To all of our good fortune, the researchers have found that ‘flow’ is not the exclusive realm of artists. Since then Csikszentmihalyi, along with colleagues all over the world, has studied Himalayan climbers, Dominican monks, Navajo shepherds and thousands of others. Csikszentmihalyi called this trance-like altered state of total absorption and effortless concentration ‘flow’. Indeed, there was something special happening. Csikszentmihalyi heard athletes, poets, chess players describe the same phenomenon. He didn’t need to think, he lost track of time and the music would “just flow out”. Did something about their process bring them fulfilment? What made their sacrifice worthwhile? One composer told Csikszentmihalyi how, when his work was going well, he experienced a kind of ecstasy. There must be some reason why they toiled away at projects unlikely to yield fame or fortune. So, as he recounted in a TED talk enticingly subtitled The Secret to Happiness, he decided to explore “where in everyday life, in our normal experience, do we feel really happy?”.Ĭsikszentmihalyi thought that creatives – artists, painters, musicians – might have some insight.
He wondered how wealth fit into the happiness equation, but the data suggested money wasn’t the answer beyond a certain, basic threshold, increases in income hardly affected well-being. He became preoccupied by a question that doesn’t trouble most kids: what makes life worth living?Ĭsikszentmihalyi moved from Hungary to the US to study psychology and the question that had obsessed him since childhood. Growing up in World War Two-ravaged Europe, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi saw the adults around him struggling to rebuild their lives – and often losing the will to try.
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