustration is an essential part of life. As soon as we manage to fulfill some of our desires, we immediately begin to want more. Chronic dissatisfaction is the second obstacle to self-sufficiency and happiness.

To overcome these obstacles, each culture eventually develops certain mechanisms that protect a person from chaos. These include religion, art, philosophy and domestic comfort. They help us to believe that we are in control of what is happening, and give reason to be satisfied with our lot. But these protections work only for a while: after several centuries, and sometimes after several decades, religion or beliefs lose their influence and no longer provide the same spiritual support. Not finding support in faith, people, as a rule, seek happiness in all sorts of pleasures, the idea of which can be laid down at the genetic level or determined by society. Wealth, power and sex become the main goals on their life path. However, the quality of life cannot be improved in this way. Only direct control over our experience and the ability to enjoy everything we do can overcome the obstacles that prevent satisfaction.

Current page: 1 (total book has 31 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 8 pages]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Scientific editor Dmitry Leontiev

Project Manager I. Seryogina

Corrector M. Milovidova

Typesetter E. Sentsova

Cover designer Y. Buga

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and in corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Dedicated to Isabella, Mark and Christopher

How to forge happiness: the secrets of craftsmanship
(foreword by the editor of the Russian edition)

Today he is one of the most authoritative and respected psychologists. He is known and appreciated all over the world, and not only by his colleagues. A few years ago, the popular anthology How to Make a Life came out in the United States, offering lessons in wisdom from the lives of prominent thinkers and writers, past and present, starting with Plato and Aristotle. Csikszentmihalyi is among the heroes of this book, positioned between Salinger and Disney. The business community treats him with great attention and respect; his main place of work now is the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont University, California. At the turn of the century, Csikszentmihalyi, together with his colleague Martin Seligman, became the founder of positive psychology - a new trend in psychology, which is aimed at studying the patterns of a good, meaningful and dignified life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in 1934 on the shores of the Adriatic, on the territory that then belonged to Italy, and now it is part of Croatia. His father was a Hungarian consul, after the collapse of fascism he became ambassador to Italy, and when the communists who seized power in Hungary in 1948 dismissed him, he decided to stay with his family in Italy, where Mihai spent his childhood and school years. Having become interested in psychology and not finding a suitable university in Italy, he flew across the ocean to get a psychological education in the United States, and after graduating from the University of Chicago, he remained to live and work in this country, where he spent his entire professional career. He is the author of one and a half dozen books, including: “The meaning of things: domestic symbols of our I”, “Creative vision: psychology of aesthetic attitude”, “Personality in evolution”, “Being a teenager”, “Becoming an adult”, “Creativity”, etc.

However, the most important book that brought him worldwide fame is precisely The Flow. Some time after its release in 1990, it was given brilliant publicity by such impressed readers as US President Bill Clinton, Speaker of Congress Newt Gingrich, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It is included in lists such as "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time". It belongs to the rare category of "long-running" bestsellers. Having gained popularity among the mass audience immediately after its release, it continues to be reprinted almost annually and has already been translated into 30 languages.

This is an amazing book. Before I undertook to edit its translation, I read it at least twice, used it in lectures and publications, and undoubtedly appreciated it, which was facilitated by both personal acquaintance with the author and joint work with him. But only now, slowly and painstakingly going over word by word, I experienced a genuine, incomparable pleasure from the way it was written - there are no gaps between thought and word, each word is fitted to the next, each phrase stands in its place. , and in this text there is not a single slot where a knife blade could be inserted. This is a sign of that rare book, the words of which do not play their game, leading a cheerful dance or, on the contrary, folding into a reinforced concrete structure, but directly and accurately express a clear and well-thought-out picture of the world. Each word is not accidental, it contains the pulse of a living thought, and therefore this whole book is like a living organism: it has structure, order, unpredictability, tension, tone and life.

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 lives. 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.

Csikszentmihalyi's book, like his other works, leaves no stone unturned from this sweet lie. He claims that humanity is evolving. The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex, and the human response to this challenge of complexity is not to bury our heads in the sand, but to become more complex, more unique, and at the same time more connected to other people, ideas, values, and social groups. The joy of flow is the highest reward that nature can give us for striving to solve more and more complex meaningful problems, and which cannot be obtained in any other way. 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 has no value. "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."

We often repeat the old saying: “Every person is the blacksmith of his own happiness”, usually forgetting how difficult and time-consuming blacksmithing is. Half a century ago, Erich Fromm, in his philosophical and psychological super-bestseller The Art of Loving, managed to convince us that love is not just a passive experience that "accidentally descends", but an active relationship - not a noun, but a verb. Csikszentmihalyi in a sense repeats his path in relation to another equally important phenomenon in our life - happiness. He recalls: happiness is not something that just happens to us (happiness is not something that just happens), it is both an art and a science, it is something that requires both effort and a kind of qualification. A mature, complex person is not happier than an immature one, but her happiness is of a different quality. The scale of personality is not related to the chances of happiness, but is related to the scale of this happiness. Happiness is simpler, more accessible, stamped, disposable, and sometimes complex, unique, hand-forged. And everything, ultimately, depends on us. This is what this, I'm not afraid of this word, great book tells about - about life in its full depth and perspective, which does not open to an insufficiently attentive look.

Dmitry Leontiev,

Doctor of Psychology,

Professor of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov,

head Laboratory of Positive Psychology and Quality of Life, Higher School of Economics

Author's preface to the Russian edition

The Flow was first published in the US in 1990 and has since been translated into 30 languages, including languages I didn't even know existed. The reason for the popularity of this book is simple: it talks about an important phenomenon that is familiar to almost any reader, but at that time ignored by psychologists.

When I started writing about the flow state, psychology was dominated by behaviorism, which argued that humans, like rats and monkeys, expend energy only if they are sure that their behavior will be rewarded with some external change: less pain, more food. or some other desirable result.

It seemed to me that this theory - quite useful in a general sense - ignores some of the most important motives for human behavior. Looking at how behaviorists or psychoanalysts try to explain why people make so much effort to compose poetry, music, why they dance, why they conquer mountain peaks at the risk of their lives or swim across the ocean alone in a small boat, I saw that they the theoretical constructions became more and more intricate and improbable, and they began to remind me of astronomers trying to explain the movement of the planets in terms of the Ptolemaic system.

The problem was that psychologists, in applying a scientific approach to human behavior, got carried away with existing mechanistic explanations and lost sight of the fact that human behavior is a very special phenomenon, a process that has evolved towards greater autonomy, more arbitrariness and orientation towards development than all material processes previously studied by scientists. In trying to adhere to scientific principles, psychologists have paradoxically forgotten the very first rule of pure science: the approach to understanding any phenomenon must be consistent with the nature of the observed phenomena.

In this respect, the humanities have proved to be much more suitable for the study of the essence of human nature than scientific psychology. Poets, writers, philosophers, and some psychologists, such as Abraham Maslow, have long noted that if a person engages in an activity in which he has achieved excellence, such an activity becomes a reward in itself. Almost 600 years ago, Dante Alighieri wrote in his political treatise De Monarchia:

... In every action ... the main intention of the performer is the expression of his own image; therefore anyone who does, whatever he does, enjoys his action. Since everything that exists strives for existence and through action the doer reveals his being, then action brings pleasure by its very nature ...

The state of flow occurs when we do something that expresses our essence. This is what Tolstoy describes in the pages of Anna Karenina, when Konstantin Levin enviously watches his peasants, rhythmically and harmoniously waving their scythes between the rows of wheat. This is exactly what musicians feel when they immerse themselves in the work they perform; athletes approaching their limits; any employee, if he is aware that he is doing an excellent job. This experience is not some strange by-product of the human psyche. Rather, it can be argued that this is the emotional component of a person's realization of his capabilities, the cutting edge of evolution. Flow experiences force us to go further, reach new levels of complexity, seek new knowledge, improve our skills. In many ways, this is precisely the engine that has led to the transition from hominids, concerned only with their own survival, to homo sapiens sapiens who is not afraid to take risks and, in order to feel better, needs more be able to.

In the twenty years since this book was first published, the concept of flow has been used in a variety of ways, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, in the January issue of the magazine New Scientist it is written that all video game designers strive to induce a state of flow in the users of their products, and this is presented as a well-known fact. Therapists recommend the flow experience as a treatment for the chronic pain of rheumatoid arthritis. This concept is used in the training of Olympic athletes, in the projects of new schools and museums.

But ultimately this book is just an attempt to understand what makes our life more joyful and worth living. It was not written for professional psychologists, but for anyone who wants to fill their lives with meaning. That is for you.

Claremont, California. January 2011

Foreword 1990

This book summarizes the results of many years of research on the positive aspects of human experience- joy, creativity, complete absorption in life, which I call flow. It is written for a general audience. Such a move is fraught with some danger, since going beyond the bounds of academic prose can lead to carelessness or excessive enthusiasm. However, the book you are holding in your hands is not popular literature that gives readers advice on how to become happy. This would be obviously impossible, because a happy life is always the result of the creativity of a particular person, it cannot be recreated according to a recipe. Instead, I have tried to formulate general principles and illustrate them with examples of how some people, using these principles, have been able to turn a boring and meaningless life into a life full of joy.

These pages do not promise easy and short cuts. But interested readers will be able to find enough information to help them move from theory to practice.

To make the book as accessible and easy to read as possible, I have tried to avoid footnotes, footnotes, and other means commonly used by scholars in their work. I have tried to present the results of psychological research and the ideas based on the interpretation of these results in a form that any educated reader can appreciate and apply to their own lives, whether or not they have specialized knowledge on the subject.

For those who are interested in the scientific sources on which my conclusions are based, I have written rather extensive notes at the end of the book. They are not linked to any particular footnote, but are related to the page where the issue is discussed. For example, the very first page mentions happiness. The reader who is interested in whose writings my conclusions are based on may refer to the footnotes beginning on page 359 and looking at the link to page 1 for a summary of Aristotle's views on happiness, as well as contemporary research on the subject, with relevant citations. The notes can be read like a second, highly condensed and technically detailed version of the original text.

At the beginning of any book, it is customary to express gratitude to those who contributed to its creation. In this case, this is not possible, since the list of names would be almost the same size as the book itself. However, there are some people I am especially grateful for and I want to take the opportunity to express my feelings. First of all, it is Isabella, who as a wife and as a friend has enriched my life for twenty-five years, and her editorial advice has helped to improve this book in form. Mark and Christopher, our sons, from whom I probably learned as much as they learned from me. Jacob Getzels, my regular teacher. Among colleagues and friends, I would especially like to mention Donald Campbell, Howard Gardner, Jean Hamilton, Philip Hefner, Hiroaki Imamura, David Kipper, Doug Kleiber, George Klein, Fausto Massimini, Elisabeth Noel-Neumann, Jerome Singer, James Stigler and Brian Sutton. Smith - they all helped me in one way or another, inspired and supported me.

I would also like to name my former students and collaborators who have made particularly significant contributions to the research underlying the ideas developed in these pages. They are Ronald Graf, Robert Kyuubi, Reed Larson, Gene Nakamura, Kevin Rathunde, Rick Robertson, Ikuya Sato, Sam Whalen and Maria Wong. John Brockman and Richard Kot provided professional support for this project and helped me from the beginning to the end. Finally, I must thank the Spencer Foundation for its generous support of our research over the past ten years. I am particularly grateful to the Foundation's former president, H. James, and current president, L. Crimin, and to Marion Faldeth, Vice President. Of course, none of the above-mentioned people is responsible for the shortcomings that you may encounter in the book - this is solely my responsibility.

Chicago. March 1990

1. A new look at happiness

Introduction

Even 2,300 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle came to the conclusion that more than anything in the world, a person wants happiness. Only happiness is what we seek 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. Much has changed since then. The knowledge we have accumulated about stars and about atoms has increased tremendously. The ancient Greek gods would have looked like helpless children compared to modern humanity and the powers that it has mastered. And yet, in matters of happiness, little has changed since then. We know no better than Aristotle what happiness is, and as far as its achievement is concerned, progress is not noticeable at all.

Despite the fact that we are now healthier and live longer, that even the poorest in our society are today surrounded by such material goods that our ancestors did not even dream of a few decades ago (in the palace of Louis XIV there were only a few toilets, chairs were rare in the richest houses of the Middle Ages, and no Roman emperor could escape boredom by turning on the TV), despite all our amazing scientific achievements, people often come to feel that their life is wasted, and instead of being filled with happiness, years passed in anxiety and boredom.

Is it because the true destiny of the sons of men is to remain forever unsatisfied, for each one desires more than he is able to receive? Or are our even brightest moments poisoned by the feeling that we are looking for happiness in the wrong place? This book, drawing on the tools of modern psychology, explores this ancient problem: what does a person need to feel happy? If we can get closer to answering this question, we may be able to design our lives in such a way that there will be more happiness in it.

Twenty-five years before I started working on this book, I made one small discovery, and all these years I tried to understand what I discovered. Strictly speaking, it would be wrong to call what came to my mind a discovery - people have known this since time immemorial. Nevertheless, this word is quite appropriate, since what I found was not described and theoretically explained by the relevant field of science - in this case, psychology. I devoted the next quarter of a century to the study of this elusive phenomenon.

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 should prepare, grow it and keep it inside. 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. “Ask yourself if you are happy, and at the same moment happiness will elude you,” said J. Mill. We find happiness only by fully immersing ourselves in the little things that make up our lives, good and bad, but not trying to seek it directly. The famous Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl, in the preface to his book Man's Search for Meaning, brilliantly expressed this idea: “Do not strive for success at any cost - the more you fixate 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.

So how can we get closer to these goals that elude us, to which there is no direct road? My twenty-five years of research has convinced me that there is a way. This winding path begins with gaining control over the content of our consciousness.

Our perception of life is the result of the action of various forces that give shape to our experiences, influencing whether we are good or bad. Most of these forces are beyond our control. There is little we can do in terms of changing our appearance, temperament, or physique. We cannot, at least not yet, determine how tall or smart we will grow. We cannot choose parents, place of birth; it is not in our power to decide whether there will be a war or an economic crisis. The instructions in our genes, the force of gravity, the pollen in the air, the historical period in which we were born—these and countless other events determine what we see, feel, and do. No wonder we believe that our destiny is completely determined by something outside of us.

But we all had to experience moments when we felt 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 in our life.

This is what we call optimal experience. When a sailor on the right course feels the wind whistle in his ears, the sailboat glides over the wave and 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 smile for the first time in response to his smile. This, however, does not only occur when external circumstances are favorable. Those who lived through 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 song of a bird in the forest, the completion of hard work, or the taste of a shared meal with a comrade. of bread.

Contrary to popular belief, these moments - in fact, the best moments of our lives - do not come to us in a state of relaxation or passive contemplation. 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. We ourselves generate the optimal experience is when a child, with trembling fingers, places the last cube 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 to reveal ourselves through them.

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. Gaining control over your own life is not an easy task, sometimes accompanied by pain. Ultimately, however, optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery of one's own life, or rather, even to a sense of involvement in determining the content of one's life. This experience is closest to what we usually call "happiness".

In the course of my research, I tried to find out as accurately as possible what people experience in moments of the highest joy, intoxication with life, and why this happens. My first research involved several hundred “experts”—artists, athletes, musicians, chess players, surgeons—who apparently spent time doing activities they enjoyed. Based on their stories about how they feel doing what they love, I developed a theory of optimal experience. This theory was based on the concept flow- a state of complete absorption in the 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.

Using this theoretical model, my research group at the University of Chicago, and later my colleagues around the world, interviewed thousands of people in a wide variety of occupations and professions. As a result, it turned out that optimal experiences are described by people in the same way, regardless of age, gender, or belonging to a particular culture. The experience of flow was not the privilege of members of elitist industrial societies. It was described, in fact, by the same words by elderly Korean women, and residents of Thailand and India, and teenagers from Tokyo, and shepherds of the Navajo Indian tribe, and farmers from the Italian Alps, and assembly line workers in Chicago.

Initially, our data was limited to interviews and questionnaires. In order to achieve higher accuracy in recording subjective experiences, we gradually developed a new method, which we called the Experience Sampling Method. During the study using this method, the subject must carry a special pager with him everywhere for a week. Signals were sent to the pager via radio at random times of the day, about eight times a day. After receiving the signal, the subject had to write down how he felt and what he thought at that moment. At the end of the week, we received a “cut” of fragments of the life of each subject, composed of randomly selected pieces. As a result, hundreds of thousands of such “slices of experiences” have been accumulated, taken in various parts of the world, on which the conclusions of this book are based.

The state of flow research I started at the University of Chicago has now spread all over the world in Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Australia. The most extensive data bank outside of Chicago today is collected in Italy, at the Psychological Institute of the Medical Faculty of the University of Milan. The concept of flow is recognized as useful by psychologists who study happiness, life satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation, sociologists who see it as the opposite of anomie and alienation, and anthropologists who study rituals and states of collective euphoria.

But flow is not only an object of academic research. Already a few years after the first publication, the flow theory began to be actively applied in a number of applied areas. Flow theory can point the way where the goal is to improve the quality of life. It stimulated the development of experimental programs in comprehensive schools, business training, and the creation of goods for leisure and entertainment. The flow theory is also used to find new ideas and practices in clinical psychotherapy, in the re-education of juvenile delinquents, in the organization of leisure in nursing homes, in the design of museum exhibitions, in the occupational therapy of the disabled. All of this appeared within twelve years of the first papers on flow appearing in scientific journals. Today there is reason to believe that the influence of this theory will continue to grow in the coming years.

Portal for the student. Self-training