Finding Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow,” said that the natural state of the mind is chaos and this is why we need to constantly work at flow.
Csikszentmihalyi came up with the term flow, thinking of a river. When we are left alone with no demands on attention, entropy is the normal state of consciousness, a condition he says is neither useful or enjoyable. Entropy is a state of disorder, deterioration, randomness; not a place we want to be. This, too, important to keep in awareness.
Alone in our heads, the brain moves like a digital radio in scan mode. With the radio, we stop on something that gives us pleasure. But unless we actively attend, the brain may seek pain, grudges, and real and imagined upsetting conversations and events.
Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as the antidote and breaks activities offering flow into seven components.
Flow’s Seven Components
- Completely involved in what we are doing – focused.
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A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
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Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing,
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Knowing the activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to the task.
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A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
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Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present; hours seem to pass by in minutes.
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Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.
Habits and strategies offering a sense of flow are activities you are so into that you lose a sense of time. Writing, drawing, painting, sports, nature, yoga, meditation, music, and gaming are some activities that can transport you into this state of flow.
Daydreaming and imagining can be a source of flow. Playing out a sequence of events as mental images create emotional order by compensating for unpleasant realities. Imaginary situations are a positive way for children to rehearse and test out strategies and consider various optional behaviors. A well-timed book inspires the imagination and creates a state of flow. We need to provide kids with reading that targets personal needs early on. Once they tap into a sense of flow from reading, they are on a path to self-discovery. Both fiction and nonfiction offer flow when personal needs are targeted at the right time.
Figure 7-1 Finding Flow
Delicate Balance of Skill & Challenge
Flow requires a delicate balance between skill level and challenge. A good video game is programmed so that the level of challenge stays just ahead of skill level. If the skill level is set too low you get bored. If it is too high you get frustrated. The precise balance between challenge and level of skill contributes to flow.
Gaming offers a world with immediate feedback so you know how well you are doing moment to moment. You enter into a world where the activity is intrinsically rewarding, concentration is deep, problems are forgotten, and control and a feeling of mastery is possible. Self-consciousness disappears and it is possible to transcend the limits of ego, self, and time, lifting you out of a powerless state of ennui or chronic stress.
Once you have entered this effortless, spontaneous state, whatever you are doing is worth doing for its own sake. It is a state in which you are doing something that you really like to do and are totally involved. You lose track of time and may not notice when you are hungry or tired. It is a state when both the skill level and challenge are higher than average, with the challenge slightly higher than the skill level. You can be doing practically anything, riding the balance between the challenge and skill level, constantly working a bit beyond your comfort zone to reinforce and advance from each level of skill.
Csikszentmihalyi searched for ways to make flow accessible to more people. It comes to artists, gamers, and athletes naturally. But many people rarely experience flow, so the challenge is to incorporate it into our educational system from the earliest grades. All of us should be able to shift into a flow activity offering a sense of serene clarity and focus.
Finding Your Own Flow
Though we stay in flow when the challenge slightly exceeds our skill level, Csikszentmihalyi says we need to eventually take this to a higher level where activities are linked to one another in a meaningful way. This involves an overarching goal where all of the unrelated activities merge into an all-encompassing set of challenges that give purpose to everything we do.
Whoever achieves this state will never really lack anything else. A person whose consciousness is so ordered need not fear unexpected events or even death. Every living moment will make sense and most of it will be enjoyable.
Few achieve this state. Many people are stuck in the day to day rut of personal survival. They need to focus psychic energies on themselves with little or nothing left for the goals of the wider community, no less for family. But they still have a need for flow.
Juvenile delinquents get flow from car theft and vandalism. Way back, I got flow from setting fires, calling in bomb scares, and shooting ashcan and cherry bomb firecrackers out my back window with a Whamo slingshot as cursing policemen scurried from garage roof, to roof unable to discover the source of the blasts riling upset neighbors all about them.
It is not necessary to achieve goals in order to bring meaning to your life. You bring meaning into your life when you put intent to reach the goal into action. What matters is that psychic energy is expended to reach the goal, not wasted on doubt, regret, guilt, and fear.
The activities that bring us to optimal experience are not all fun and games. The best moments can be when the mind or body is stretched to its limits in an effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is a process of attempting to gain mastery, sometimes over mind or body. The key is a constant “attempting.” When you get there, the challenge is over. So maybe, fortunately, we never really get there.
Putting intent to action and working toward your goal takes more resolve than most people have. Climbers and runners go through excruciating pain to experience the rewards of optimal experience. Working toward goals leads to blocks, dead ends, and troubles, and it is far easier to give it up when faced with barriers than plodding on.
If you maintain focus on putting intent to action despite pain and failure, Csikszentmihalyi says that life is felt to be meaningful and can become extended episodes of flow.
Victor Frankl said the meaning of life is finding your own meaning. Personal meaning may change completely at different stages of life. It may be concrete and external like total commitment to a job, a cause, a sport; or internal, as the quest for self-knowledge and mental health. But it is important to think through the consequences of any long-term commitment. If I commit all my resources to my job and sacrifice my family, is it worth it? In the best of all worlds, we would have balanced commitments.
Our commitments can fit the rules of family and society or they can be an expression of what we truly feel and believe. The more intrinsically motivated, the more authentic; the more externally driven, the more inauthentic.
As important as an intrinsic, authentic lifestyle, Csikszentmihalyi says the optimal condition is when you no longer see yourself in opposition to the environment, insisting that your goals and intentions take precedence over everything else. The optimal condition is when you are in tune with and feel a part of whatever goes on around you, and you attempt to do the best within the system in which you operate. Goals may have to be subordinated to a greater entity and you may have to play by a different set of rules from what you might prefer.
Though you don’t want to lose sight of your intents and goals, you need to hold them with an Open Focus, processing information from within your surroundings. People who function at an optimal level don’t expend all of their energy trying to satisfy what they believe are their needs, nor do they attempt to conform to all that society might expect of them. It is possible to work toward developing an Open Focus that includes both inward focus and an awareness of myriad alternate possibilities.
