Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"People who learn to control inner experience will be able to improve the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."
"The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."
"Flow - the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sake of doing it."
"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. [...] To do that we must learn to achieve mastery over consciousness itself"
"The function of consciousness is to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body."
"Information enters consciousness either because we intend to focus attention on it or as a result of attentional habits based on biological or social instructions."
"The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and no longer."
"Because attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events - such as remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions - happen there, it is useful to think of it as psychic energy. Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience."
"When the informations that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly."
"They are situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against. We have called this state the flow experience, [...] and those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue."
"When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable."
"Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind."
"Enjoyable events occur when a person has not only met some prior expectation or satisfied a need or a desire but also gone beyond what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something unexpected, perhaps something even unimagined before."
"To gain personal control over the quality of experience, however, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out."
"When all a person's relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person's attention is completely absorbed by the activity."
"As a result, one of the most universal and distinctive features of optimal experience takes place: people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing."
"The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediate."
"The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward."
"As Democritus said so simply many centuries ago: “Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim."
"The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs."
"How we feel at any given moment of a flow activity is strongly influenced by the objective conditions; but consciousness is still free to follow its own assessment of the case."
"The traits that mark an autotelic personality are most clearly revealed by people who seem to enjoy situations that ordinary persons would find unbearable."
"When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces. When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free."
"Non self-conscious individualism, or a strongly directed purpose that is not self-seeking. People who have that quality are bent on doing their best in all circumstances, yet they are not concerned primarily with advancing their own interests. Because they are intrinsically motivated in their actions, they are not easily disturbed by external threats. With enough psychic energy free to observe and analyze their surroundings objectively, they have a better chance of discovering in them new opportunities for action."
"The challenges of the activity are what force us to concentrate."
"To be enjoyable, a relationship must become more complex. To become more complex, the partners must discover new potentialities in themselves and in each other. To discover these, they must invest attention in each other—so that they can learn what thoughts and feelings, what dreams reside in their partner's mind. This in itself is a never-ending process, a lifetime's task."
"Observing, recording, and preserving the memory of both the large and small events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness."
"It is true that if one finds flow in work, and in relations with other people, one is well on the way toward improving the quality of life as a whole."
"The most detailed information about who we are as individuals comes from those we communicate with, and from the way we accomplish our jobs."
"The ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give structure to attention."
"Friendships allow us to express parts of our beings that we seldom have the opportunity to act out otherwise."
"Those who know how to transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled will be able to enjoy themselves, and emerge stronger from the ordeal."
"Unselfconscious self-assurance. [...] one common attitude shared by such people was the implicit belief that their destiny was in their hands. [...] This attitude occurs when a person no longer sees himself in opposition to the environment, as an individual who insists that his goals, his intentions take precedence over everything else."
"The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony."
"Setting goals. Becoming immersed in the activity. Paying attention to what is happening. Learning to enjoy the immediate experience."
"Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy."
"This is where the presumed advantage of a contemplative life comes in. Detached reflection upon experience, a realistic weighing of options and their consequences, have long been held to be the best approach to a good life."
If you'd like to explore the book in full:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Amazon
This page may contain affiliate links. If you choose to use them, it supports this project at no extra cost to you.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.