Ready to learn the key to fundamentally enhancing your quality of life? The ultimate positive psychology resource?
It’s my beauty secret.
Flow.
The fabulous state of flow is freaking AMAZING.
Haven’t had the pleasure yet?
Join in our exploration of A to Z alchemy with the concept of flow as a state of consciousness in which we are completely absorbed in an activity, particularly one that uses our creative capacity.
Remember a moment in your life when you were fully engaged in something you loved, when self-consciousness disappeared, you felt strong, alert, capable and you lost track of time.
In that moment, you were in a state of flow, deeply connected to your inner alchemist.
It is my passion to share alchemy for adventurers in life, so I’m letting you in on the surprising secret:
This optimal experience does NOT occur during relaxing, receptive, passive times. The happiness of flow is not something that happens to us, it is alchemy we can actively court & encourage to enter into our lives!
As Flowmaster Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
, “The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Here are 5 key points to develop your flow:
- Immerse yourself in a challenging activity you enjoy.
- Set goals that have clear and immediate feedback.
- Pay attention to what is happening in the moment.
- Learn to enjoy your immediate experience.
- Proportion your skills to the challenge at hand (it can’t be too easy OR too hard – must be right in the “sweet spot“).
Want to read more? Check out this article on Mihaly from The Pursuit of Happiness.
And if you have 18 minutes to hear it straight from the Flowmaster, this Ted Talk is for you:
[ted id=366]
So how ’bout it? Are you up for bringing more flow into your life? What are your favorite ways to bond with your inner alchemist and invite this experience? As an alchemist at heart, I’d love to hear what lights up your life!
Comments (1)
Good article! Well, flow is an awesome one and it is very useful to our daily lives. As what I’d read here in C Wilson Meloncelli website (https://www.cwilsonmeloncelli.com/) flow can make us more productive and creative. Aside from that, it will make us transcend to our limits.