Cathy's Happiness Quest: Experiencing Flow

With all due apologies to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of "Finding Flow", I think the analogy in the title is a good one for describing what finding flow is all about. Frankly, it's also a lot like the once popular effort of "Finding Waldo". If you aren't old enough to know what "Finding Waldo" is all about, then you'd better bone up on that before you read much further!

Have you ever watched a mighty river as it reaches for the sea? It courses onward, often becoming more powerful as it gets closer to its final destination. I am always mesmerized by the awesome power of water. Rivers always seem pretty bent on a particular course. Have you ever imagined the river plunked on the couch, thinking to itself, my life as a river is dreary, I am bored, whatever shall I do? Of course not. The river has a clear purpose towards which it strides with confidence and abandon.

And that, my friends, is" flow" - being fully engaged in something with both confidence and abandon. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi used a lot more words to describe it, but I suspect that you may not have time to read his whole book so I have "watered" it down (pun definitely intended) for the sake of brevity. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheeks sent me high) spent years studying happiness and discovered something that he did not expect - material wealth doesn't get you very far on the happiness trail. You can listen to Csikszentmihalyi discuss work on TED.com. Here's the TED Talk link.

I have never bought a lottery ticket - not because I am perfectly virtuous, but just because I can think of other things I would rather do with that money. People who do buy lottery tickets often believe that "attaining money, fame, or beauty" (Haidt) is the key to happiness. As I mentioned previously, the great Frank Lloyd Wright insightfully said, “Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions".

Csikszentmihalyi's research showed that there is a state that people value much more than material wealth or physical beauty and this state is what he calls "flow" - you can also think of it as "being in the zone". Csikszentmihalyi describes it as the "complete absorption in what one does". I suspect that since this breakthrough research in the 1960s, few studies of happiness have been able to exclude the concept. As part of my Happiness Quest posts, I have often referred to Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis and Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness. Both of these world class doctors of psychology cite the concept of flow as being fundamentally vital to achieving happiness.

Lyubomirsky describes flow and provides some practical suggestions for how to achieve it. Haidt assumes that we can each figure out how to achieve flow and so chooses to explore what type of flow actually results in intrinsic happiness. I find Haidt's discussion to be the more valuable - goodness knows that each and every one of us can be deeply absorbed in all manner of things and technically experiencing flow (doing your taxes comes to mind) but little happiness results. As Haidt explains, Csikszentmihalyi's theory focuses on those experiences that meet the both the "complete absorption" test and the "enjoyment" test. Haidt describes the three keys to flow: "there's a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step".

But then Haidt goes beyond Csikszentmihalyi's basic premise. First he weaves in the further research of Martin Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi's co-founder of positive psychology. Seligman proposes that there is a distinction between enjoyment gleaned from pleasures ("delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components") and the true flow that comes from acts of gratification ("that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to lose self-consciousness").

Then Haidt hits the synthesis jackpot! If you haven't read my "Throwing Down the Gauntlet" post, it is an important part of my reaction to Haidt's synthesis of the works of Csikszentmihalyi, Seligman and Haidt's own further research. Haidt makes the point that gratifications are much more influential to our state of happiness than are pleasures. He states: "gratifications ask more of us; they challenge us and make us extend ourselves. Gratifications often come from accomplishing something, learning something, or improving something".

My Emerging Cycle of Happiness

To prove his point, Haidt embarked on a study, using 350 of the students in his Intro Psych class. These eager young subjects were sent out into the great wide world and asked to engage in four new activities. One of these was to indulge the senses, another to attend a class they wouldn't normally go to, another to perform an act of kindness for a freind who needed cheering up, and another to write down the reasons they were thankful for someone and then to call that person to express this gratitude. You can probably anticipate the results: the big finding was that people experienced longer-lasting improvements in mood from the kindness and gratitude activities than from those in which they indulged themselves.

Once again, I am drawn right back to compassion - so make time for those random acts of kindness and count your blessings and let me know if you notice a difference.

Maybe I should also let you know that by random acts of kindness, I really do mean random. There's nothing random about forcing yourself to begrudgingly do something nice for someone else just so you can can check it off your "happiness to-do" list. It's an internal change in your approach to relationships - you may have to think about it a little at first, but eventually it will become second nature. So breathe deeply for a moment before you yell at your husband for tracking in mud, or snap at the municipal employee because you can't get rid of the grubs on your lawn (a sad, but true story). Remember that a fundamental element of living a compassionate life is to "refrain consistently and emphatically from inflicting pain" (Armstrong).

In the movie White Christmas, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney sing a beautiful duet about counting your blessings. Add a little blessings counting to your random acts of kindness and I think you will have some of the most important ingredients for your happiness recipe.