"Flow: Optimal Experience Psychology"
[Author]: Mihari ChiksenMihalai
[Translator]: Zhang Dingqi
[Category]: Psychology
[Publisher]: CITIC Publishing House
[Publisher]: CITIC Publishing House
[Publishing time]: 2017.12
[Douban score]: 8.2 points
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
History Csikszentmihalyi
History, one of the founders of the "flow" theory. Former President of the American Psychological Society, Martin Seligman, , praised him as "the world's top positive psychology researcher."
Chickson Mihalay has been committed to the study of happiness and creativity, the most famous of which is the proposed and developed the theory of "flow". He has served as the chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago and is currently teaching at Claremont University in California. His works include world-class bestsellers such as "Flow", "Discovering Flow" and "Creativity", which have had a significant impact on the development of positive psychology. Among them, "Flow" has been translated into more than 30 languages since its publication in 1990, affecting millions of researchers and readers around the world.
"Flow" refers to the state of being fully focused and selfless when we do something - in this state, you can't even feel the existence of time, and after this thing is completed, we will have a kind of fullness. Energy and a very satisfying feeling. In fact, many times when we do things that we like very much, are challenging and good at, we can easily experience flow, such as climbing, swimming, playing ball, playing games, reading, playing musical instruments and working.
The father of psychological theory and founder of positive psychology Mihari Chickson Mihalay, based on a large number of case studies 30 years ago, he pioneered the concept of "flow". This book systematically explains the flow theory, the conditions for entering the flow state, and explains how to enter the flow state from various aspects such as daily life, leisure and entertainment, work, and interpersonal relationships. For psychology enthusiasts and researchers, "Flow" is an indispensable theoretical material for understanding fields such as positive psychology; for the general public, it is also an action guide to improve happiness and efficiency.
[4] Happiness is not the theme of life, but an accompanying phenomenon. Happiness is the state of when you devote yourself to something, reaching the level of selflessness, and thus obtaining inner order and peace.
[13] On the one hand, being alone is a necessary experience in establishing one's inner system. On the other hand, with your own inner system, you can adapt to the lonely situation you fall into due to accidental reasons.
[13] Appropriate solitude is conducive to forming the "self".
[29] Stunning does not necessarily happen only when love at first sight, but may also be looking back at night.
[50] What life wants is not the result of the final end, but the process of growth every moment.
[64] Happiness does not happen instantly; it has nothing to do with luck or probability, it cannot be bought with money, and it cannot be robbed by power; it is not manipulated by external things, but depends on our interpretation of external things. In fact, happiness depends on personal cultivation, sufficient preparation in advance, and deliberate cultivation and maintenance. Only those who learn to control their souls can determine their own quality of life; having this ability is equivalent to approaching the state of happiness.
[66] The most pleasant moment is usually when a person works hard for a difficult task and exerts both physical and intellectual strength to the extreme. The best experience is created by ourselves.
[66] Controlling life is not easy, sometimes it is a kind of pain, but the optimal experience over time will gather into a sense of control - to put it more appropriately, it is a sense of participation that can determine the connotation of life by oneself - —This is the closest state we can imagine to be called "happiness".
[81] Emerson once said: "We have all kinds of expectations for life, but we have never really lived."
[138] Engage in any activity that requires concentration, and the sense of time will become compact, not only time is concentrated at one point What is more noteworthy is that information that can enter perception is also strictly controlled, and the annoying thoughts that usually freely enter and exit the mind are temporarily blocked.
[ 141] Only when personal power can control the results can one be sure that one has control.
[149] "Self-making goals" means doing something without pursuing future rewards. Doing this thing itself is the greatest reward.
[182] Even if all hope is shattered, we still have to find a meaningful goal and reorganize ourselves around it.
[235] Writing for writing cannot be said to be a waste of time. The most important thing is that it provides the soul with a way to express it, allowing a person to record events and feelings in a convenient way to relive it in the future.
[275] The flow experience generated from the application of skills will bring growth; behind purely passive entertainment, there is nothing.
[276] Those who learn to discover fun from work and do not waste their leisure time will feel that life is becoming more and more valuable. Brightbill wrote: "The future belongs not only to educated people, but also to those who know how to make good use of their leisure time."
[279] If a person cannot tolerate loneliness and even finds fun from it, it will be difficult to complete tasks that require full attention. . Therefore, it is necessary for us to learn to control our consciousness without foreign aid.
[290] If a person can enter the flow as he pleases without being restricted by external conditions, he has mastered the key to changing the quality of life.
[351] It doesn’t matter how much a person has achieved the goal. What’s important is whether he has worked hard to achieve the goal and does not let his energy dissipate or waste it.
[359] There is a correspondence between goals and efforts. At first, it was necessary to prove the need for hard work, but later it became the importance of hard work.
We have all had this experience: doing things that you like or are good at will be very dedicated, focusing, forgetting the existence of yourself and time, immersing in your own world, ignoring the existence of other things, and even reaching the level of forgetting to eat and sleep, And feel happy from this, that is a very beautiful feeling. After reading this book, I realized that this state is "flow".
Nowadays, human material life is getting better and better, but the connotation of improving experience has not improved.
flow is the source of happiness. flow can help us improve our sense of happiness from the bottom of our hearts and improve our quality of life.
If you feel that life and work are boring and have no fun, you can learn from this book to create fun from life, cultivate a self-satisfied personality, control consciousness, and create order in the mind. Follow the three principles of "clear goals", "instant feedback", and "match difficulty" to train yourself to create more flow experiences, thereby improving the quality of your life experience.
is like reading to improve yourself. When I insist on reading and writing reading notes, I found that my writing level, thinking and cognition are constantly improving, and these have given me immediate feedback.Slowly I began to try more difficult challenges, reading more types of books to inject more nutrition into the mind. I was immersed in this process and gained the flow of my heart brought by reading.
▶️ There are three core words in this book:
①Happiness
Happiness is not the theme of life, but an accompanying phenomenon. Happiness is when you devote yourself to something, reach the level of selflessness, and thus gain inner order and tranquility. state.
②Optimal experience (flow)
The opposite of spiritual entropy is the optimal experience, that is, flow.
"Flow" refers to the state of being fully focused and selfless when we do something - in this state, you can't even feel the existence of time, and after this thing is completed, we will have a kind of fullness. Energy and a very satisfying feeling.
③Mental entropy
Entropy refers to the degree of chaos in a system. The more chaotic the, the higher the entropy value. Conversely, the more regular and clearer the structure is within a system, the lower the entropy value. Negative entropy is the trend from disorder to order.
Mental entropy refers to the threat of information to the goals and structures in people's consciousness, which will lead to the loss of order in the heart, which is spiritual entropy.
The best experience "flow" is the large-scale survey results of more than 100,000 analysis records by the author and his group visited men, women, young and old with different occupations and education.
▶️ How is the flow of the heart formed and what are its characteristics?
① Attention, anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep happiness is obtained by strict self-discipline and concentration.
② has a goal that he is willing to give for. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, as long as the goal focuses his attention here.
③ has instant feedback.
④ Because of his full concentration, his annoying trivial matters in daily life have been forgotten and blocked.
⑤ has reached a state of selflessness.
Focus is the key to flow. When you focus on one thing and reach the level of selflessness, you will generate flow.
Happiness depends on whether the heart is harmonious; and pursuing inner harmony can only start with mastering consciousness.
The function of consciousness is to collect all information inside and outside the organization, and after evaluation, the body will make appropriate responses. He can be regarded as the center of various perceptions, sensations and concepts, and he also arranges the order of various information. Without consciousness, we can still "know" what is around us, but we can only react intuitively. Only by consciousness can we measure the priorities of events and respond appropriately accordingly; we can even create information that we have never seen before, such as daydreaming, lying, writing beautiful rhetorics or derive scientific theories.
The most obvious indicator of control consciousness is to be able to concentrate as you wish and not be distracted by anything. If you can do this, you can find fun in your daily life. What kind of feeling will flow bring? Under what circumstances will it happen?
▶️Constituent elements of flow
The main strategies for improving the quality of life :
One is to make the external conditions meet our goals;
The second is to change the way we experience external conditions so that it can match our goals Consistent.
Change external conditions such as wealth, status, power cannot change our quality of life. To improve life, we must start with improving the quality of the experience.
Eight elements generated by fun :
①This experience occurs when we face a work that can be done.
② We must be able to concentrate on this matter.
③ This task has clear goals.
④ Instant feedback.
⑤ We can devote ourselves to action in depth without any far-fetchedness, and the worries and frustrations of daily life are wiped out.
⑥ The fun-filled experience makes people feel free to control their actions.
⑦ entered the "selfless" state, but after the flow experience comes to an end, the self-feeling will become stronger again.
⑧ The sense of time will change - a few hours are like a few minutes, and a few minutes may also become as long as a few hours.
Why can fun activities bring such a great sense of satisfaction? This knowledge will allow us to control our consciousness and turn the most boring moments of our daily lives into opportunities that help us grow ourselves.
▶️ How to find flow in daily life?
When we do things we like, have challenges and are good at, it is easy to experience flow. In the book, the author mentioned many times that composing, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, chess and other activities have experienced the effect of flow. The design of these activities is aimed at achieving flow.
The family environment that helps generate the optimal experience has five characteristics: :
①Clear Children clearly know their parents’ expectations for themselves, and when interacting with their families, their goals are clear, and their children give back when they achieve their goals.
② Attach importance to Children can feel that their parents value and have a strong interest in what they do, rather than blindly expecting them to be admitted to a good university and find a good job.
③Choose to give children the right to choose independently, but let them know and be prepared to bear the consequences of their choices.
④Investing in allows the child to have enough confidence, let go of the shield of self-defense and self-awareness, and do what he is interested in.
⑤Challenge Parents should arrange complex and gradual action opportunities for their children. Flow experiences make the self more complex than in the past. The five conditions of
constitute the so-called "self-targeted family environment" because they provide ideological training to enjoy the joy of life. These five characteristics are obviously connected to the life experience. Children who grow up in a family environment that can provide clear goals, feedback, control, focus, focus, and focus on things themselves and challenges, usually better grasp the order of life and enjoy life.
▶️How to get flow
The book says that when we feel unhappy, frustrated, and bored, there is a very convenient way out: just try to make use of our body.
The easiest way to improve the quality of life is to learn to control your body and feelings.
► Get the sensory joy from exercise, dance, yoga, love, observing nature, listening to music, and tasting food.
► Obtain 's joy of thinking from appreciation of art works, daydreaming, memory information, games (guessing games, thinking games, word games, etc.), thinking, chanting poetry, talking, writing, hobbies, and learning.
►Discover fun from work, work like playing games, improve the quality of work experience, and obtain Joy of work .
Improve the quality of life through work, and two auxiliary strategies are needed: :
On the one hand, we need to redesign the work so that it is as close to flow activities as possible.
On the other hand, you must cultivate a self-satisfactory personality, strengthen your skills, and choose feasible goals. If used alone, these two strategies cannot increase the work pleasure too much, but two-pronged approaches can produce an unexpected optimal experience.
► Tame loneliness and learn to use the time of being alone. Get Interpersonal joy from family, love, marriage and friendship.
▶️ How to enjoy yourself in the setbacks?
►Turn the helpless situation into a new flow activity and control it.
Such a transformation can be divided into three steps :
①unconsciously affirms itself. To achieve self-confidence, a person must first have considerable confidence in himself, his own situation, and his position in the environment.
②3 focuses on the outside world. Mental entropy is generated by focusing on inner disorder. At this time, if you turn your attention to things around you, the damage caused by stress will be reduced.
③3 finds a new way out.
There are two basic methods to deal with the situation that causes mental entropy :
① Focus on the obstacles that prevent us from achieving our goals, eliminate it, and rebuild the harmony of consciousness. This method is more direct.
② focuses on the entire situation, including yourself, discusses whether there are other more suitable goals, and seeks different solutions.
►Cultivate a self-satisfactory personality. A self-entertainment transforms the experience that may develop into spiritual entropy into a flow of mind.
▶️How to cultivate a self-satisfied personality
► Establish goals (to experience flow, you must have a clear goal first)
►Concentrate on (after choosing the action system, people with self-satisfied personality will thrust into the head Enter what he does. )
► Avoid being too self-centered
► Seek fun from the current experience
Happiness comes from the order of the heart. In our daily life, we will inevitably be in a state of mental entropy such as anxiety, depression, and depression. We must learn to use the mind flow method to make the disordered mind entropy return to an orderly state, and transform the experience that may develop into spiritual entropy into a flow Only by gaining inner order and peace and creating a meaningful and happy life for yourself.
This is a relatively difficult book, and it is relatively long. Some of the contents are difficult to read, but after reading, I still gain a lot of gains, so I need to calm down and read slowly.
has six prefaces in total 60 pages. It is recommended to read the main text first and then read the preface, so that you will have a more understanding of the content of the book.
Author introduction: [Sugar Cube]
A post-90s who focuses on personal growth, self-media information and reading sharing
A person who focuses on personal growth, self-media information and reading sharing
The article first published on Official account "Cucumber Sugar Reading", thank you for your attention [Send Heart]
Further reading:
"Rich people are different from what you think": The secret of wealth that changes your life
"The Road to Financial Freedom": Realize financial freedom within 7 years
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