Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Review of the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by M. Csikszentmihalyi

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In our first issue we will read the book by the famous psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - “Flow. The psychology of optimal experience". The book's ten key messages will help you understand what flow is and how to achieve it.

The author and his book

The author of the “flow” theory is professor of psychology, former dean of the University of Chicago Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He is a researcher on creativity and personal well-being, the founder of such a well-known movement as positive psychology, and the author of many books on psychology, happiness and creativity.

His book, Flow, first published in 1990, has been repeatedly included in ratings of the best business books. She brought Csikszentmihalyi worldwide fame. “Stream” was highly appreciated even by the top officials of the states. For example, former US President Bill Clinton named Csikszentmihalyi his favorite author. The latter is also considered the most cited psychologist in the world.

How to live in the flow: key ideas

1. Flow and flow activity

Flow is a state of internal balance that occurs when you fully concentrate on the task at hand and achieving the goal. When we are engaged in something that captivates us, makes us immerse ourselves completely, we often say that we are “in the flow”, “floating with the flow”, not noticing anything around. You can feel the flow state by reading an interesting book, doing your favorite hobby, or listening to your favorite music.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, there are activities that effortlessly help you abstract from external conditions and draw inspiration from a state of inner balance. But you can achieve a state of optimal experience in any other activity, for example, in work.

The ability to not give up in the face of obstacles and setbacks is justifiably admirable because it seems to be an extremely important trait not only for being successful in life, but also for enjoying it. To develop this property, a person must learn to control his consciousness, control feelings and thoughts.

2. Chaos Management

The natural state of our consciousness is chaos, dominated by uncontrollable thoughts, memories and experiences. Flow, or optimal experience, is, on the contrary, a state of internal order. At this moment, the restless consciousness, which usually strives to control events, partially loosens its grip: psychic energy is not enough to cope with two tasks at the same time. As a result, energy is freed and directed towards a calm movement towards solving the assigned tasks.

In a state of optimal experience, a person is at the limit of his capabilities. He is able to find solutions to every challenge that arises and, thanks to this, experience a sense of harmony and satisfaction. According to Csikszentmihalyi, to achieve a state of flow, the type of activity does not play any role: if we are faced with a difficult but feasible task, moving towards its solution takes us to a new level of development and gives us new experience.

We have all experienced moments when we felt not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, mastery over our own destiny. In these rare moments we feel inspired, especially joyful. These feelings remain in our hearts for a long time and serve as a guide in our lives. This is what we call optimal experience.

3. Flow training

There are activities through which you can learn and practice flow state. They are divided into physical (sports, yoga, walking, listening to music, cooking your favorite food) and intellectual (reading, science, creativity). They require exactly the degree of involvement that is necessary for optimal experience, they can give a feeling of joy from the current moment, and give new ideas and discoveries in the process. In this case, it is not the level of professionalism in the chosen activity that is important, but the degree of interest in it. Having experienced a sense of flow in his physical or intellectual hobby, a person will strive for it in work and life, and most importantly, he will already understand the mechanism for achieving it.

If a person is able to organize his consciousness in such a way that the state of flow occurs as often as possible, the quality of his life will inevitably begin to improve, because in this case even the most boring activities will take on meaning and begin to bring joy.

4. Problem as challenge and development

A state of flow can be achieved through activities that are challenging enough to be interesting and require skill to master. This activity can be something different for each person. For example, these are competitions among athletes. Each of the participants makes enough efforts, knows what they are capable of, but their flow state is a desire for their own new level. It is the process of improving skills, not the outcome, that is of utmost importance. At the same time, improvement is possible only if tasks and skills match.

Any activity offers a person many opportunities for action and poses a kind of “challenge” to his skills and abilities. If an individual does not have the appropriate skills, the task will be uninteresting and simply meaningless to him.

5. Focus

Flow requires sufficient focus and concentration on the process, otherwise any distraction will take you out of this state. At the same time, if a person is sufficiently immersed in a task and his actions begin to become almost automatic, then concentration becomes natural, like breathing. There is simply no room left in the mind for information that is insignificant at the current moment.

The depth of involvement displaces doubts, worries, and fixation on negative thoughts from consciousness. But the opposite is also true: the absence of experiences makes it easy to immerse yourself in the flow.

Usually we interrupt our activities with doubts and questions: “Why am I doing this? Shouldn't I do something else? We evaluate again and again the reasons that prompted us to take certain actions and their appropriateness. And in a state of flow there is no need to reflect, because the action, as if by magic, itself carries us forward.”

6. Goals and objectives

A person can achieve flow only if he understands the purpose of his activity and imagines its end result. Thanks to this, it becomes clear what tasks to set, in what direction to move and what to do, and the necessary sense of control appears. But it is worth considering that a task that was to be tackled once can lead to setting a longer-term goal (for example, one successful serve of the ball made you want to master an entire sport).

“An autotelic personality (a person who perceives a complex task as an interesting challenge for himself - ed.) knows: it was she who chose the goal to which she is now striving. What she does is neither an accident nor the result of external forces. This consciousness further enhances a person’s motivation. At the same time, your own goals can be changed if circumstances make them meaningless. Therefore, the behavior of an autotelic personality is both more goal-directed and flexible.”

7. Getting feedback from the process

To achieve a state of flow, you need to be able to receive feedback that progress towards your goal is going well. Regular confirmation of the success of your efforts can maintain a state of optimal experience.

However, not all activities provide clear feedback. For example, representatives of creative professions (artists, composers, musicians, etc.) do not always know from the very beginning how the work should turn out as a result. But, as Csikszentmihalyi says, it is not necessary to imagine the final goal of your actions - there is feedback already in the process of moving towards it. For example, one brush stroke fit well into the whole canvas, created a feeling of satisfaction in the artist and preserved the condition for his further presence in the flow.

The type of feedback we focus on is often unimportant in itself. Does it matter what exactly is happening: a tennis ball flies between the white lines, the opponent's king is pinned in a corner, or a glimmer of understanding flashes in the patient's eyes? This information is valuable because it contains a symbolic message: “I have achieved my goal.” Understanding this organizes consciousness and strengthens the structure of our personality.”

8. Control of the situation

Any activity in a flow state allows you to feel control over your actions and everything that happens in the process. This is felt most clearly by people who engage in activities that involve a high degree of risk, such as extreme sports. According to them, with the proper level of development in their business and sufficient experience, the feeling of control over what is happening becomes many times higher than it could be in a calmer situation, where everything can develop much more unexpectedly, since it cannot be controlled or directly interfered with.

But you don’t have to do extreme sports to immerse yourself in a state of optimal experience. Something you are good at can also make you feel in control because everything is in your hands. At the same time, it is important not to immerse yourself in this activity, so as not to become dependent on it, avoiding the “uncontrollable” external reality.

The state of flow is usually characterized by a feeling of control over the situation, or more precisely, the absence of the fear of losing control, which is typical of many situations in everyday life. […] Flow-inducing activities, even those that seem extremely dangerous, are designed in such a way that they allow a person to develop skills that reduce the likelihood of error to a minimum.

9. Expanding the boundaries of your “I”

When a person is in the flow, he seems to “dissolve” in the matter, loses his “I”. However, despite this, after finishing a streaming session, it becomes stronger than before.

Every day, people pay too much attention to their “I”, which leads to the emergence of unreasonable anxiety: thoughts “is everything okay with me”, “what do my colleagues think of me”, “do I meet the requirements sufficiently” occupy a significant part of the consciousness, and restoring a harmonious internal state destroyed by these thoughts requires psychic energy.

In the flow there is an expansion of the boundaries of one’s “I”: a passionate person, embodying the goals set for himself, is interested only in activities that bring him joy, and does not waste attention on introspection. There is a feeling of harmonious unity with the workspace, the team, and the world around.

In a state of flow, a person faces a challenge and must constantly improve his skills to respond to it. At this time he is deprived of the opportunity to think about anything in terms of the Self, otherwise the experience will not be so deep. But later, when the problem is solved and self-reflection is restored, the Self that a person begins to realize differs from what existed before experiencing the flow; now it has been enriched with new skills and achievements.”

10. Freedom from external conditions

Being in the life stream and falling out of it occurs for reasons that do not depend on the conditions in which a person, a group of people, or an entire generation exists and develops. Despite the development of civilization, new opportunities and quality of life, our contemporaries, for the most part, are not much happier than their ancestors.

The internal state with which people go through life is influenced by the same flow conditions described above: setting a complex but feasible goal and tasks in accordance with skills and abilities, concentrating attention, receiving feedback, a sense of control, the ability to see challenge in a problematic situation. Compliance with these conditions allows you to experience optimal experiences more often and make them your usual state.

Intention, determination and inner harmony give our lives meaning and integrity, turning it into one never-ending flow experience. A person who has achieved such a state is unlikely to ever experience dissatisfaction. Every moment of his life will matter and give joy.

Buy the book “Flow. Psychology of optimal experience" is possible.

Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience" is a book about personality psychology by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In his work, he raises an important topic of human happiness.

All people strive to be happy, to find this feeling in work, other people, relationships. But few people are ready to think and realize that happiness must be found within themselves. Someone does their work with enthusiasm, better quality and faster. And someone does it through force, slowly and with worse results. Of course, it is likely that the person is minding his own business. But there are people who experience this feeling all the time. It turns out that a person does not know how to hear himself, cannot realize his desires, or do what brings him happiness. How to find a job that you want to rush to, so as not to notice how time flies and not get tired as the day passes? Is it always about work?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi teaches the reader to approach everything with inspiration, emotional uplift, finding it all within himself. After all, even the most routine work can be done with pleasure; you can add to it what inspires you in another matter. It is important to perceive every event, every moment, feeling joy from the very fact of life.

The author describes a state of inspiration, involvement and even excitement, which he calls flow. He teaches you how to understand yourself, realize what you are doing wrong and change everything for the better. The reader will be able to find out how to enter this flow and catch the right wave. And being in the flow, you can achieve greater efficiency not only in work, but also in life, with less expenditure of moral and physical strength. Every day, any business will bring pleasure and satisfaction. The book will be useful to those who love self-development, who want to understand themselves and find happiness and inspiration within themselves.

The work belongs to the Psychology genre. On our website you can download the book "Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The book's rating is 4.05 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner's online store you can buy and read the book in paper form.

Current page: 1 (book has 31 pages in total) [available reading passage: 8 pages]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Scientific editor Dmitry Leontyev

Project Manager I. Seregina

Corrector M. Milovidova

layout designer E. Sentsova

Cover designer Yu. Buga

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Dedicated to Isabella, Mark and Christopher

How to forge happiness: secrets of mastery
(preface by the editor of the Russian edition)

He is a truly wise man. Slow, although sometimes decisive. Absorbed in himself, although periodically blooming with a radiant smile. He weighs words and avoids categorical judgments, but speaks and writes surprisingly clearly and transparently. Interested more in others than in himself, but loving life in its most varied manifestations.

Today he is one of the most authoritative and respected psychologists. He is known and appreciated all over the world, and not only by his colleagues. A few years ago, the popular anthology How to Make a Life was published in the United States, offering lessons in wisdom through the lives of prominent thinkers and writers of the past and present, starting with Plato and Aristotle. Csikszentmihalyi is among the heroes of this book, positioned between Salinger and Disney. The business community treats him with great attention and respect; His current primary affiliation is the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, California. At the turn of the century, Csikszentmihalyi, along with his colleague Martin Seligman, became the founder of positive psychology - a new movement in psychology that aims to study the patterns of a good, meaningful and dignified life.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in 1934 on the shores of the Adriatic, in territory that then belonged to Italy, and is now part of Croatia. His father was a Hungarian consul, after the collapse of fascism he became ambassador to Italy, and when the communists who seized power in Hungary in 1948 sent him into retirement, he decided to stay with his family in Italy, where Mihai spent his childhood and school years. Having become interested in psychology and not finding a suitable university in Italy, he flew across the ocean to get a psychological education in the USA, and after graduating from the University of Chicago, he remained to live and work in this country, where he spent his entire professional career. He is the author of one and a half dozen books, including: “The Meaning of Things: Home Symbols of Our I", "Creative vision: psychology of aesthetic attitude", "Personality in evolution", "Being a teenager", "Becoming an adult", "Creativity", etc.

However, the most important book that brought him worldwide fame is “Flow”. Some time after its release in 1990, it received brilliant advertising from such impressed readers as US President Bill Clinton, Speaker of Congress Newt Gingrich and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It is included in lists such as “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.” It belongs to the rare category of “long-lasting” bestsellers. Having gained popularity among the mass audience immediately after its release, it continues to be republished almost every year and has already been translated into 30 languages.

This is an amazing book. Before I undertook to edit its translation, I had read it at least twice, used it in lectures and publications, and certainly appreciated it, which was facilitated by my personal acquaintance with the author and joint work with him. But only now, slowly and painstakingly going through word by word, did I experience genuine, incomparable pleasure from the way it was written - there are no gaps between thought and word, every word fits into the next one, every phrase stands in its place , and in this text there is not a single crack where one could insert a knife blade. This is a sign of that rare book, the words of which do not play their own game, leading a cheerful round dance or, on the contrary, folding into a reinforced concrete structure, but directly and accurately express a clear and well-thought-out picture of the world. Every word is not accidental, it contains the pulse of a living thought, and therefore this entire book is like a living organism: it has structure, order, unpredictability, tension, tone and life.

What is it about? About many things. If we approach it formally, it’s about happiness, about quality of life, about optimal experiences. The category of experience is indeed one of the central ones for Csikszentmihalyi (under the influence of the famous American philosopher of the early last century, John Dewey), and he convincingly shows the emptiness and meaninglessness, on the one hand, of the brilliance of fame and material prosperity, on the other hand, of noble slogans and goals, if they do not give rise to a person’s feeling of inner uplift, inspiration and fullness of life. And vice versa, the presence of such experiences may well make a person happy who is deprived of many of the material benefits and pleasures that are familiar to us.

Happiness and pleasure are two different things, and in this Csikszentmihalyi repeats the revelations of many outstanding philosophers, from Aristotle to Nikolai Berdyaev and Viktor Frankl. But he doesn’t just repeat, but builds a detailed, harmonious and experimentally confirmed theory, at the center of which is the idea of “autotelic experiences” or, simply put, flow experiences. This is a state of complete fusion with your work, absorption by it, when you do not feel time, yourself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy... Csikszentmihalyi discovered it in his studies of creative individuals, but flow is not the exclusive property of some special people. For three decades now, research and discussions around this phenomenon have been ongoing, new books are being published, but one thing is clear: the state of flow is one of the most beautiful things in our lives. And most importantly - unlike other similar states that have from time to time come into the focus of psychologists' attention (for example, peak experiences, happiness, subjective well-being), the flow does not descend on us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands. In it, pleasure merges with effort and meaning, generating an energizing, active state of joy.

Therefore, flow is directly related to personality characteristics, the level of its development and maturity. Csikszentmihalyi recalls that when he was a child, he found himself in exile, while in his native Hungary everything was collapsing, one system and way of life was replaced by another. In his own words, he observed the disintegration of the world in which at the beginning of his life he was quite comfortably rooted. And he was surprised how many adults whom he had previously known as successful and self-confident people suddenly became helpless and lost their presence of mind, deprived of the social support that they had in the old stable world. Deprived of work, money, status, they literally turned into some kind of empty shells. But there were also people who maintained their integrity and purposefulness, despite all the chaos that surrounded them, and in many ways they served as an example for others, a support that helped others not to lose hope. And the most interesting thing is that these were not the men and women from whom this could be expected. It was impossible to predict which people would survive in this difficult situation. These were neither the most respected, nor the most educated, nor the most experienced members of society. Since then, he has wondered what the sources of strength are for those people who remain resilient in this chaos. He considers his entire future life to be a search for an answer to these questions, which he was unable to find either in philosophical and religious books that were too subjective and dependent on faith, or in psychological studies that were too simplified and limited in their approach. These were men who maintained their resilience and dignity through the storms of World War II, who did something impossible, and in this could be found the key to what man is capable of at his best.

The book “Flow” represents a very non-trivial approach to many problems of general psychology, primarily to the problems of human emotional life and the regulation of behavior. There is no need to retell the contents of the book that is in your hands, but I will note the main thing, in my opinion. Csikszentmihalyi, with convincing historical and experimental psychological material in his hands, methodically, step by step, refutes the myths of mass consumer culture and its branches in a higher price category - glamor. These myths are well known: you don’t have to work hard, you don’t have to worry, all the main answers to life’s problems are simple, in order to be happy, you have to not think about difficulties and troubles and have more money so as not to deny yourself anything.

Csikszentmihalyi's book, like his other works, leaves no stone unturned from this sweet lie. He claims: humanity is evolving. The world we live in is becoming increasingly complex, and the human response to this challenge of complexity is not to bury our heads in the sand, but to become more complex, more unique, and at the same time more connected to other people, ideas, values and social groups. The joy of flow is the highest reward that nature can bestow upon us for striving to solve more and more complex meaningful problems, and which cannot be obtained in any other way. Unlike the standard of living, the quality of experience can be increased by paying only one currency - an investment of attention and organized effort; other currency in the realm of flow has no price. “The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.”

We often repeat the old saying: “Every man is the smith of his own happiness,” usually forgetting how complex and labor-intensive the blacksmith’s craft is. Half a century ago, Erich Fromm, in his philosophical and psychological superbestseller “The Art of Loving,” was able to convince us that love is not just a passive experience that “unexpectedly appears,” but an active relationship is not a noun, but a verb. Csikszentmihalyi, in a sense, repeats his path in relation to another equally important phenomenon in our lives - happiness. He reminds us: happiness is not something that just happens to us, it is both an art and a science, it is something that requires both effort and a kind of qualification. A mature, complex person is no happier than an immature one, but her happiness is of a different quality. The scale of personality is not related to the chances of happiness, but is related to the scale of this happiness. There is happiness that is simpler, more accessible, stamped, disposable, and sometimes it is complex, unique, hand-forged. And everything ultimately depends on us. This, I’m not afraid to say, great book talks about this - about life in its full depth and perspective, which is not revealed to an insufficiently attentive gaze.

Dmitry Leontyev,

Doctor of Psychology,

Professor of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov,

head Laboratory of Positive Psychology and Quality of Life, National Research University Higher School of Economics

Author's preface to the Russian edition

Flow was first published in the United States in 1990 and has since been translated into 30 languages, including some I never knew existed. The reason for the popularity of this book is simple: it talks about an important phenomenon, familiar to almost any reader, but at that time ignored by psychologists.

When I began writing about flow states, psychology was dominated by behaviorism, which argued that people, like rats and monkeys, expend energy only if they are confident that their behavior will be rewarded with some external changes: a decrease in pain, the appearance of food or some other desired result.

It seemed to me that this theory - quite useful in a general sense - ignored some of the most important motives of human behavior. Looking at how supporters of behaviorism or psychoanalysis try to explain why people make so much effort to compose poetry, music, why they dance, why they risk their lives to conquer mountain peaks or cross the ocean alone in a small boat, I saw that their the theories became more and more intricate and incredible, and they began to remind me of astronomers trying to explain the movements of the planets within the framework of the Ptolemaic system.

The problem was that psychologists, in applying a scientific approach to human behavior, became carried away by existing mechanistic explanations and lost sight of the fact that human behavior is a very special phenomenon, a process that has evolved towards greater autonomy, greater volition and developmental orientation than all others. material processes previously studied by scientists. In trying to adhere to scientific principles, psychologists have paradoxically forgotten the very first rule of pure science: the approach to understanding any phenomenon must correspond to the nature of the observed phenomena.

In this regard, the humanities have proven to be much more suitable for exploring the essence of human nature than scientific psychology. Poets, writers, philosophers and some psychologists, such as Abraham Maslow, have long noted that if a person engages in an activity in which he has achieved excellence, such activity becomes a reward in itself. Almost 600 years ago, Dante Alighieri wrote in his political treatise De Monarchia:

...In every action... the main intention of the one performing it is the expression of his own image; therefore, whoever does, whatever he does, enjoys his action. Since everything that exists strives for existence and through action the doer reveals his being, then action brings pleasure by its nature...

A state of flow occurs when we do something that expresses who we are. This is exactly what Tolstoy describes in the pages of Anna Karenina, when Konstantin Levin watches with envy his peasants, rhythmically and harmoniously waving their scythes between the rows of wheat. This is exactly what musicians feel when they immerse themselves in the work they perform; athletes approaching their limits; any employee, if he realizes that he is doing an excellent job. This experience is not some strange by-product of the human psyche. Rather, it can be argued that this is the emotional component of a person’s realization of his capabilities, the cutting edge of evolution. Flow experiences force us to go further, reach new levels of complexity, seek new knowledge, and improve our skills. In many ways, this is precisely the engine that drove the transition from hominids concerned only with their own survival to homo sapiens sapiens who is not afraid to take risks and needs more to feel better be able to.

In the twenty years since this book was first published, the concept of flow has been used in a variety of ways, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, in the January issue of the magazine New Scientist It is written that all video game designers strive to induce a state of flow in the users of their products, and this is presented as a well-known fact. Therapists recommend flow experiences as a treatment for chronic pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis. This concept is used in the training of Olympic athletes, in projects for new schools and museums.

But ultimately, this book is just an attempt to understand what makes our lives more joyful and worth living. It was written not for professional psychologists, but for everyone who wants to fill their life with meaning. That is for you.

Claremont, California. January 2011

Preface 1990

This book summarizes years of research into the positive aspects of the human experience—joy, creativity, the kind of total engagement with life that I call flow. It is written for a general audience. This step is fraught with some danger, since going beyond academic prose can lead to carelessness or excessive enthusiasm. However, the book you are holding in your hands is not popular literature that gives readers advice on how to become happy. This would obviously be impossible, because a happy life is always the result of the creativity of a specific person; it cannot be recreated according to a recipe. Instead, I tried to formulate general principles and illustrate them with examples of how some people, using these principles, were able to transform a boring and meaningless life into a life full of joy.

These pages do not promise any shortcuts or shortcuts. But interested readers will find enough information to help them move from theory to practice.

To make the book as accessible and easy to understand as possible, I have tried to avoid notes, footnotes, and other devices that scientists typically use in their work. I have attempted to present the results of psychological research and the ideas based on the interpretation of these results in a form that any educated reader can appreciate and apply to their own lives, regardless of whether they have specialized knowledge of the subject.

For those interested in the scientific sources on which my conclusions are based, I have written quite extensive notes at the end of the book. They are not tied to any specific footnote, but are related to the page where a particular issue is discussed. For example, the very first page mentions happiness. The reader who is interested in whose work my conclusions are based on may refer to the notes beginning on page 359 and, by looking at the reference to page 1, will find a summary of Aristotle's views on happiness, as well as modern research on the topic, with relevant quotations. The notes can be read as a second, very condensed and technically detailed version of the original text.

At the beginning of any book, it is customary to express your gratitude to those who contributed to its creation. In this case, this is impossible, since the list of names would be almost the same size as the book itself. However, there are some people I am especially grateful for and want to take the opportunity to express my feelings. First of all, there is Isabella, who, as a wife and as a friend, has enriched my life for twenty-five years, and whose editorial advice has helped improve the form of this book. Mark and Christopher, our sons, from whom I probably learned as much as they learned from me. Jacob Getzels, my constant teacher. Among colleagues and friends, I would especially like to mention Donald Campbell, Howard Gardner, Jean Hamilton, Philip Hefner, Hiroaki Imamura, David Kipper, Doug Kleiber, George Klein, Fausto Massimini, Elizabeth Noel-Neumann, Jerome Singer, James Stigler and Brian Sutton. Smith - they all helped me, inspired and supported me in one way or another.

I would also like to name my former students and collaborators who have made particularly significant contributions to the research underlying the ideas developed in these pages. They are Ronald Graf, Robert Kuby, Reed Larson, Gene Nakamura, Kevin Rathunde, Rick Robertson, Ikuya Sato, Sam Whalen and Maria Wong. John Brockman and Richard Cote provided professional support for this project and helped me from start to finish. Finally, I must thank the Spencer Foundation, which has generously supported our research for ten years. I am especially grateful to former Foundation President H. James and current Foundation President L. Crimen, as well as Marion Faldet, Vice President. Of course, none of the above-mentioned people are responsible for any shortcomings that you may encounter in the book - that is solely my responsibility.

Chicago. March 1990

1. A New Look at Happiness

Introduction

Even 2300 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle came to the conclusion that more than anything else in the world, a person wants happiness. We strive only for happiness for its own sake, and any other goals - health, wealth, beauty or power - are important to us only to the extent that we expect them to make us happy. Much has changed since then. Our accumulated knowledge of stars and atoms has increased enormously. The ancient Greek gods would have looked like helpless children compared to modern humanity and the powers it has mastered. And yet, in matters of happiness, little has changed since then. We know no better than Aristotle what happiness is, and in terms of achieving it, progress is not noticeable at all.

Despite the fact that we are now healthier and live longer, despite the fact that even the least affluent in our society are surrounded today by such material benefits that our ancestors never dreamed of several decades ago (in the palace of Louis XIV there were only a few toilets, chairs were a rarity in the richest homes of the Middle Ages, and no Roman emperor could escape boredom by turning on the television), despite all our amazing scientific achievements, people often come to feel that their lives are wasted, and, instead of being filled with happiness, years passed in anxiety and boredom.

Is it because the true destiny of the sons of men is to remain eternally unsatisfied, for everyone desires more than he is able to receive? Or are even our brightest moments poisoned by the feeling that we are looking for happiness in the wrong place? This book, drawing on the tools of modern psychology, explores this ancient problem: what does a person need to feel happy? If we can get closer to the answer to this question, perhaps we will be able to design our lives in such a way that there will be more happiness in it.

Twenty-five years before I began working on this book, I made one small discovery, and all these years I have been trying to understand what I discovered. Strictly speaking, it would be wrong to call what came to my mind a discovery - people have known this since time immemorial. Nevertheless, this word is quite appropriate, since what I discovered had not been described and theoretically explained by the relevant field of science - in this case, psychology. I devoted the next quarter of a century to researching this elusive phenomenon.

I “discovered” that happiness is not something that happens to us. This is not the result of luck or fluke. It cannot be bought with money or achieved by force. It depends not on the events happening around us, but on our interpretation of them. Happiness is a state that everyone should prepare for, cultivate and keep within themselves. People who have learned to control their experiences will be able to influence the quality of their lives. This is the only way each of us can get closer to being happy.

Happiness cannot be achieved by consciously setting such a goal. “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and at that very moment happiness will elude you,” said J. Mill. We find happiness only by being completely immersed in the little things that make up our lives, good and bad, but without trying to look for it directly. The famous Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl, in the preface to his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” brilliantly expressed this idea: “Do not strive for success at any cost - the more fixated you are on it, the more difficult it is to achieve. Success, like happiness, cannot be achieved, they come by themselves<…>as a side effect of a person’s focus on something greater than himself.”

So how can we get closer to these goals that elude us, to which there is no direct road? My twenty-five years of research have convinced me that there is a way. This winding path begins with gaining control over the content of our consciousness.

Our perception of life is the result of various forces that give shape to our experiences, influencing whether we feel good or bad. Most of these forces are beyond our control. There is little we can do to change our appearance, temperament or physique. We cannot, at least for now, determine how tall or smart we will grow. We cannot choose our parents, our place of birth; It is not in our power to decide whether there will be a war or an economic crisis. The instructions in our genes, the force of gravity, the pollen in the air, the historical period in which we were born - these and countless other events determine what we see, feel and do. It's no wonder we believe that our destiny is completely determined by something outside of us.

But we have all experienced moments when we felt not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, mastery over our own destiny. In these rare moments we feel inspired, especially joyful. These feelings remain in our hearts for a long time and serve as a guide in our lives.

That's what we call optimal experience. When a sailor, keeping the right course, feels the wind whistling in his ears, the sailboat glides over the wave and the sails, sides, wind and waves merge into a harmony that vibrates in the sailor's veins. When the artist feels that the colors on the canvas, having come to life, are attracted to each other, and a new living form is suddenly born before the eyes of the amazed master. When a father sees his child smile back at him for the first time. This, however, does not only happen when external circumstances are favorable. Those who survived concentration camps or faced mortal danger say that often, despite the seriousness of the situation, they somehow perceived ordinary events as especially fully and vividly, for example, the singing of a bird in the forest, the completion of hard work, or the taste of a shared meal with a comrade. of bread.

Contrary to popular belief, such moments—indeed, the best moments of our lives—do not come to us in a state of relaxation or passive contemplation. Of course, relaxation can also be a pleasure, for example, after hard work. But the best moments usually happen when the body and mind are stretched to the limit in an effort to achieve something difficult and valuable. We ourselves we generate the optimal experience is when a child, with trembling fingers, places the last block on top of the tallest tower he has ever built, when a swimmer makes his last effort to break his record, when a violinist masters the most difficult musical passage. For each of us there are thousands of opportunities and tasks to reveal ourselves through.

The immediate sensations experienced at these moments do not have to be pleasant. During the decisive swim, an athlete's muscles may ache from tension, his lungs may burst from lack of air, he may faint from fatigue - and yet these will be the best moments of his life. Gaining control over your own life is not easy, and sometimes painful. However, ultimately, optimal experiences result in a feeling of mastery of one’s own life, or rather, even a feeling of involvement in determining the content of one’s life. This experience is closest to what we usually call “happiness.”

In the course of my research, I tried to find out as accurately as possible what people experience in moments of greatest joy, intoxication with life, and why this happens. My early research included several hundred “experts”—artists, athletes, musicians, chess players, surgeons—who apparently spent time doing things they enjoyed. Based on their stories of what it felt like to do what they loved, I developed a theory of optimal experience. This theory was based on the concept flow- a state of complete absorption in an activity, when everything else recedes into the background, and the pleasure from the process itself is so great that people will be willing to pay just to do it.

Guided by this theoretical model, members of my research group at the University of Chicago, and later my colleagues around the world, interviewed thousands of people in a wide range of occupations and professions. The results revealed that people describe optimal experiences in the same way, regardless of age, gender, or cultural background. The experience of flow was not the privilege of members of elite industrial societies. It was described, in fact, in the same words by elderly Korean women, and residents of Thailand and India, and teenagers from Tokyo, and shepherds of the Navajo Indian tribe, and farmers from the Italian Alps, and assembly line workers in Chicago.

Initially, our data was limited to interviews and questionnaires. To achieve greater accuracy in recording subjective experiences, we gradually developed a new method called the Experience Sampling Method. During a study using this method, the subject must carry a special pager with him everywhere for a week. Signals were sent to the pager via radio at random times of the day, approximately eight times a day. Having received the signal, the subject had to write down how he felt and what he was thinking about at that moment. At the end of the week, we received a “slice” of fragments of each subject’s life, compiled from randomly selected pieces. As a result, hundreds of thousands of similar “slices of experiences” have been accumulated in various parts of the world, on which the conclusions of this book are based.

The flow research I began at the University of Chicago has now spread throughout the world, with research into Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Australia. The most extensive data bank outside of Chicago today is collected in Italy, at the Psychological Institute of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Milan. The concept of flow is recognized as useful by psychologists who study happiness, life satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, by sociologists who see it as the opposite of anomie and alienation, and by anthropologists who study rituals and states of collective euphoria.

But flow is not just an object of academic research. Just a few years after its first publication, flow theory began to be actively used in a number of applied areas. Flow theory can point the way when the goal is to improve quality of life. She stimulated the development of experimental programs in secondary schools, business training, and the creation of goods for leisure and entertainment. Flow theory is also used to search for new ideas and practices in clinical psychotherapy, in the re-education of juvenile delinquents, in the organization of leisure in nursing homes, in the design of museum exhibitions, and in occupational therapy for the disabled. All this appeared within twelve years after the first articles on flow were published in scientific journals. Today there is reason to believe that the influence of this theory will continue to grow in the coming years.

Description from the publisher

Quote

The book “Flow” represents a very non-trivial approach to the problems of human emotional life and behavior regulation. The joy of flow is the highest reward that nature can bestow upon us for striving to solve more and more complex problems. Unlike the standard of living, the quality of experience can be increased by paying only one currency - an investment of attention and organized effort; no other currency is quoted in the realm of flow. Csikszentmihalyi reminds us: happiness is not something that just happens to us, it is both an art and a science, it is something that requires effort and a kind of qualification. “The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.”
Dmitry Leontiev, Doctor of Psychology.

What is this book about

While researching creative individuals, the author found in his research that they are happy because they experience a state of flow during the process of insight. But the flow is not the exclusive property of some special people. The author builds a detailed, harmonious and experimentally confirmed theory, at the center of which is the idea of flow. This is a state of complete fusion with your work, absorption by it, when you don’t feel time, yourself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy.

Why the book is worth reading

The state of flow is one of the most beautiful things in our lives. And the book will lead the reader to this state.
It turns out that happiness does not descend upon us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts, it is in our hands.
A rare example of high science serving an ordinary person.

Who is this book for?

For everyone who strives to truly live this life happily. For those who are interested in psychology as a discipline, who are, in principle, attracted by the phenomenon of happiness, and for all those who sorely lack this very happiness in their own lives. Indeed, in a state of flow, pleasure merges with effort and meaning, giving rise to an energizing, boundless state of joy.

about the author

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist, emeritus professor and director of the Center for Quality of Life Research at Claremont University (USA), a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Leisure Studies, the author of about 20 books, the most famous of which is “Flow” - translated in 30 languages. Lives and works in the USA.

Flow is a state of optimal human experience, complete merging with one’s work. Brings a feeling of inspiration and special joy.
Despite differences in cultural levels, all people describe the state of joy in approximately the same way.
People who have learned to control their experiences can influence the quality of their lives.

Three decades ago, a term was born in psychology and quickly gained popularity, which evokes associations with anything but academic science - “flow”. This is a state of optimal human experience - complete merging with one’s work, absorption in it, when you don’t feel time, yourself, when instead of fatigue there is a constant surge of energy...

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered it while studying the lives of creative individuals, but “flow” is not the exclusive property of some special people. “Flow” does not descend upon us as grace, but is generated by our meaningful efforts; it is in our hands. And the state of “flow” is one of the most beautiful things in our life.

Mastery over fate

We have all experienced moments when we feel not the blows of nameless forces, but control over our actions, mastery over our own destiny. In these rare moments we feel inspired, especially joyful. These feelings remain in our hearts for a long time and serve as a guide for our lives.

When a sailor, holding the right course, feels the wind whistling in his ears, the sailboat glides over the waves, the sails, sides, wind and waves merge into a harmony that vibrates in the veins of the sailor. When the artist feels that the colors on the canvas, having come to life, are attracted to each other and a new living form is suddenly born before the eyes of the amazed master. When a father sees his child return his smile for the first time.

This, however, does not only happen when external circumstances are favorable. Those who survived concentration camps or faced mortal danger say that often, despite the seriousness of the situation, they somehow felt especially fully and vividly about ordinary events, such as the sound of a bird singing in the forest, the completion of hard work, or the taste of sharing a loaf of bread with a comrade. .

Happiness

Happiness is not something that happens to us. This is not the result of luck or fluke. It cannot be bought with money or achieved by force. It depends not on the events happening around us, but on how we interpret them.

Happiness is a state for which everyone must prepare, cultivate and store it within themselves. People who have learned to control their experiences will be able to influence the quality of their lives. This is the only way each of us can get closer to being happy.

Optimal Experience

Contrary to popular belief, the best moments of our lives do not come to us in a state of relaxation or passive perception. Of course, relaxation can also be a pleasure, for example after hard work. But the best moments usually happen when the body and mind are stretched to the limit in the effort to achieve something difficult and valuable.

Both the optimal experience itself and the conditions for its occurrence are the same for all cultures and peoples

We ourselves create the optimal experience: when a child, with trembling fingers, places the last block on top of the tallest tower he has ever built, when a swimmer makes his last effort to break his record, when a violinist masters the most difficult musical passage.

For each of us there are thousands of opportunities and tasks through which we can reveal ourselves. The immediate sensations experienced at these moments do not have to be pleasant. During the decisive swim, an athlete's muscles may ache from tension, his lungs may burst from lack of air, he may faint from fatigue - and yet these will be the best moments of his life.

Favourite buisness

The first surprise was the high similarity of the sensations experienced by people when they were doing what they loved and doing it well. Thus, a swimmer crossing the English Channel experienced feelings very similar to those experienced by a chess player during a tense tournament, or to those experienced by a mountain climber negotiating a difficult section of rock on the way to the top.

A musician working on a complex musical passage, a black teenager from the poor neighborhoods of New York participating in the finals of a basketball championship, and many, many others, spoke about similar impressions.

Despite differences in cultural levels and degrees of economic well-being, people described the state of joy in the same way

The second surprise was that, despite the differences in cultural levels, degrees of economic well-being, social class, gender, and age of these people, they all described the state of joy in approximately the same way. Their activities were quite different: an elderly Korean man was meditating, a young Japanese man was riding a motorcycle with a gang of rockers, a resident of an Alpine village was caring for animals, but the descriptions of their experiences were almost identical.

Moreover, when explaining why this activity brings them joy, people pointed to similar reasons. We can say with confidence: both the optimal experience itself and the conditions for its occurrence are the same for all cultures and peoples.

Joy in everyday life

During the development of mankind, each culture developed certain protective mechanisms that made it easier for a person to exist. This includes religion, art, and philosophy. One of their tasks was to help a person cope with the destructive effects of universal chaos, to help believe that a person can control what happens to him, to help him feel satisfied with life and destiny.

However, such mechanisms provide only temporary protection. Over time, established religious beliefs wear out, losing their ability to provide the peace of mind we need.

The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions

Deprived of spiritual support, people often find a solution to the problem of life satisfaction in collecting all kinds of pleasures and entertainment, based on genetic programs or determined by society. Many people today go through life driven by a desire for wealth, power or sex.

However, quality of life cannot be improved in this way. The key to happiness lies in the ability to control yourself, your feelings and impressions, thus finding joy in the everyday life around us.

Give meaning

In order to turn your entire life into one bright and exciting “streaming” experience, it is not enough just to learn to control the content of your consciousness at each given moment. It is also necessary to have a global system of interconnected life goals that can give meaning to each specific activity that a person is engaged in.

If you simply switch from one type of flow activity to another without any connection between them and without any global perspective, then it is very likely that, when you look back at your life, you will not find any meaning in it. The goal of the “flow” theory is to teach a person to achieve harmony in all his endeavors.

Goals are in yourself

We call an “autotelic personality” a person who is able to turn real or potential threats into enjoyable tasks. This is a person who never gets bored, rarely worries, pays attention to what is happening around him, and having taken up any task, he is easily carried away by it, entering a state of flow.

The term “autotelic personality” itself means “a person whose goals are located within himself”; it reflects the self-sufficiency, autonomy of the individual, his ability to independently set goals. For most people, goals, as a rule, are set by biological instincts or formed by society, that is, the sources of goals are “outside”.

For an autotelic personality, most of the goals stem from a conscious assessment of one’s experiences and reflect its true needs. The autotelic personality is able to transform the chaos of the external environment into the experience of “flow”.

Living “in spite of”

Examples of how people find “flow” in life, despite the misfortunes that befall them, were collected and processed by Fausto Massimini, a professor at the University of Milan. One of the groups he studied included young people who had become paralyzed as a result of injuries or accidents. One of the most surprising results of his research was that even years after their accident, these people had ambivalent assessments of the tragic incident that changed their lives.

On the one hand, it was a tragedy. But on the other hand, it was she who opened up for them an unknown, much more perfect world - the world of “limited choice.” Those patients who were able to cope with new tasks and problems that arose as a result of their injury spoke of the emergence of clear and distinct goals in their lives that were not there before. At the same time, young people felt real pride from the fact that they had learned to live not “thanks to”, but “in spite of”.

Eight Components of Flow

When people describe their experiences of moments of joy, they mention at least one of the following components (and often all eight):

Feasibility of the activity, achievability of the goal, solvability of the task.
The ability to concentrate on what a person is doing.
Clear goals.
Clear and immediate feedback to correct movement towards the goal.
Complete absorption in the problem, liberation of consciousness from the worries and anxieties of everyday life.
A feeling of complete control over what is happening.
A person’s lack of thoughts about himself in the flow (however, after a person has been in the “flow,” his individuality becomes stronger, more vibrant).
The feeling of the passage of time in the process of “flow” can vary widely: seconds drag on like hours, hours fly by like seconds.

The combination of all these conditions causes that feeling of deep joy, for which people who experience it are ready to spend an incredible amount of effort and time again and again.

About the expert

The author of the term and theory of “flow”, one of the most authoritative and respected psychologists in the world. Professor at Claremont College, author of a dozen books, including the famous Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper and Row, 1990).