Dr. Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high”), Psychologist at University of Claremont, California has dedicated the better part of his career to his study of what he calls the state of “flow”. This is a state where you are totally absorbed in what you are doing, at one with the music. When in this joyful state, one loses all awareness of time and time seems to fly by. Thoughts about yourself become narrowed to the specifics of the activity at hand, with less regard to how you look or worry about how you are perceived by others. Your mind quiets and becomes less cluttered with mundane thoughts and busy brain. The actual activity seem effortless, even if is work. There is instant reward in the moment in the form of joy and pleasure. Dr. C, as I affectionately refer to him, found that people report they experience more positive emotion in the short term when immersed in flow activities and score higher on life satisfaction and happiness tests over the longer term with repeated states of flow.
The research shows that flow happens when the level of challenge matches the level of skill. So if an activity is very challenging but one has the skills then flow is the natural outcome. On the other hand if the challenge is high and one doesn’t have the skills the result is more likely to be stress and anxiety. If the challenge is low and the skills are high then the result it boredom. You can increase your own happiness by allowing time for activities you love that have the right balance of challenge matched with your skills. This also plays out in the workplace in a similar way when we consider job satisfaction.
Add some mindful awareness to your flow activities to increase the potency. Make a conscious effort to take note of when you are in flow, and notice how you feel. We can, if we chose to, override the challenge/skill balance by overlaying mindfulness to make a mundane activity joyful. Next time you have to wash the dishes, try being with the experience. Savour the warmth of the water on your hands, the playfulness of the bubbles, the instant reward of a clean dish and the momentary release from having to do anything but just wash the dishes…go with the flow!
If you are interested in more about what Dr. C has to say, check out his national best seller “flow – the psychology of optimal experience”.
By Beth Montgomery