And this activity must be something that isn’t too easy to do and not so challenging that it becomes unattainable. We must engage in an activity where we have to complete something. There are also two critical things needed to achieve the flow state: Goals and Feedback. If the project, job, or work is one you are good at, it’ll be easy to immerse yourself in it. You can achieve a flow state when you engage in a pleasurable activity with a finished task. This focus explains why the flow state isn’t associated with passive activities, such as watching TV or doomscrolling through social media. It occurs when we are faced with a challenging and engaging task that requires intensive focus. He noted that the flow state doesn’t happen when we are relaxed. When Does a Flow State Occur?Ĭsikszentmihalyi discovered in his research that there are certain conditions for the state to occur. He also wrote a book, entitled: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a bestseller for the past 30 years. He discovered these creatives and athletes experienced the same state, and thus, the term flow state was born. This observation led Csikszentmihalyi to further his research and included interviews with surgeons, mountain climbers, ballet dancers, and chess players. These painters would work all day without feeling fatigued, without eating or resting, and once they completed the painting, they showed no interest in their finished project. It’s a genuinely meditative state of mindfulness.Ĭsikszentmihalyi began his research on the topic in the ’60s when he observed painters and creatives who immersed themselves in their work with deep concentration and focus. In this state, there are feelings of pleasure, ecstasy, excitement, and pure bliss. And it’s not just about completing something, but a person in this state is enjoying what he is doing at this moment so much that he doesn’t think about anything else. You can observe the flow state in musicians losing themselves in a performance, painters painting on a canvas for hours or days without eating or sleeping, surgeons operating for 18 hours without stopping, and mountain climbers reaching summits without resting.įlow state is the complete and utter loss of the sense of time and one’s physical needs, and the only important thing is finishing the task at hand. Together with Jeanne Nakamura, both psychologists popularized the term. Hungarian-American positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow state. Flow State is a state of being fully immersed in whatever you are doing that you achieve a “sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity, and you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to another.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |