# Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience ## Metadata - Author:: [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] - Full Title: Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience - Rating:: 10 - Category: #📚 - DateFinished:: 11/3/2022 - Citation: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). _Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) ## 🚀The Book in 3 Sentences - The people who live the best lives are those who find out how to reliably bring order to consciousness and enter the flow state. - By gamifying ones activities, one can enter flow with the body, mind, relationships, and work. - One can only have universal flow by bringing order to consciousness and integrating one's actions toward a unified purpose and in turn creating [[Meaning MOC]]. ### 🎨 Impressions - This is one of the best books I have ever read. It's not just a book on psychology. It's a book that gives insight into the fundamental ways that the world works. It explains human history through the lens of trying to bring order to consciousness. - However, it's worth mentioning that the book does make broad generalizations often. It bites off more than it can reasonably chew but the author makes it clear that there will be holes and inconsistencies in the argument. ### 📖Who Should Read It? - Anyone interested in improving the quality of their experiences - Anyone interested in psychology - Anyone interested in learning how to focus on what matters ### ☘️ How the Book Changed Me - Both times I have read this book, it has made me more intentional with what I do in my day. I try focus on being more present and attending to what matters for the present activity. - This book has made me realize how destructive an inability to attend to the information that matters in the moment is which is ironically exactly what the multitasking behaviors that so many students are prone to do. It makes me more fearful of the destructive behaviors students habits of inability to attend are having on them. ### ✍️ My Top 3 Quotes - “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.” - “The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,” in the words of J. H. Holmes. “It is simply indifferent.” - “We are always getting to live,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, “but never living.” # Main Points What is Happiness? - [[Happiness can be prepared for, cultivated, and defended]] - [[Optimal experiences]] Consciousness - [[The flow state causes a loss of self-consciousness but not consciousness of the self]] - [[Generally a loss of consciousness of the self means you're in a situation that justifies itself]] - [[What is consciousness]] - [[How do we order consciousness]] - [[A realized person is someone who is in control of their consciousness]] Flow - [[Flow is order in chaos]] - [[How to create a universal state of flow through cultivating meaning in ones experiences]] - [[Flow can become an addiction]] - [[Areas we can experience flow in]] - [[Flow State MOC]] - [[Blockers to the flow state]] - [[Attachment plays a large role in your propensity for entering flow]] - [[Work is generally easier to enjoy than leisure time and yet most people would rather have leisure time]] Culture and Flow - [[The realized person learns to distance themselves from biological and social controls]] - [[The main role of a culture is to provide a framework for bringing order to experience]] - [[One way societies fall is when they become complacent from too long a period of prosperity]] - [[Why does understanding of how to have optimal experiences not transmit through history]] - [[Flow is universal across cultures]] - [[The agricultural revolution is the worst thing that ever happened to humanity]] Differences between pleasure and enjoyment [[Pleasure vs. enjoyment]]. Chapter 1 Highlight(yellow) - Page 1 · Location 153 1 HAPPINESS REVISITED Highlight(orange) - Introduction > Page 2 · Location 176 Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. Note - Introduction > Page 2 · Location 177 I like the word defended in this definition. Create a note in how happiness must be prepared for. You can prepare for times you know will be hard, like a severe prelim week, by scheduling in more times to talk to those who can help you through tough feelings. This idea can be applied to every sort of thing which might try to hurt your happiness. Highlight(orange) - Introduction > Page 2 · Location 177 People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy. Highlight(orange) - Introduction > Page 2 · Location 178 “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.” It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. Note - Introduction > Page 2 · Location 180 Create a note on how happiness is largely an unconscious state. Highlight(orange) - Introduction > Page 3 · Location 203 The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. Highlight(orange) - Introduction > Page 4 · Location 220 The flow experience was not just a peculiarity of affluent, industrialized elites. It was reported in essentially the same words by old women from Korea, by adults in Thailand and India, by teenagers in Tokyo, by Navajo shepherds, by farmers in the Italian Alps, and by workers on the assembly line in Chicago. Note - Introduction > Page 4 · Location 222 Flow is not some cultural phenomenon. Like the six basic emotions it seems to be a universal emotion. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 8 · Location 303 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 8 · Location 303 The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. Highlight(yellow) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 316 A meteorite on a collision course with New York City might be obeying all the laws of the universe, but it would still be a damn nuisance. The virus that attacks the cells of a Mozart is only doing what comes naturally, even though it inflicts a grave loss on humankind. “The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,” in the words of J. H. Holmes. “It is simply indifferent.” Highlight(orange) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 319 Chaos is one of the oldest concepts in myth and religion. It is rather foreign to the physical and biological sciences, because in terms of their laws the events in the cosmos are perfectly reasonable. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 320 .c1 Highlight(orange) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 321 But chaos has a different meaning in psychology and the other human sciences, because if human goals and desires are taken as the starting point, there is irreconcilable disorder in the cosmos. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 323 .c2 History is a story of people and groups finding different ways to deal with chaos. Highlight(yellow) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 327 How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 9 · Location 329 This is why achieving mastery over the self is the way to achieve happiness Highlight(orange) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 10 · Location 345 The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 10 · Location 346 Happiness then becomes a balance of appreciating, feeling grateful, and reflecting on how far you have come while still pursuing future goals. Highlight(yellow) - The Roots of Discontent > Page 10 · Location 346 Though the evidence suggests that most people are caught up on this frustrating treadmill of rising expectations, many individuals have found ways to escape it. These are people who, regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy. Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives. Note - The Roots of Discontent > Page 10 · Location 352 If you don’t understand yourself and your whims, you are not living life but letting life live you. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 10 · Location 355 THE SHIELDS OF CULTURE Note - The Shields of Culture > Page 10 · Location 356 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 10 · Location 356 Over the course of human evolution, as each group of people became gradually aware of the enormity of its isolation in the cosmos and of the precariousness of its hold on survival, it developed myths and beliefs to transform the random, crushing forces of the universe into manageable, or at least understandable, patterns. One of the major functions of every culture has been to shield its members from chaos, to reassure them of their importance and ultimate success. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 359 The Eskimo, the hunter of the Amazon basin, the Chinese, the Navajo, the Australian Aborigine, the New Yorker—all have taken for granted that they live at the center of the universe, and that they have a special dispensation that puts them on the fast track to the future. Highlight(orange) - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 363 An unrealistic trust in the shields, in the cultural myths, can lead to equally extreme disillusion when they fail. This tends to happen whenever a culture has had a run of good luck and for a while seems indeed to have found a way of controlling the forces of nature. Note - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 364 Create note describing too much prosperity in a society leads to collapse. Highlight(orange) - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 366 The Romans reached that juncture after several centuries of ruling the Mediterranean, the Chinese were confident of their immutable superiority before the Mongol conquest, and the Aztecs before the arrival of the Spaniards. Highlight(orange) - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 369 When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of the first signs of adversity. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 11 · Location 376 This general malaise is not due directly to external causes. Unlike so many other nations in the contemporary world, we can’t blame our problems on a harsh environment, on widespread poverty, or on the oppression of a foreign occupying army. The roots of the discontent are internal, and each person must untangle them personally, with his or her own power. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 12 · Location 386 As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: “Is this all there is?” Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all there is the expectation that after one grows up, things will get better. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 12 · Location 395 From the earliest years we have been conditioned to believe that a benign fate would provide for us. After all, everybody seemed to agree that we had the great fortune of living in the richest country that ever was, in the most scientifically advanced period of human history, surrounded by the most efficient technology, protected by the wisest Constitution. Therefore, it made sense to expect that we would have a richer, more meaningful life than any earlier members of the human race. Note - The Shields of Culture > Page 13 · Location 398 .c1 Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 13 · Location 400 Yet despite all these assurances, sooner or later we wake up alone, sensing that there is no way this affluent, scientific, and sophisticated world is going to provide us with happiness. Note - The Shields of Culture > Page 13 · Location 402 .c2 Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 13 · Location 402 As this realization slowly sets in, different people react to it differently. Some try to ignore it, and renew their efforts to acquire more of the things that were supposed to make life good—bigger cars and homes, more power on the job, a more glamorous life-style. Highlight(yellow) - The Shields of Culture > Page 13 · Location 407 Others decide to attack directly the threatening symptoms. If it is a body going to seed that rings the first alarm, they will go on diets, join health clubs, do aerobics, buy a Nautilus, or undergo plastic surgery. If the problem seems to be that nobody pays much attention, they buy books about how to get power or how to make friends, or they enroll in assertiveness training courses and have power lunches. After a while, however, it becomes obvious that these piecemeal solutions won’t work either. No matter how much energy we devote to its care, the body will eventually give out. If we are learning to be more assertive, we might inadvertently alienate our friends. And if we devote too much time to cultivating new friends, we might threaten relationships with our spouse and family. Highlight(orange) - The Shields of Culture > Page 16 · Location 461 while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience. Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 463 RECLAIMING EXPERIENCE Note - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 464 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 464 There is no way out of this predicament except for an individual to take things in hand personally. If values and institutions no longer provide as supportive a framework as they once did, each person must use whatever tools are available to carve out a meaningful, enjoyable life. Highlight(orange) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 469 To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. Highlight(orange) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 471 She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances. Note - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 472 Other words we need to start becoming a product of our environment or our childhood Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 475 We grow up believing that what counts most in our lives is that which will occur in the future. Parents teach children that if they learn good habits now, they will be better off as adults. Teachers assure pupils that the boring classes will benefit them later, when the students are going to be looking for jobs. Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 16 · Location 479 “We are always getting to live,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, “but never living.” Or as poor Frances learned in the children’s story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never bread and jam today. Highlight(orange) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 18 · Location 506 The problem is that it has recently become fashionable to regard whatever we feel inside as the true voice of nature speaking. The only authority many people trust today is instinct. If something feels good, if it is natural and spontaneous, then it must be right. But when we follow the suggestions of genetic and social instructions without question we relinquish the control of consciousness and become helpless playthings of impersonal forces. Note - Reclaiming Experience > Page 18 · Location 509 For example, failing to be conscious of the fact that physical attraction to someone doesn’t necessarily align with your conscious plans but rather aligns with your bodies innate tendencies evolved to promote gene replication from your genetic code. Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 18 · Location 510 The “liberated” view of human nature, which accepts and endorses every instinct or drive we happen to have simply because it’s there, results in consequences that are quite reactionary. Much of contemporary “realism” turns out to be just a variation on good old-fashioned fatalism: people feel relieved of responsibility by recourse to the concept of “nature.” Note - Reclaiming Experience > Page 18 · Location 512 The opposite view of working for your future self is behaving towards your every whim but this brings its own problems as society isn’t built to have everyone doing what they want in the moment. Highlight(orange) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 18 · Location 519 A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for—rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires. Highlight(orange) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 19 · Location 529 There is no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications. But a person does not have to be turned into a puppet jerked about by social controls. Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 19 · Location 533 The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders. Highlight(yellow) - Reclaiming Experience > Page 20 · Location 544 “Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them,” said Epictetus a long time ago. And the great emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.” Highlight(yellow) - Paths of Liberation > Page 20 · Location 547 PATHS OF LIBERATION Note - Paths of Liberation > Page 20 · Location 547 .h3 Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 20 · Location 549 The oracle’s advice in ancient Delphi, “Know thyself,” implied it. It was clearly recognized by Aristotle, whose notion of the “virtuous activity of the soul” in many ways prefigures the argument of this book, and it was developed by the Stoic philosophers in classical antiquity. Note - Paths of Liberation > Page 20 · Location 551 This knowledge that judgement of experience is the main contributor to happiness has been known for a long time in history. Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 21 · Location 565 why haven’t we made more progress in this direction? Why are we as helpless, or more so, than our ancestors were in facing the chaos that interferes with happiness? There are at least two good explanations for this failure. In the first place, the kind of knowledge—or wisdom—one needs for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative. Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 21 · Location 568 it must be earned through trial-and-error experience by each individual, generation after generation. Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 21 · Location 573 Second, the knowledge of how to control consciousness must be reformulated every time the cultural context changes. Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 21 · Location 580 Routinization, unfortunately, tends to take place very rapidly. Freud was still alive when his quest for liberating the ego from its oppressors was turned into a staid ideology and a rigidly regulated profession. Highlight(yellow) - Paths of Liberation > Page 21 · Location 583 as Dostoevsky among many others observed, if Christ had returned to preach his message of liberation in the Middle Ages, he would have been crucified again and again by the leaders of that very church whose worldly power was built on his name. Highlight(orange) - Paths of Liberation > Page 22 · Location 585 In each new epoch—perhaps every generation, or even every few years, if the conditions in which we live change that rapidly—it becomes necessary to rethink and reformulate what it takes to establish autonomy in consciousness. Note - Paths of Liberation > Page 22 · Location 587 This can become a note. We are facing this idea right now especially with the coming of the internet. While I don’t think we actually need new strategies to find optimal experience if people were willing to do them (meditation is meditation), the strategies need to be formulated and portrayed differently to newcomers to convince them to try them out because of different cultural contexts Highlight(yellow) - Paths of Liberation > Page 22 · Location 593 The insights of the Gospels, of Martin Luther, of the framers of the Constitution, of Marx and Freud—just to mention a very few of those attempts that have been made in the West to increase happiness by enhancing freedom—will always be valid and useful, even though some of them have been perverted in their application. But they certainly do not exhaust either the problems or the solutions. Chapter 2 Highlight(yellow) - Page 23 · Location 604 2 THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS Note - Page 23 · Location 604 .h2 Highlight(yellow) - Page 23 · Location 605 AT CERTAIN TIMES in history cultures have taken it for granted that a person wasn’t fully human unless he or she learned to master thoughts and feelings. In Confucian China, in ancient Sparta, in Republican Rome, in the early Pilgrim settlements of New England, and among the British upper classes of the Victorian era, people were held responsible for keeping a tight rein on their emotions. Anyone who indulged in self-pity, who let instinct rather than reflection dictate actions, forfeited the right to be accepted as a member of the community. In other historical periods, such as the one in which we are now living, the ability to control oneself is not held in high esteem. Highlight(yellow) - Page 24 · Location 625 Over the endless dark centuries of its evolution, the human nervous system has become so complex that it is now able to affect its own states, making it to a certain extent functionally independent of its genetic blueprint and of the objective environment. A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness. Highlight(yellow) - Page 24 · Location 627 We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the force of their personalities. This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well. Highlight(yellow) - Page 25 · Location 654 Although it sounds like indecipherable academic jargon, the most concise description of the approach I believe to be the clearest way to examine the main facets of what happens in the mind, in a way that can be useful in the actual practice of everyday life, is “a phenomenological model of consciousness based on information theory.” This representation of consciousness is phenomenological in that it deals directly with events—phenomena—as we experience and interpret them, rather than focusing on the anatomical structures, neurochemical processes, or unconscious purposes that make these events possible. Highlight(orange) - Page 26 · Location 664 what, then, does it mean to be conscious? It simply means that certain specific conscious events (sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions) are occurring, and that we are able to direct their course. Highlight(yellow) - Page 27 · Location 682 We may call intentions the force that keeps information in consciousness ordered. Note - Page 27 · Location 683 .c1 Highlight(yellow) - Page 27 · Location 685 We often call the manifestation of intentionality by other names, such as instinct, need, drive, or desire. But these are all explanatory terms, telling us why people behave in certain ways. Intention is a more neutral and descriptive term; it doesn’t say why a person wants to do a certain thing, but simply states that he does. Note - Page 27 · Location 688 .c2 Highlight(orange) - Page 28 · Location 698 The intentions we either inherit or acquire are organized in hierarchies of goals, which specify the order of precedence among them. Note - Page 28 · Location 699 .c1 Highlight(yellow) - Page 28 · Location 705 consciousness can be ordered in terms of different goals and intentions. Each of us has this freedom to control our subjective reality. Note - Page 28 · Location 706 .c2 Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 707 THE LIMITS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Note - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 707 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 708 If it were possible to expand indefinitely what consciousness is able to encompass, one of the most fundamental dreams of humankind would come true. It would be almost as good as being immortal or omnipotent—in short, godlike. We could think everything, feel everything, do everything, scan through so much information that we could fill up every fraction of a second with a rich tapestry of experiences. In the space of a lifetime we could go through a million, or—why not?—through an infinite number of lives. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 711 Unfortunately, the nervous system has definite limits on how much information it can process at any given time. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 715 Thoughts have to follow each other, or they get jumbled. While we are thinking about a problem we cannot truly experience either happiness or sadness. We cannot run, sing, and balance the checkbook simultaneously, because each one of these activities exhausts most of our capacity for attention. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 28 · Location 717 At this point in our scientific knowledge we are on the verge of being able to estimate how much information the central nervous system is capable of processing. It seems we can manage at most seven bits of information—such as differentiated sounds, or visual stimuli, or recognizable nuances of emotion or thought—at any one time, and that the shortest time it takes to discriminate between one set of bits and another is about 1/ 18 of a second. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 29 · Location 721 By using these figures one concludes that it is possible to process at most 126 bits of information per second, or 7,560 per minute, or almost half a million per hour. Over a lifetime of seventy years, and counting sixteen hours of waking time each day, this amounts to about 185 billion bits of information. It is out of this total that everything in our life must come—every thought, memory, feeling, or action. It seems like a huge amount, but in reality it does not go that far. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 29 · Location 729 Of course, these figures are only suggestive at this point in our knowledge of the way the mind works. It could be argued justifiably that they either underestimate or overestimate the capacity of the mind to process information. The optimists claim that through the course of evolution the nervous system has become adept at “chunking” bits of information so that processing capacity is constantly expanded. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 29 · Location 736 But the ability to compress stimuli does not help as much as one might expect. The requirements of life still dictate that we spend about 8 percent of waking time eating, and almost the same amount taking care of personal bodily needs such as washing, dressing, shaving, and going to the bathroom. These two activities alone take up 15 percent of consciousness, and while engaged in them we can’t do much else that requires serious concentration. But even when there is nothing else pressing occupying their minds, most people fall far below the peak capacity for processing information. In the roughly one-third of the day that is free of obligations, in their precious “leisure” time, most people in fact seem to use their minds as little as possible. Highlight(yellow) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 30 · Location 746 So the 185 billion events to be enjoyed over our mortal days might be either an overestimate or an underestimate. If we consider the amount of data the brain could theoretically process, the number might be too low; but if we look at how people actually use their minds, it is definitely much too high. Highlight(orange) - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 30 · Location 749 the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and the quality of life. Note - The Limits of Consciousness > Page 30 · Location 750 This reminds me of the idea that information is like food Highlight(yellow) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 30 · Location 751 ATTENTION AS PSYCHIC ENERGY Note - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 30 · Location 751 .h3 Highlight(orange) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 30 · Location 752 Information enters consciousness either because we intend to focus attention on it or as a result of attentional habits based on biological or social instructions. Note - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 30 · Location 753 This reminds me on my notes of western people are more self focused and less context aware. I might want to create a new note that says culture effects the brains informational prioritization. Highlight(yellow) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 31 · Location 761 While forming such a judgment seems to be a lightning-fast reaction, it does take place in real time. And it does not happen automatically: there is a distinct process that makes such reactions possible, a process called attention. It is attention that selects the relevant bits of information from the potential millions of bits available. Highlight(orange) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 31 · Location 770 The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. Highlight(blue) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 31 · Location 773 The first is E., a European woman who is one of the best-known and powerful women in her country. A scholar of international reputation, she has at the same time built up a thriving business that employs hundreds of people and has been on the cutting edge of its field for a generation. E. travels constantly to political, business, and professional meetings, moving among her several residences around the world. If there is a concert in the town where she is staying, E. will probably be in the audience; at the first free moment she will be at the museum or library. And while she is in a meeting, her chauffeur, instead of just standing around and waiting, will be expected to visit the local art gallery or museum; for on the way home, his employer will want to discuss what he thought of its paintings. Not one minute of E.’ s life is wasted. Usually she is writing, solving problems, reading one of the five newspapers or the earmarked sections of books on her daily schedule—or just asking questions, watching curiously what is going on, and planning her next task. Very little of her time is spent on the routine functions of life. Chatting or socializing out of mere politeness is done graciously, but avoided whenever possible. Each day, however, she devotes some time to recharging her mind, by such simple means as standing still for fifteen minutes on the lakeshore, facing the sun with eyes closed. Or she may take her hounds for a walk in the meadows on the hill outside town. E. is so much in control of her attentional processes that she can disconnect her consciousness at will and fall asleep for a refreshing nap whenever she has a moment free. Note - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 32 · Location 785 An example of one person using attention in the most optimal way possible Highlight(orange) - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 33 · Location 803 The names we use to describe personality traits—such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid—refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attention. Note - Attention as Psychic Energy > Page 33 · Location 804 Future Aidan create a note out of OCEAN and how each personality trait relates to the way one structures their attention. Highlight(yellow) - Enter the Self > Page 33 · Location 818 ENTER THE SELF Note - Enter the Self > Page 33 · Location 818 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Enter the Self > Page 34 · Location 823 we realize that the I, or the self as we shall refer to it from now on, is also one of the contents of consciousness. It is one that never strays very far from the focus of attention. Highlight(yellow) - Enter the Self > Page 34 · Location 826 The self is no ordinary piece of information, however. In fact, it contains everything else that has passed through consciousness: all the memories, actions, desires, pleasures, and pains are included in it. And more than anything else, the self represents the hierarchy of goals that we have built up, bit by bit, over the years. The self of the political activist may become indistinguishable from his ideology, the self of the banker may become wrapped up in his investments. Highlight(orange) - Enter the Self > Page 34 · Location 838 consciousness is not a strictly linear system, but one in which circular causality obtains. Attention shapes the self, and is in turn shaped by it. Note - Enter the Self > Page 34 · Location 839 In one way the self directs attention whereas in another attention determines the self. In this way consciousness is a circular system in which attention and self can both shape each other. Highlight(blue) - Enter the Self > Page 34 · Location 839 An example of this type of causality is the experience of Sam Browning, one of the adolescents we have followed in our longitudinal research studies. Sam went to Bermuda for a Christmas holiday with his father when he was fifteen. At the time, he had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life; his self was relatively unformed, without an identity of its own. Sam had no clearly differentiated goals; he wanted exactly what other boys his age are supposed to want, either because of their genetic programs or because of what the social environment told them to want—in other words, he thought vaguely of going to college, then later finding some kind of well-paying job, getting married, and living somewhere in the suburbs. In Bermuda, Sam’s father took him on an excursion to a coral barrier, and they dove underwater to explore the reef. Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. He found the mysterious, beautifully dangerous environment so enchanting that he decided to become more familiar with it. He ended up taking a number of biology courses in high school, and is now in the process of becoming a marine scientist. In Sam’s case an accidental event imposed itself on his consciousness: the challenging beauty of life in the ocean. He had not planned to have this experience; it was not the result of his self or his goals having directed attention to it. But once he became aware of what went on undersea, Sam liked it—the experience resonated with previous things he had enjoyed doing, with feelings he had about nature and beauty, with priorities about what was important that he had established over the years. Highlight(yellow) - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 36 · Location 867 DISORDER IN CONSCIOUSNESS: PSYCHIC ENTROPY Note - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 36 · Location 867 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 36 · Location 868 One of the main forces that affects consciousness adversely is psychic disorder—that is, information that conflicts with existing intentions, or distracts us from carrying them out. We give this condition many names, depending on how we experience it: pain, fear, rage, anxiety, or jealousy. Note - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 36 · Location 870 Talk about being worries about turning in assignments for my Chemistry class in first semester Cornell only because I was taking it. After I dropped it, I of course stopped doing assignments for the class. It’s information that enters our consciousness and is skewed by the self that determines how we feel about it. I worried about doing assignments for chem only because I was in the class Highlight(orange) - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 37 · Location 893 Whenever information disrupts consciousness by threatening its goals we have a condition of inner disorder, or psychic entropy, a disorganization of the self that impairs its effectiveness. Prolonged experiences of this kind can weaken the self to the point that it is no longer able to invest attention and pursue its goals. Note - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 37 · Location 896 It is the self that determines whether an objective piece of information is psychic disorder or not. Highlight(yellow) - Disorder in Consciousness: Psychic Entropy > Page 38 · Location 916 The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it. It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests, and determines whether it is harmful or not. For instance, if Julio had had more money or some credit, his problem would have been perfectly innocuous. If in the past he had invested more psychic energy in making friends on the job, the flat tire would not have created panic, because he could have always asked one of his co-workers to give him a ride for a few days. Highlight(yellow) - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 39 · Location 930 ORDER IN CONSCIOUSNESS: FLOW Note - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 39 · Location 930 .h3 Highlight(orange) - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 39 · Location 931 The opposite state from the condition of psychic entropy is optimal experience. When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly. There is no need to worry, no reason to question one’s adequacy. Note - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 39 · Location 933 This is the feeling I get when I send an email on my learning juststick for create a YouTube video or read a book for an hour and a half. Highlight(blue) - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 39 · Location 935 Another one of our respondents, a worker named Rico Medellin, gets this feeling quite often on his job. He works in the same factory as Julio, a little further up on the assembly line. The task he has to perform on each unit that passes in front of his station should take forty-three seconds to perform—the same exact operation almost six hundred times in a working day. Most people would grow tired of such work very soon. But Rico has been at this job for over five years, and he still enjoys it. The reason is that he approaches his task in the same way an Olympic athlete approaches his event: How can I beat my record? Like the runner who trains for years to shave a few seconds off his best performance on the track, Rico has trained himself to better his time on the assembly line. With the painstaking care of a surgeon, he has worked out a private routine for how to use his tools, how to do his moves. After five years, his best average for a day has been twenty-eight seconds per unit. In part he tries to improve his performance to earn a bonus and the respect of his supervisors. But most often he does not even let on to others that he is ahead and lets his success pass unnoticed. It is enough to know that he can do it, because when he is working at top performance the experience is so enthralling that it is almost painful for him to slow down. “It’s better than anything else,” Rico says. “It’s a whole lot better than watching TV.” Rico knows that very soon he will reach the limit beyond which he will no longer be able to improve his performance at his job. So twice a week he takes evening courses in electronics. When he has his diploma he will seek a more complex job, one that presumably he will confront with the same enthusiasm he has shown so far. Note - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 40 · Location 947 Adding in feedback systems that can allow you to think about a problem makes it easier to achieve optimal experience because it’s hard to feel strongly about it then if you’re thinking about a problem. Highlight(yellow) - Order in Consciousness: Flow > Page 40 · Location 952 These examples illustrate what we mean by optimal experience. They are situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against. We have called this state the flow experience, because this is the term many of the people we interviewed had used in their descriptions of how it felt to be in top form: “It was like floating,” “I was carried on by the flow.” It is the opposite of psychic entropy—in fact, it is sometimes called negentropy—and those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue. Highlight(yellow) - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 969 COMPLEXITY AND THE GROWTH OF THE SELF Note - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 969 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 970 Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies. Highlight(yellow) - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 975 The self becomes more differentiated as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled. Note - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 976 .c1 Note - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 978 .c2 Highlight(orange) - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 982 Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Note - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 41 · Location 983 In other words [[Flow is order in chaos]] Highlight(yellow) - Complexity and the Growth of the Self > Page 42 · Location 992 The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. Chapter 3 Highlight(yellow) - Page 43 · Location 1003 3 ENJOYMENT AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE Note - Page 43 · Location 1004 .h3 Highlight(orange) - Page 43 · Location 1005 THERE ARE TWO MAIN STRATEGIES we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. Highlight(yellow) - Page 43 · Location 1007 For instance, feeling secure is an important component of happiness. The sense of security can be improved by buying a gun, installing strong locks on the front door, moving to a safer neighborhood, exerting political pressure on city hall for more police protection, or helping the community to become more conscious of the importance of civil order. All these different responses are aimed at bringing conditions in the environment more in line with our goals. The other method by which we can feel more secure involves modifying what we mean by security. If one does not expect perfect safety, recognizes that risks are inevitable, and succeeds in enjoying a less than ideally predictable world, the threat of insecurity will not have as great a chance of marring happiness. Highlight(yellow) - Page 43 · Location 1012 Neither of these strategies is effective when used alone. Changing external conditions might seem to work at first, but if a person is not in control of his consciousness, the old fears or desires will soon return, reviving previous anxieties. Highlight(blue) - Page 43 · Location 1015 The myth of King Midas well illustrates the point that controlling external conditions does not necessarily improve existence. Like most people, King Midas supposed that if he were to become immensely rich, his happiness would be assured. So he made a pact with the gods, who after much haggling granted his wish that everything he touched would turn into gold. King Midas thought he had made an absolutely first-rate deal. Nothing was to prevent him now from becoming the richest, and therefore the happiest, man in the world. But we know how the story ends: Midas soon came to regret his bargain because the food in his mouth and the wine on his palate turned to gold before he could swallow them, and so he died surrounded by golden plates and golden cups. Highlight(yellow) - Page 45 · Location 1045 Given these observations, instead of worrying about how to make a million dollars or how to win friends and influence people, it seems more beneficial to find out how everyday life can be made more harmonious and more satisfying, and thus achieve by a direct route what cannot be reached through the pursuit of symbolic goals. Highlight(yellow) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 45 · Location 1048 PLEASURE AND ENJOYMENT Note - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 45 · Location 1048 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 45 · Location 1049 When considering the kind of experience that makes life better, most people first think that happiness consists in experiencing pleasure: good food, good sex, all the comforts that money can buy. We imagine the satisfaction of traveling to exotic places or being surrounded by interesting company and expensive gadgets. If we cannot afford those goals that slick commercials and colorful ads keep reminding us to pursue, then we are happy to settle for a quiet evening in front of the television set with a glass of liquor close by. Highlight(orange) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 45 · Location 1053 Pleasure is a feeling of contentment that one achieves whenever information in consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have been met. Highlight(orange) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1058 Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Note - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1059 Create a note on pleasure vs. enjoyment Highlight(orange) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1062 When people ponder further about what makes their lives rewarding, they tend to move beyond pleasant memories and begin to remember other events, other experiences that overlap with pleasurable ones but fall into a category that deserves a separate name: enjoyment. Enjoyable events occur when a person has not only met some prior expectation or satisfied a need or a desire but also gone beyond what he or she has been programmed to do and achieved something unexpected, perhaps something even unimagined before. Note - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1065 Enjoyment happens when a pleasant experience is combined with movement beyond what was required leading to growth of body or kind. Highlight(yellow) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1066 Playing a close game of tennis that stretches one’s ability is enjoyable, as is reading a book that reveals things in a new light, as is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas we didn’t know we had. Closing a contested business deal, or any piece of work well done, is enjoyable. None of these experiences may be particularly pleasurable at the time they are taking place, but afterward we think back on them and say, “That really was fun” and wish they would happen again. Highlight(orange) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1073 we can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention. Highlight(yellow) - Pleasure and Enjoyment > Page 46 · Location 1077 It is for this reason that pleasure is so evanescent, and that the self does not grow as a consequence of pleasurable experiences. Complexity requires investing psychic energy in goals that are new, that are relatively challenging. It is easy to see this process in children: During the first few years of life every child is a little “learning machine” trying out new movements, new words daily. The rapt concentration on the child’s face as she learns each new skill is a good indication of what enjoyment is about. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 48 · Location 1110 THE ELEMENTS OF ENJOYMENT Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 48 · Location 1110 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 48 · Location 1111 The first surprise we encountered in our study was how similarly very different activities were described when they were going especially well. Apparently the way a long-distance swimmer felt when crossing the English Channel was almost identical to the way a chess player felt during a tournament or a climber progressing up a difficult rock face. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 48 · Location 1116 What they did to experience enjoyment varied enormously—the elderly Koreans liked to meditate, the teenage Japanese liked to swarm around in motorcycle gangs—but they described how it felt when they enjoyed themselves in almost identical terms. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1120 As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1122 First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1123 Connect with note on games have more clear rules. We know there is an end which isn’t guaranteed in real life. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1123 Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1123 Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1124 Connect games have more immediate feedback. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1124 Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1125 Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1125 Connect games have more voluntary participation. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1125 Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1126 Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 49 · Location 1137 It is important to clarify at the outset that an “activity” need not be active in the physical sense, and the “skill” necessary to engage in it need not be a physical skill. For instance, one of the most frequently mentioned enjoyable activities the world over is reading. Reading is an activity because it requires the concentration of attention and has a goal, and to do it one must know the rules of written language. The skills involved in reading include not only literacy but also the ability to translate words into images, to empathize with fictional characters, to recognize historical and cultural contexts, to anticipate turns of the plot, to criticize and evaluate the author’s style, and so on. In this broader sense, any capacity to manipulate symbolic information is a “skill,” such as the skill of the mathematician to shape quantitative relationships in his head, or the skill of the musician in combining musical notes. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 50 · Location 1144 To be an activity it need not require physical movement. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 50 · Location 1148 Any activity contains a bundle of opportunities for action, or “challenges,” that require appropriate skills to realize. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 50 · Location 1149 Connect to note on how games have more clear rules giving us clarity about which skill we should be practicing. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 51 · Location 1167 one purpose of this book is to explore ways in which even routine details can be transformed into personally meaningful games that provide optimal experiences. Mowing the lawn or waiting in a dentist’s office can become enjoyable provided one restructures the activity by providing goals, rules, and the other elements of enjoyment to be reviewed below. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 51 · Location 1169 In other words, gamifying life’s mundane experiences can make more of our lives producers of optimal experiences. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 52 · Location 1190 Everybody develops routines to fill in the boring gaps of the day, Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 52 · Location 1192 These are the “microflow” activities that help us negotiate the doldrums of the day. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 52 · Location 1193 I like to read a quick article or just think about a conversation, book, or my content. Productive downtime. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 52 · Location 1199 Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 52 · Location 1200 Goldilocks zone. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 53 · Location 1209 When all a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity. There is no excess psychic energy left over to process any information but what the activity offers. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 53 · Location 1211 In other words, entering flow requires such a focusing of attention that no attention can be brought to questioning the validity of the activity. You should assess beforehand whether something is valuable to do so you can prime yourself for entering flow. This reminds me of note from Jordan on self consciousness. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 54 · Location 1223 It is for this reason that we called the optimal experience “flow.” The short and simple word describes well the sense of seemingly effortless movement. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 54 · Location 1230 Although the flow experience appears to be effortless, it is far from being so. It often requires strenuous physical exertion, or highly disciplined mental activity. It does not happen without the application of skilled performance. Any lapse in concentration will erase it. And yet while it lasts consciousness works smoothly, action follows action seamlessly. In normal life, we keep interrupting what we do with doubts and questions. “Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing something else?” Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions, and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 54 · Location 1236 Clear Goals and Feedback Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 54 · Location 1237 The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediate. A tennis player always knows what she has to do: return the ball into the opponent’s court. And each time she hits the ball she knows whether she has done well or not. The chess player’s goals are equally obvious: to mate the opponent’s king before his own is mated. Highlight(blue) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 55 · Location 1245 Certain activities require a very long time to accomplish, yet the components of goals and feedback are still extremely important to them. One example was given by a sixty-two-year-old woman living in the Italian Alps, who said her most enjoyable experiences were taking care of the cows and tending the orchard: Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 55 · Location 1256 The goals of an activity are not always as clear as those of tennis, and the feedback is often more ambiguous than the simple “I am not falling” information processed by the climber. A composer of music, for instance, may know that he wishes to write a song, or a flute concerto, but other than that, his goals are usually quite vague. And how does he know whether the notes he is writing down are “right” or “wrong”? Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 55 · Location 1261 In some creative activities, where goals are not clearly set in advance, a person must develop a strong personal sense of what she intends to do. The artist might not have a visual image of what the finished painting should look like, but when the picture has progressed to a certain point, she should know whether this is what she wanted to achieve or not. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 56 · Location 1264 Creative activities are an exception to the clarity of goal requirement because by definition creatives don’t know the exact outcome of their creativity before they start. Regardless they must still set goals in some way to have optimal experience. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 58 · Location 1308 Concentration on the Task at Hand Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 58 · Location 1309 One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life. This feature of flow is an important by-product of the fact that enjoyable activities require a complete focusing of attention on the task at hand—thus leaving no room in the mind for irrelevant information. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 58 · Location 1316 A professor of physics who was an avid rock climber described his state of mind while climbing as follows: “It is as if my memory input has been cut off. All I can remember is the last thirty seconds, and all I can think ahead is the next five minutes.” In fact, any activity that requires concentration has a similarly narrow window of time. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 58 · Location 1319 But it is not only the temporal focus that counts. What is even more significant is that only a very select range of information can be allowed into awareness. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 59 · Location 1341 The Paradox of Control Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 59 · Location 1342 Enjoyment often occurs in games, sports, and other leisure activities that are distinct from ordinary life, where any number of bad things can happen. If a person loses a chess game or botches his hobby he need not worry; in “real” life, however, a person who mishandles a business deal may get fired, lose the mortgage on the house, and end up on public assistance. Thus the flow experience is typically described as involving a sense of control—or, more precisely, as lacking the sense of worry about losing control that is typical in many situations of normal life. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 60 · Location 1352 This sense of control is also reported in enjoyable activities that involve serious risks, activities that to an outsider would seem to be much more potentially dangerous than the affairs of normal life. People who practice hang gliding, spelunking, rock climbing, race-car driving, deep-sea diving, and many similar sports for fun are purposefully placing themselves in situations that lack the safety nets of civilized life. Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 62 · Location 1398 Almost any enjoyable activity can become addictive, in the sense that instead of being a conscious choice, it becomes a necessity that interferes with other activities. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 62 · Location 1399 Writing, reading, and note making have in many ways become addictive activities that I have to actively restrict my time allocation towards or they would consume my other time. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 62 · Location 1400 When a person becomes so dependent on the ability to control an enjoyable activity that he cannot pay attention to anything else, then he loses the ultimate control: the freedom to determine the content of consciousness. Thus enjoyable activities that produce flow have a potentially negative aspect: while they are capable of improving the quality of existence by creating order in the mind, they can become addictive, at which point the self becomes captive of a certain kind of order, and is then unwilling to cope with the ambiguities of life. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 62 · Location 1405 The Loss of Self-Consciousness Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 62 · Location 1406 We have seen earlier that when an activity is thoroughly engrossing, there is not enough attention left over to allow a person to consider either the past or the future, or any other temporarily irrelevant stimuli. One item that disappears from awareness deserves special mention, because in normal life we spend so much time thinking about it: our own self. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 63 · Location 1414 The loss of the sense of a self separate from the world around it is sometimes accompanied by a feeling of union with the environment, whether it is the mountain, a team, or, in the case of this member of a Japanese motorcycle gang, the “run” of hundreds of cycles roaring down the streets of Kyoto: Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 64 · Location 1437 But in fact the optimal experience involves a very active role for the self. A violinist must be extremely aware of every movement of her fingers, as well as of the sound entering her ears, and of the total form of the piece she is playing, both analytically, note by note, and holistically, in terms of its overall design. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 64 · Location 1439 .c1 Highlight(orange) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 64 · Location 1442 loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 65 · Location 1470 There is one very important and at first apparently paradoxical relationship between losing the sense of self in a flow experience, and having it emerge stronger afterward. It almost seems that occasionally giving up self-consciousness is necessary for building a strong self-concept. Why this should be so is fairly clear. In flow a person is challenged to do her best, and must constantly improve her skills. At the time, she doesn’t have the opportunity to reflect on what this means in terms of the self—if she did allow herself to become self-conscious, the experience could not have been very deep. But afterward, when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements. Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 66 · Location 1477 Flow makes us lose consciousness of the self but makes it stronger afterward when we are capable of reflecting on our wins Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 66 · Location 1477 The Transformation of Time Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 66 · Location 1478 One of the most common descriptions of optimal experience is that time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does. The objective, external duration we measure with reference to outside events like night and day, or the orderly progression of clocks, is rendered irrelevant by the rhythms dictated by the activity. Often hours seem to pass by in minutes; in general, most people report that time seems to pass much faster. But occasionally the reverse occurs: Ballet dancers describe how a difficult turn that takes less than a second in real time stretches out for what seems like minutes: Note - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 66 · Location 1482 When I get really into an article or blog post, all time seems to go by. Similarly when I am recording for YouTube and time seems to just test. Highlight(yellow) - The Elements of Enjoyment > Page 66 · Location 1486 But here, too, there are exceptions that prove the rule. An outstanding open-heart surgeon who derives a deep enjoyment from his work is well known for his ability to tell the exact time during an operation with only half a minute margin of error, without consulting a watch. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1500 THE AUTOTELIC EXPERIENCE Note - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1500 .h3 Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1500 The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding. Note - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1502 Most things we do are a mixture of autotelic (self goal) and exotelic (external goal) Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1504 The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1511 Most things we do are neither purely autotelic nor purely exotelic (as we shall call activities done for external reasons only), but are a combination of the two. Surgeons usually enter into their long period of training because of exotelic expectations: to help people, to make money, to achieve prestige. If they are lucky, after a while they begin to enjoy their work, and then surgery becomes to a large extent also autotelic. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 67 · Location 1514 Some things we are initially forced to do against our will turn out in the course of time to be intrinsically rewarding. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 69 · Location 1540 But, as we have already seen in the section dealing with the sense of control, one must be aware of the potentially addictive power of flow. We should reconcile ourselves to the fact that nothing in the world is entirely positive; every power can be misused. Love may lead to cruelty, science can create destruction, technology unchecked produces pollution. Optimal experience is a form of energy, and energy can be used either to help or to destroy. Fire warms or burns; atomic energy can generate electricity or it can obliterate the world. Energy is power, but power is only a means. The goals to which it is applied can make life either richer or more painful. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 69 · Location 1546 Even in societies that are called “civilized” because they try to make life enjoyable without interfering with anyone’s well-being, people are attracted to violence. Gladiatorial combat amused the Romans, Victorians paid money to see rats being torn up by terriers, Spaniards approach the killing of bulls with reverence, and boxing is a staple of our own culture. Note - The Autotelic Experience > Page 69 · Location 1549 Flow can be a force of evil as well. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Experience > Page 69 · Location 1555 As long as a significant segment of society has few opportunities to encounter meaningful challenges, and few chances to develop the skills necessary to benefit from them, we must expect that violence and crime will attract those who cannot find their way to more complex autotelic experiences. Note - The Autotelic Experience > Page 70 · Location 1558 This is why not having any jobs for the lowly worker would be terrible. They need ways to find meaning in life through optimal experience. Chapter 4 Highlight(yellow) - Page 71 · Location 1577 4 THE CONDITIONS OF FLOW Note - Page 71 · Location 1577 .h1 Highlight(yellow) - Page 71 · Location 1579 WE HAVE SEEN HOW PEOPLE DESCRIBE the common characteristics of optimal experience: a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous. Note - Page 71 · Location 1583 A summary of why people like flow Highlight(orange) - Page 71 · Location 1584 Occasionally flow may occur by chance, because of a fortunate coincidence of external and internal conditions. Highlight(orange) - Page 71 · Location 1586 While such events may happen spontaneously, it is much more likely that flow will result either from a structured activity, or from an individual’s ability to make flow occur, or both. Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 72 · Location 1593 FLOW ACTIVITIES Note - Flow Activities > Page 72 · Location 1593 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 72 · Location 1594 When describing optimal experience in this book, we have given as examples such activities as making music, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, chess, and so forth. What makes these activities conducive to flow is that they were designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible. They facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called “paramount reality” of everyday existence. Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 72 · Location 1603 Roger Caillois, the French psychological anthropologist, has divided the world’s games (using that word in its broadest sense to include every form of pleasurable activity) into four broad classes, depending on the kind of experiences they provide. Agon includes games that have competition as their main feature, such as most sports and athletic events; alea is the class that includes all games of chance, from dice to bingo; ilinx, or vertigo, is the name he gives to activities that alter consciousness by scrambling ordinary perception, such as riding a merry-go-round or skydiving; and mimicry is the group of activities in which alternative realities are created, such as dance, theater, and the arts in general. Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 74 · Location 1632 In our studies, we found that every flow activity, whether it involved competition, chance, or any other dimension of experience, had this in common: It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness. In short, it transformed the self by making it more complex. Highlight(blue) - Flow Activities > Page 74 · Location 1637 A simple diagram might help explain why this should be the case. Let us assume that the figure below represents a specific activity—for example, the game of tennis. The two theoretically most important dimensions of the experience, challenges and skills, are represented on the two axes of the diagram. The letter A represents Alex, a boy who is learning to play tennis. The diagram shows Alex at four different points in time. When he first starts playing (A1), Alex has practically no skills, and the only challenge he faces is hitting the ball over the net. This is not a very difficult feat, but Alex is likely to enjoy it because the difficulty is just right for his rudimentary skills. So at this point he will probably be in flow. But he cannot stay there long. After a while, if he keeps practicing, his skills are bound to improve, and then he will grow bored just batting the ball over the net (A2). Or it might happen that he meets a more practiced opponent, in which case he will realize that there are much harder challenges for him than just lobbing the ball—at that point, he will feel some anxiety (A3) concerning his poor performance. Neither boredom nor anxiety are positive experiences, so Alex will be motivated to return to the flow state. How is he to do it? Glancing again at the diagram, we see that if he is bored (A2) and wishes to be in flow again, Alex has essentially only one choice: to increase the challenges he is facing. (He also has a second choice, which is to give up tennis altogether—in which case A would simply disappear from the diagram.) By setting himself a new and more difficult goal that matches his skills—for instance, to beat an opponent just a little more advanced than he is—Alex would be back in flow (A4). Note - Flow Activities > Page 75 · Location 1651 FATI Use this image to relate to my own tennis flow experience. Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 76 · Location 1673 During the course of human evolution, every culture has developed activities designed primarily to improve the quality of experience. Even the least technologically advanced societies have some form of art, music, dance, and a variety of games that children and adults play. There are natives of New Guinea who spend more time looking in the jungle for the colorful feathers they use for decoration in their ritual dances than they spend looking for food. Note - Flow Activities > Page 76 · Location 1676 Think about the NFT craze happening right now. Some are obviously doing it for the money but a lot are also doing it simply for the enjoyment of collecting images nobody else has in the entire world. Highlight(yellow) - Flow Activities > Page 76 · Location 1680 In fact, flow and religion have been intimately connected from earliest times. Many of the optimal experiences of mankind have taken place in the context of religious rituals. Not only art but drama, music, and dance had their origins in what we now would call “religious” settings; that is, activities aimed at connecting people with supernatural powers and entities. The same is true of games. One of the earliest ball games, a form of basketball played by the Maya, was part of their religious celebrations, and so were the original Olympic games. This connection is not surprising, because what we call religion is actually the oldest and most ambitious attempt to create order in consciousness. It therefore makes sense that religious rituals would be a profound source of enjoyment. Note - Flow Activities > Page 77 · Location 1686 what we call religion is actually the oldest and most ambitious attempt to create order in consciousness. Highlight(yellow) - Flow and Culture > Page 77 · Location 1701 FLOW AND CULTURE Note - Flow and Culture > Page 77 · Location 1701 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Flow and Culture > Page 78 · Location 1707 Over the past few generations social scientists have grown extremely unwilling to make value judgments about cultures. Any comparison that is not strictly factual runs the risk of being interpreted as invidious. It is bad form to say that one culture’s practice, or belief, or institution is in any sense better than another’s. This is “cultural relativism,” a stance anthropologists adopted in the early part of this century as a reaction against the overly smug and ethnocentric assumptions of the colonial Victorian era, when the Western industrial nations considered themselves to be the pinnacle of evolution, better in every respect than technologically less developed cultures. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 78 · Location 1712 It’s looked down upon to say one culture is any sense better than another. Highlight(yellow) - Flow and Culture > Page 78 · Location 1717 If we assume, however, that the desire to achieve optimal experience is the foremost goal of every human being, the difficulties of interpretation raised by cultural relativism become less severe. Each social system can then be evaluated in terms of how much psychic entropy it causes, measuring that disorder not with reference to the ideal order of one or another belief system, but with reference to the goals of the members of that society. A starting point would be to say that one society is “better” than another if a greater number of its people have access to experiences that are in line with their goals. A second essential criterion would specify that these experiences should lead to the growth of the self on an individual level, by allowing as many people as possible to develop increasingly complex skills. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 78 · Location 1723 One way we can make cultural relativism objective is by measuring a cultures ability to allow for optimal experience. In other words, how easy is it for someone in a culture to align their goals with their experiences to create increasingly complex skills by harboring flow. Highlight(blue) - Flow and Culture > Page 79 · Location 1730 the culture of the Dobu islanders, as described by the anthropologist Reo Fortune, is one that encouraged constant fear of sorcery, mistrust among even the closest relatives, and vindictive behavior. Just going to the bathroom was a major problem, because it involved stepping out into the bush, where everybody expected to be attacked by bad magic when alone among the trees. The Dobuans didn’t seem to “like” these characteristics so pervasive in their everyday experience, but they were unaware of alternatives. They were caught in a web of beliefs and practices that had evolved through time, and that made it very difficult for them to experience psychic harmony. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 79 · Location 1734 This is an example of a culture objectively worse than others when analyzed through the lens of allowing for flow experiences. Highlight(blue) - Flow and Culture > Page 79 · Location 1739 There is no evidence that any of these cultures chose to be selfish, violent, or fearful. Their behavior does not make them happier; on the contrary, it causes suffering. Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary; they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be; they come to believe they have no other options. Highlight(blue) - Flow and Culture > Page 79 · Location 1743 Fortunately there are also many instances of cultures that, either by luck or by foresight, have succeeded in creating a context in which flow is relatively easy to achieve. For instance, the pygmies of the Ituri forest described by Colin Turnbull live in harmony with one another and their environment, filling their lives with useful and challenging activities. When they are not hunting or improving their villages they sing, dance, play musical instruments, or tell stories to each other. As in many so-called “primitive” cultures, every adult in this pygmy society is expected to be a bit of an actor, singer, artist, and historian as well as a skilled worker. Their culture would not be given a high rating in terms of material achievement, but in terms of providing optimal experiences their way of life seems to be extremely successful. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 80 · Location 1750 Some cultures are better than others in providing optimal experiences Highlight(blue) - Flow and Culture > Page 80 · Location 1750 Another good example of how a culture can build flow into its life-style is given by the Canadian ethnographer Richard Kool, describing one of the Indian tribes of British Columbia: The Shushwap region was and is considered by the Indian people to be a rich place: rich in salmon and game, rich in below-ground food resources such as tubers and roots—a plentiful land. In this region, the people would live in permanent village sites and exploit the environs for needed resources. They had elaborate technologies for very effectively using the resources of the environment, and perceived their lives as being good and rich. Yet, the elders said, at times the world became too predictable and the challenge began to go out of life. Without challenge, life had no meaning. So the elders, in their wisdom, would decide that the entire village should move, those moves occurring every 25 to 30 years. The entire population would move to a different part of the Shushwap land and there, they found challenge. There were new streams to figure out, new game trails to learn, new areas where the balsamroot would be plentiful. Now life would regain its meaning and be worth living. Everyone would feel rejuvenated and healthy. Incidentally, it also allowed exploited resources in one area to recover after years of harvesting…. Highlight(orange) - Flow and Culture > Page 81 · Location 1768 Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience. They are adaptive responses, just as feathers are for birds and fur is for mammals. Cultures prescribe norms, evolve goals, build beliefs that help us tackle the challenges of existence. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 81 · Location 1770 Sometimes, however, through random unfortunate chance, norms get set in place that are counterproductive to the fostering of optimal experiences but because nobody knows an alternative, nothing changes. Highlight(orange) - Flow and Culture > Page 81 · Location 1772 It is in this respect that games provide a compelling analogy to cultures. Both consist of more or less arbitrary goals and rules that allow people to become involved in a process and act with a minimum of doubts and distractions. The difference is mainly one of scale. Cultures are all-embracing: they specify how a person should be born, how she should grow up, marry, have children, and die. Games fill out the interludes of the cultural script. Note - Flow and Culture > Page 81 · Location 1774 Create note on similarities between cultures and games. Highlight(yellow) - Flow and Culture > Page 81 · Location 1784 A culture that enhances flow is not necessarily “good” in any moral sense. The rules of Sparta seem needlessly cruel from the vantage point of the twentieth century, even though they were by all accounts successful in motivating those who abided by them. Highlight(orange) - Flow and Culture > Page 82 · Location 1790 Similarly, while flow is a powerful motivator, it does not guarantee virtue in those who experience it. Highlight(yellow) - Flow and Culture > Page 83 · Location 1813 TV watching, the single most often pursued leisure activity in the United States today, leads to the flow condition very rarely. In fact, working people achieve the flow experience—deep concentration, high and balanced challenges and skills, a sense of control and satisfaction—about four times as often on their jobs, proportionately, as they do when they are watching television. Highlight(orange) - Flow and Culture > Page 83 · Location 1816 One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 83 · Location 1825 THE AUTOTELIC PERSONALITY Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 83 · Location 1825 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 84 · Location 1830 Some individuals might be constitutionally incapable of experiencing flow. Psychiatrists describe schizophrenics as suffering from anhedonia, which literally means “lack of pleasure.” This symptom appears to be related to “stimulus overinclusion,” which refers to the fact that schizophrenics are condemned to notice irrelevant stimuli, to process information whether they like it or not. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 84 · Location 1836 Unable to concentrate, attending indiscriminately to everything, patients who suffer from this disease not surprisingly end up unable to enjoy themselves. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 84 · Location 1844 A less drastic obstacle to experiencing flow is excessive self-consciousness. A person who is constantly worried about how others will perceive her, who is afraid of creating the wrong impression, or of doing something inappropriate, is also condemned to permanent exclusion from enjoyment. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 84 · Location 1846 .c1 Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1853 Under these conditions it is difficult to become interested in intrinsic goals, to lose oneself in an activity that offers no rewards outside the interaction itself. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1854 .c2 Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1854 Attentional disorders and stimulus overinclusion prevent flow because psychic energy is too fluid and erratic. Excessive self-consciousness and self-centeredness prevent it for the opposite reason: attention is too rigid and tight. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1859 Paradoxically a self centered person doesn’t grow themselves as they find it hard to enter the flow activities which grow the self. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1865 The social conditions that inhibit flow might be more difficult to overcome. One of the consequences of slavery, oppression, exploitation, and the destruction of cultural values is the elimination of enjoyment. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1866 .c1 Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 85 · Location 1868 It is probable that many cultures disappeared in a similar fashion, because they were no longer able to provide the experience of enjoyment. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1869 .c2 Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1869 Two terms describing states of social pathology apply also to conditions that make flow difficult to experience: anomie and alienation. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1871 Anomie—literally, “lack of rules”—is the name the French sociologist Emile Durkheim gave to a condition in society in which the norms of behavior had become muddled. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1876 Alienation is in many ways the opposite: it is a condition in which people are constrained by the social system to act in ways that go against their goals. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1881 It is interesting to note that these two societal obstacles to flow, anomie and alienation, are functionally equivalent to the two personal pathologies, attentional disorders and self-centeredness. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1886 Neurophysiology and Flow Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 86 · Location 1886 Just as some people are born with better muscular coordination, it is possible that there are individuals with a genetic advantage in controlling consciousness. Such people might be less prone to suffer from attentional disorders, and they may experience flow more easily. Highlight(pink) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 87 · Location 1901 In another set of experiments, students who did and who did not report frequent flow experiences were asked to pay attention to flashes of lights or to tones in a laboratory. While the subjects were involved in this attentional task, their cortical activation in response to the stimuli was measured, and averaged separately for the visual and auditory conditions. (These are called “evoked potentials.”) Dr. Hamilton’s findings showed that subjects who reported only rarely experiencing flow behaved as expected: when responding to the flashing stimuli their activation went up significantly above their baseline level. But the results from subjects who reported flow frequently were very surprising: activation decreased when they were concentrating. Instead of requiring more effort, investment of attention actually seemed to decrease mental effort. A separate behavioral measure of attention confirmed that this group was also more accurate in a sustained attentional task. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 87 · Location 1908 People good at flow don’t need to make as much mental effort when attempting to get into their flow state because they are so good at directing attention to one thing. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 87 · Location 1908 The most likely explanation for this unusual finding seems to be that the group reporting more flow was able to reduce mental activity in every information channel but the one involved in concentrating on the flashing stimuli. This in turn suggests that people who can enjoy themselves in a variety of situations have the ability to screen out stimulation and to focus only on what they decide is relevant for the moment. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 88 · Location 1918 The Effects of the Family on the Autotelic Personality Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 88 · Location 1919 A neurological advantage in processing information may not be the only key to explaining why some people have a good time waiting at a bus station while others are bored no matter how entertaining their environment is. Early childhood influences are also very likely factors in determining whether a person will or will not easily experience flow. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 88 · Location 1922 There is ample evidence to suggest that how parents interact with a child will have a lasting effect on the kind of person that child grows up to be. In one of our studies conducted at the University of Chicago, for example, Kevin Rathunde observed that teenagers who had certain types of relationship with their parents were significantly more happy, satisfied, and strong in most life situations than their peers who did not have such a relationship. Highlight(yellow) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 88 · Location 1925 The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them—goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children’s perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules—as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents’ dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 89 · Location 1933 The five characteristics contributing to a healthy child parent relationship are clarity, centering, choice, commitment, and challenge. Highlight(orange) - The Autotelic Personality > Page 89 · Location 1935 Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible. Note - The Autotelic Personality > Page 89 · Location 1937 Your childhood plays a massive role in your ability to experience flow later in life. Highlight(yellow) - The People of Flow > Page 90 · Location 1955 THE PEOPLE OF FLOW Note - The People of Flow > Page 90 · Location 1955 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The People of Flow > Page 90 · Location 1956 The traits that mark an autotelic personality are most clearly revealed by people who seem to enjoy situations that ordinary persons would find unbearable. Highlight(blue) - The People of Flow > Page 91 · Location 1974 Eva Zeisel, the ceramic designer who was imprisoned in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison for over a year by Stalin’s police, kept her sanity by figuring out how she would make a bra out of materials at hand, playing chess against herself in her head, holding imaginary conversations in French, doing gymnastics, and memorizing poems she composed. Highlight(blue) - The People of Flow > Page 91 · Location 1980 An acquaintance who worked in United States Air Force intelligence tells the story of a pilot who was imprisoned in North Vietnam for many years, and lost eighty pounds and much of his health in a jungle camp. When he was released, one of the first things he asked for was to play a game of golf. To the great astonishment of his fellow officers he played a superb game, despite his emaciated condition. To their inquiries he replied that every day of his imprisonment he imagined himself playing eighteen holes, carefully choosing his clubs and approach and systematically varying the course. This discipline not only helped preserve his sanity, but apparently also kept his physical skills well honed. Highlight(orange) - The People of Flow > Page 92 · Location 2007 the most important trait of survivors is a “nonself-conscious individualism,” or a strongly directed purpose that is not self-seeking. People who have that quality are bent on doing their best in all circumstances, yet they are not concerned primarily with advancing their own interests. Note - The People of Flow > Page 92 · Location 2009 It sounds like these types of people value doing their best in all circumstances simply for the sake of doing their best in all circumstances. Highlight(orange) - The People of Flow > Page 93 · Location 2015 Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of our century, described how he achieved personal happiness: “Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection.” There could be no better short description of how to build for oneself an autotelic personality. Chapter 5 Highlight(yellow) - Page 94 · Location 2024 5 THE BODY IN FLOW Note - Page 94 · Location 2024 .h2 Highlight(orange) - Page 95 · Location 2045 The human body is capable of hundreds of separate functions—seeing, hearing, touching, running, swimming, throwing, catching, climbing up mountains and climbing down caves, to name only a few—and to each of these there correspond flow experiences. In every culture, enjoyable activities have been invented to suit the potentialities of the body. Highlight(yellow) - Page 95 · Location 2052 Before exploring further how physical activity contributes to optimal experience, it should be stressed that the body does not produce flow merely by its movements. The mind is always involved as well. To get enjoyment from swimming, for instance, one needs to cultivate a set of appropriate skills, which requires the concentration of attention. Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 96 · Location 2063 HIGHER, FASTER, STRONGER Note - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 96 · Location 2063 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 96 · Location 2064 The Latin motto of the modern Olympic games—Altius, citius, fortius—is a good, if incomplete summary of how the body can experience flow. It encompasses the rationale of all sports, which is to do something better than it has ever been done before. The purest form of athletics, and sports in general, is to break through the limitations of what the body can accomplish. Note - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 96 · Location 2067 This is similar to progressive summarization Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 96 · Location 2074 Altius—higher—is the first word of the Olympic motto, and soaring above the ground is another universally recognized challenge. Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 97 · Location 2082 Flow experiences based on the use of physical skills do not occur only in the context of outstanding athletic feats. Olympians do not have an exclusive gift in finding enjoyment in pushing performance beyond existing boundaries. Every person, no matter how unfit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow to be a little stronger. The joy of surpassing the limits of the body is open to all. Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 97 · Location 2089 A good example of this method is the act of walking, which is as simple a use of the body as one can imagine, yet which can become a complex flow activity, almost an art form. A great number of different goals might be set for a walk. For instance, the choice of the itinerary: where one wishes to go, and by what route. Within the overall route, one might select places to stop, or certain landmarks to see. Another goal may be to develop a personal style, a way to move the body easily and efficiently. Note - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 97 · Location 2093 Literally anything can be made into a flow activity Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 98 · Location 2100 On a difficult trail an experienced hiker walks with economy of motion and lightness, and the constant adjustment of her steps to the terrain reveals a highly sophisticated process of selecting the best solution to a changing series of complex equations involving mass, velocity, and friction. Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 98 · Location 2107 There are store windows to see, people to observe, patterns of human interaction to reflect on. Some walkers specialize in choosing the shortest routes, others the most interesting ones; some pride themselves in walking the same route with chronometric precision, others like to mix and match their itinerary. In winter some aim to walk as long as possible on the sunny stretches of the sidewalk, and to walk as much in the shade as possible in the summer. There are those who time their crossings exactly for when the traffic lights change to green. Of course these chances for enjoyment must be cultivated; they don’t just happen automatically to those who do not control their itinerary. Unless one sets goals and develops skills, walking is just featureless drudgery. Note - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 98 · Location 2112 This emphasizes just how much you can make the most dull of experiences amazing. Highlight(yellow) - Higher, Faster, Stronger > Page 99 · Location 2127 What we found was that when people were pursuing leisure activities that were expensive in terms of the outside resources required—activities that demanded expensive equipment, or electricity, or other forms of energy measured in BTUs, such as power boating, driving, or watching television—they were significantly less happy than when involved in inexpensive leisure. People were happiest when they were just talking to one another, when they gardened, knitted, or were involved in a hobby; all of these activities require few material resources, but they demand a relatively high investment of psychic energy. Leisure that uses up external resources, however, often requires less attention, and as a consequence it generally provides less memorable rewards. Highlight(yellow) - The Joys of Movement > Page 99 · Location 2133 THE JOYS OF MOVEMENT Note - The Joys of Movement > Page 99 · Location 2133 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Joys of Movement > Page 99 · Location 2134 Sports and fitness are not the only media of physical experience that use the body as a source of enjoyment, for in fact a broad range of activities rely on rhythmic or harmonious movements to generate flow. Among these dance is probably the oldest and the most significant, both for its universal appeal and because of its potential complexity. Highlight(yellow) - The Joys of Movement > Page 100 · Location 2151 And there are other forms of expression that use the body as an instrument: miming and acting, for instance. The popularity of charades as a parlor game is due to the fact that it allows people to shed for a time their customary identity, and act out different roles. Even the most silly and clumsy impersonation can provide an enjoyable relief from the limitations of everyday patterns of behavior, a glimpse into alternative modes of being. Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 100 · Location 2155 SEX AS FLOW Note - Sex as Flow > Page 100 · Location 2155 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 100 · Location 2156 When people think of enjoyment, usually one of the first things that comes to mind is sex. This is not surprising, because sexuality is certainly one of the most universally rewarding experiences, surpassed in its power to motivate perhaps only by the need to survive, to drink, and to eat. The urge to have sex is so powerful that it can drain psychic energy away from other necessary goals. Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 101 · Location 2169 But like other pleasures, unless it is transformed into an enjoyable activity, sex easily becomes boring with time. It turns from a genuinely positive experience into either a meaningless ritual or an addictive dependence. Fortunately there are many ways to make sex enjoyable. Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 101 · Location 2172 Eroticism is one form of cultivating sexuality that focuses on the development of physical skills. In a sense, eroticism is to sex as sport is to physical activity. The Kama Sutra and The Joy of Sex are two examples of manuals that aim to foster eroticism by providing suggestions and goals to help make sexual activity more varied, more interesting and challenging. Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 102 · Location 2196 At first it is very easy to obtain pleasure from sex, and even to enjoy it. Any fool can fall in love when young. The first date, the first kiss, the first intercourse all present heady new challenges that keep the young person in flow for weeks on end. But for many this ecstatic state occurs only once; after the “first love” all later relationships are no longer as exciting. Highlight(yellow) - Sex as Flow > Page 103 · Location 2203 How to keep love fresh? The answer is the same as it is for any other activity. To be enjoyable, a relationship must become more complex. To become more complex, the partners must discover new potentialities in themselves and in each other. To discover these, they must invest attention in each other—so that they can learn what thoughts and feelings, what dreams reside in their partner’s mind. This in itself is a never-ending process, a lifetime’s task. After one begins to really know another person, then many joint adventures become possible: traveling together, reading the same books, raising children, making and realizing plans all become more enjoyable and more meaningful. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 103 · Location 2210 THE ULTIMATE CONTROL: YOGA AND THE MARTIAL ARTS Note - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 103 · Location 2210 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 103 · Location 2211 When it comes to learning to control the body and its experiences, we are as children compared to the great Eastern civilizations. In many respects, what the West has accomplished in terms of harnessing material energy is matched by what India and the Far East have achieved in terms of direct control of consciousness. That neither of these approaches is, by itself, an ideal program for the conduct of life is shown by the fact that the Indian fascination with advanced techniques for self-control, at the expense of learning to cope with the material challenges of the physical environment, has conspired to let impotence and apathy spread over a great proportion of the population, defeated by scarcity of resources and by overcrowding. Note - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 103 · Location 2216 The west ability for self contemplation pales in comparison to the east and far east civilizations Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 103 · Location 2220 Of the great Eastern methods for training the body, one of the oldest and most diffuse is the set of practices known as Hatha Yoga. It is worth reviewing some of its highlights, because it corresponds in several areas to what we know about the psychology of flow, and therefore provides a useful model for anyone who wishes to be in better charge of psychic energy. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 104 · Location 2230 In practice, the first step, yama, requires that one achieve “restraint” from acts and thoughts that might harm others—falsehood, theft, lust, and avarice. The second step, niyama, involves “obedience,” or the following of ordered routines in cleanliness, study, and obedience to God, all of which help to channel attention into predictable patterns, and hence make attention easier to control. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 104 · Location 2234 The next two stages involve physical preparation, or development of habits that will enable the practitioner—or yogin—to overcome the demands of the senses, and make it possible for him to concentrate without growing tired or distracted. The third stage consists in practicing various asana, ways of “sitting” or holding postures for long periods without succumbing to strain or fatigue. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 104 · Location 2238 The fourth stage is pranayama, or breath control, which aims to relax the body, and stabilizes the rhythm of breathing. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 104 · Location 2239 The fifth stage, the hinge between the preparatory exercises and the practice of Yoga proper, is called pratyahara (“ withdrawal”). It involves learning to withdraw attention from outward objects by directing the input of the senses—thus becoming able to see, hear, and feel only what one wishes to admit into awareness. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 105 · Location 2246 Dharana, or “holding on,” is the ability to concentrate for long periods on a single stimulus, and thus is the mirror image of the earlier stage of pratyahara; first one learns to keep things out of the mind, then one learns to keep them in. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 105 · Location 2248 Intense meditation, or dhyana, is the next step. Here one learns to forget the self in uninterrupted concentration that no longer needs the external stimuli of the preceding phase. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 105 · Location 2249 Finally the yogin may achieve samadhi, the last stage of “self-collectedness,” when the meditator and the object of meditation become as one. Those who have achieved it describe samadhi as the most joyful experience in their lives. Highlight(yellow) - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 105 · Location 2251 The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong; in fact it makes sense to think of Yoga as a very thoroughly planned flow activity. Both try to achieve a joyous, self-forgetful involvement through concentration, which in turn is made possible by a discipline of the body. Some critics, however, prefer to stress the differences between flow and Yoga. Their main divergence is that, whereas flow attempts to fortify the self, the goal of Yoga and many other Eastern techniques is to abolish it. Note - The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts > Page 105 · Location 2255 Even though flow has many ties to yoga some experts say yoga is different and that it attempts to abolish the self while flow fortifies it Highlight(yellow) - Flow through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing > Page 106 · Location 2280 FLOW THROUGH THE SENSES: THE JOYS OF SEEING Note - Flow through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing > Page 106 · Location 2280 .h3 Highlight(yellow) - Flow through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing > Page 106 · Location 2281 It is easy to accept the fact that sports, sex, and even Yoga can be enjoyable. But few people step beyond these physical activities to explore the almost unlimited capacities of the other organs of the body, even though any information that the nervous system can recognize lends itself to rich and varied flow experiences. Highlight(yellow) - Flow through the Senses: The Joys of Seeing > Page 107 · Location 2286 Visual skills, however, can provide constant access to enjoyable experiences. Menander, the classical poet, well expressed the pleasure we can derive from just watching nature: “The sun that lights us all, the stars, the sea, the train of clouds, the spark of fire—if you live a hundred years or only a few, you can never see anything higher than them.” ## Chapter 6 ### Highlight (orange) - Page 117 · Location 2481 Just as there are flow activities corresponding to every physical potential of the body , every mental operation is able to provide its own particular form of enjoyment . ### Highlight (orange) - Page 119 · Location 2516 We don’t usually notice how little control we have over the mind , because habits channel psychic energy so well that thoughts seem to follow each other by themselves without a hitch . After sleeping we regain consciousness in the morning when the alarm rings , and then walk to the bathroom and brush our teeth . The social roles culture prescribes then take care of shaping our minds for us , and we generally place ourselves on automatic pilot till the end of the day , when it is time again to lose consciousness in sleep . But when we are left alone , with no demands on attention , the basic disorder of the mind reveals itself . With nothing to do , it begins to follow random patterns , usually stopping to consider something painful or disturbing . Unless a person knows how to give order to his or her thoughts , attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment : ### Highlight (orange) - Page 119 · Location 2524 To avoid this condition , people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available , as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings . This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television , despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed . ### Highlight (orange) - Page 120 · Location 2542 three symbolic systems that are very enjoyable if one comes to know their rules : history , science , and philosophy . Many more fields of study could have been mentioned , but these three can serve as examples for the others . Each one of these mental “ games ” is accessible to anyone who wants to play them . ### Highlight (orange) - The Mother of Science > Page 123 · Location 2609 A person who can remember stories , poems , lyrics of songs , baseball statistics , chemical formulas , mathematical operations , historical dates , biblical passages , and wise quotations has many advantages over one who has not cultivated such a skill . The consciousness of such a person is independent of the order that may or may not be provided by the environment . She can always amuse herself , and find meaning in the contents of her mind . While others need external stimulation — television , reading , conversation , or drugs — to keep their minds from drifting into chaos , the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self - contained . Additionally , such a person is also a much more cherished companion , because she can share the information in her mind , and thus help bring order into the consciousness of those with whom she interacts . ### Highlight (orange) - The Rules of the Games of the Mind > Page 127 · Location 2683 The point is that playing with ideas is extremely exhilarating . Not only philosophy but the emergence of new scientific ideas is fueled by the enjoyment one obtains from creating a new way to describe reality . ### Highlight (orange) - The Play of Words > Page 129 · Location 2729 the main function of conversation is not to get things accomplished , but to improve the quality of experience . ### Highlight (orange) - Befriending Clio > Page 132 · Location 2789 In a sense , every individual is a historian of his or her own personal existence . Because of their emotional power , memories of childhood become crucial elements in determining the kind of adults we grow up to be , and how our minds will function . ### Highlight (orange) - Loving Wisdom > Page 138 · Location 2910 “ Philosophy ” used to mean “ love of wisdom , ” and people devoted their lives to it for that reason . ### Highlight (orange) - Amateurs and Professionals > Page 140 · Location 2950 There was a time when it was admirable to be an amateur poet or a dilettante scientist , because it meant that the quality of life could be improved by engaging in such activities . But increasingly the emphasis has been to value behavior over subjective states ; what is admired is success , achievement , the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience . ### Highlight (orange) - Amateurs and Professionals > Page 141 · Location 2967 The point of becoming an amateur scientist is not to compete with professionals on their own turf , but to use a symbolic discipline to extend mental skills , and to create order in consciousness . ## Chapter 7 ### Highlight (orange) - Autotelic Jobs > Page 157 · Location 3276 important as the structure of a job is , by itself it won’t determine whether or not a person performing that job will find enjoyment in it . Satisfaction in a job will also depend on whether or not a worker has an autotelic personality . ### Highlight (orange) - The Paradox of Work > Page 157 · Location 3289 In our studies we have often encountered a strange inner conflict in the way people relate to the way they make their living . On the one hand , our subjects usually report that they have had some of their most positive experiences while on the job . From this response it would follow that they would wish to be working , that their motivation on the job would be high . Instead , even when they feel good , people generally say that they would prefer not to be working , that their motivation on the job is low . The converse is also true : when supposedly enjoying their hard - earned leisure , people generally report surprisingly low moods ; yet they keep on wishing for more leisure . ### Highlight (orange) - The Paradox of Work > Page 160 · Location 3334 when it comes to work , people do not heed the evidence of their senses . They disregard the quality of immediate experience , and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like . They think of it as an imposition , a constraint , an infringement of their freedom , and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible . ### Highlight (orange) - The Waste of Free Time > Page 162 · Location 3382 Ironically , jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time , because like flow activities they have built - in goals , feedback , rules , and challenges , all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work , to concentrate and lose oneself in it . Free time , on the other hand , is unstructured , and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed . ## Chapter 8 ### Highlight (orange) - Page 164 · Location 3409 STUDIES ON FLOW have demonstrated repeatedly that more than anything else , the quality of life depends on two factors : how we experience work , and our relations with other people . ### Highlight (orange) - The Pain of Loneliness > Page 168 · Location 3495 the most depressing condition is not that of working or watching TV alone ; the worst moods are reported when one is alone and there is nothing that needs to be done . For people in our studies who live by themselves and do not attend church , Sunday mornings are the lowest part of the week , because with no demands on attention , they are unable to decide what to do . ### Highlight (orange) - Taming Solitude > Page 174 · Location 3608 One can survive solitude , but only if one finds ways of ordering attention that will prevent entropy from destructuring the mind . ### Highlight (orange) - Taming Solitude > Page 175 · Location 3631 If being alone is seen as a chance to accomplish goals that cannot be reached in the company of others , then instead of feeling lonely , a person will enjoy solitude and might be able to learn new skills in the process . ### Highlight (orange) - Flow and the Family > Page 179 · Location 3724 Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws . In other words , accepting limitations is liberating . ### Highlight (orange) - Flow and the Family > Page 180 · Location 3729 As a result a great deal of energy gets freed up for living , instead of being spent on wondering about how to live . ### Highlight (orange) - Flow and the Family > Page 182 · Location 3773 The only way to restore flow to the relationship is by finding new challenges in it . These might involve steps as simple as varying the routines of eating , sleeping , or shopping . They might involve making an effort to talk together about new topics of conversation , visiting new places , making new friends . ### Highlight (orange) - Flow and the Family > Page 184 · Location 3825 Early emotional security may well be one of the conditions that helps develop an autotelic personality in children . Without this , it is difficult to let go of the self long enough to experience flow . ### Highlight (orange) - Flow and the Family > Page 185 · Location 3834 One of the most basic delusions of our time is that home life takes care of itself naturally , and that the best strategy for dealing with it is to relax and let it take its course . Men especially like to comfort themselves with this notion . ### Highlight (orange) - Enjoying Friends > Page 188 · Location 3896 There are few things as enjoyable as freely sharing one’s most secret feelings and thoughts with another person . Even though this sounds like a commonplace , it in fact requires concentrated attention , openness , and sensitivity . In practice , this degree of investment of psychic energy in a friendship is unfortunately rare . Few are willing to commit the energy or the time for it . ### Highlight (orange) - Enjoying Friends > Page 188 · Location 3912 It is only with friends that most people feel they can let their hair down and be themselves . ### Highlight (orange) - Enjoying Friends > Page 189 · Location 3914 It is in the company of friends that we can most clearly experience the freedom of the self and learn who we really are . The ideal of a modern marriage is to have one’s spouse as a friend . ### Highlight (orange) - The Wider Community > Page 190 · Location 3935 A person is part of a family or a friendship to the extent he invests psychic energy in goals shared with other people . In the same way , one can belong to larger interpersonal systems by subscribing to the aspirations of a community , an ethnic group , a political party , or a nation . ### Highlight (orange) - The Wider Community > Page 191 · Location 3964 A community should be judged good not because it is technologically advanced , or swimming in material riches ; it is good if it offers people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible , while allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater challenges . Similarly the value of a school does not depend on its prestige , or its ability to train students to face up to the necessities of life , but rather on the degree of the enjoyment of lifelong learning it can transmit . ## Chapter 9 ### Highlight (orange) - Coping with Stress > Page 200 · Location 4136 The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a very rare gift . Those who possess it are called “ survivors , ” and are said to have “ resilience , ” or “ courage . ” ### Highlight (orange) - Coping with Stress > Page 200 · Location 4140 As Francis Bacon remarked , quoting from a speech by the Stoic philosopher Seneca , “ The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished , but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired . ” ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 203 · Location 4198 The peak in the development of coping skills is reached when a young man or woman has achieved a strong enough sense of self , based on personally selected goals , that no external disappointment can entirely undermine who he or she is . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 203 · Location 4205 Why are some people weakened by stress , while others gain strength from it ? ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 203 · Location 4206 There are three main steps that seem to be involved in such transformations : ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 203 · Location 4208 Unselfconscious self - assurance . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 204 · Location 4215 Paradoxically , this sense of humility — the recognition that one’s goals may have to be subordinated to a greater entity , and that to succeed one may have to play by a different set of rules from what one would prefer — is a hallmark of strong people . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 204 · Location 4230 Focusing attention on the world . It is difficult to notice the environment as long as attention is mainly focused inward , as long as most of one’s psychic energy is absorbed by the concerns and desires of the ego . People who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 204 · Location 4234 The focus is still set by the person’s goal , but it is open enough to notice and adapt to external events even if they are not directly relevant to what he wants to accomplish . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 207 · Location 4278 The discovery of new solutions . There are basically two ways to cope with a situation that creates psychic entropy . One is to focus attention on the obstacles to achieving one’s goals and then to move them out of the way , thereby restoring harmony in consciousness . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 207 · Location 4280 The other is to focus on the entire situation , including oneself , to discover whether alternative goals may not be more appropriate , and thus different solutions possible . ### Highlight (orange) - The Power of Dissipative Structures > Page 207 · Location 4290 Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth . ### Highlight (orange) - The Autotelic Self: A Summary > Page 211 · Location 4377 In some cases it is the depth of involvement that pushes self - consciousness out of awareness , while sometimes it is the other way around : ### Highlight (orange) - The Autotelic Self: A Summary > Page 212 · Location 4383 The autotelic individual grows beyond the limits of individuality by investing psychic energy in a system in which she is included . Because of this union of the person and the system , the self emerges at a higher level of complexity . This is why ’ tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all . ### Highlight (orange) - The Autotelic Self: A Summary > Page 212 · Location 4395 In the long run , however , looking at the world exclusively from the little window that one’s self affords is always limiting . Even the most highly respected physicist , artist , or politician becomes a hollow bore and ceases to enjoy life if all he can interest himself in is his limited role in the universe . ### Highlight (orange) - The Autotelic Self: A Summary > Page 213 · Location 4411 If a person moves from one flow activity to another without a connecting order , it will be difficult at the end of one’s life to look back on the years past and find meaning in what has happened . ## Chapter 10 ### Highlight (orange) - Page 214 · Location 4418 IT IS NOT UNUSUAL for famous tennis players to be deeply committed to their game , to take pleasure in playing , but off the court to be morose and hostile . Picasso enjoyed painting , but as soon as he lay down his brushes he turned into a rather unpleasant man . Bobby Fischer , the chess genius , appeared to be helplessly inept except when his mind was on chess . These and countless similar examples are a reminder that having achieved flow in one activity does not necessarily guarantee that it will be carried over to the rest of life . ### Highlight (orange) - Page 215 · Location 4433 It is true that life has no meaning , if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience , a goal that is valid for every individual . But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning . Much of what we call culture and civilization consists in efforts people have made , generally against overwhelming odds , to create a sense of purpose for themselves and their descendants . ### Highlight (orange) - What Meaning Means > Page 216 · Location 4460 Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one’s actions into a unified flow experience . ### Highlight (orange) - What Meaning Means > Page 217 · Location 4476 The meaning of life is meaning : whatever it is , wherever it comes from , a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life . ### Highlight (orange) - What Meaning Means > Page 217 · Location 4480 The purpose must result in strivings ; intent has to be translated into action . We may call this resolution in the pursuit of one’s goals . What counts is not so much whether a person actually achieves what she has set out to do ; rather , it matters whether effort has been expended to reach the goal , instead of being diffused or wasted . ### Highlight (orange) - What Meaning Means > Page 217 · Location 4493 Purpose , resolution , and harmony unify life and give it meaning by transforming it into a seamless flow experience . ### Highlight (orange) - Cultivating Purpose > Page 221 · Location 4567 There is a consensus among psychologists who study such subjects that people develop their concept of who they are , and of what they want to achieve in life , according to a sequence of steps . Each man or woman starts with a need to preserve the self , to keep the body and its basic goals from disintegrating . At this point the meaning of life is simple ; it is tantamount to survival , comfort , and pleasure . When the safety of the physical self is no longer in doubt , the person may expand the horizon of his or her meaning system to embrace the values of a community — the family , the neighborhood , a religious or ethnic group . This step leads to a greater complexity of the self , even though it usually implies conformity to conventional norms and standards . The next step in development involves reflective individualism . The person again turns inward , finding new grounds for authority and value within the self . He or she is no longer blindly conforming , but develops an autonomous conscience . At this point the main goal in life becomes the desire for growth , improvement , the actualization of potential . The fourth step , which builds on all the previous ones , is a final turning away from the self , back toward an integration with other people and with universal values . In this final stage the extremely individualized person — like Siddhartha letting the river take control of his boat — willingly merges his interests with those of a larger whole . ### Highlight (orange) - Forging Resolve > Page 224 · Location 4618 Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset , but later it is the effort that justifies the goal . ### Highlight (orange) - Forging Resolve > Page 224 · Location 4637 freedom does not necessarily help develop meaning in life — on the contrary . If the rules of a game become too flexible , concentration flags , and it is more difficult to attain a flow experience . Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails is much easier when the choices are few and clear . ### Highlight (orange) - Forging Resolve > Page 226 · Location 4674 Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other . Action by itself is blind , reflection impotent . Before investing great amounts of energy in a goal , it pays to raise the fundamental questions : Is this something I really want to do ? Is it something I enjoy doing ? Am I likely to enjoy it in the foreseeable future ? Is the price that I — and others — will have to pay worth it ? Will I be able to live with myself if I accomplish it ? ### Highlight (orange) - Recovering Harmony > Page 227 · Location 4693 The original condition of human beings , prior to the development of self - reflective consciousness , must have been a state of inner peace disturbed only now and again by tides of hunger , sexuality , pain , and danger . ### Highlight (orange) - Recovering Harmony > Page 227 · Location 4695 The forms of psychic entropy that currently cause us so much anguish — unfulfilled wants , dashed expectations , loneliness , frustration , anxiety , guilt — are all likely to have been recent invaders of the mind . They are by - products of the tremendous increase in complexity of the cerebral cortex and of the symbolic enrichment of culture . They are the dark side of the emergence of consciousness . ### Highlight (orange) - Recovering Harmony > Page 227 · Location 4698 If we were to interpret the lives of animals with a human eye , we would conclude that they are in flow most of the time because their perception of what has to be done generally coincides with what they are prepared to do . ### Highlight (orange) - Recovering Harmony > Page 228 · Location 4710 The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow . But this becomes possible only if one keeps in mind more than one goal at a time , being aware at the same time of conflicting desires . It can happen only when the mind knows not only what is but also what could be . ### Highlight (orange) - Recovering Harmony > Page 229 · Location 4728 It is understandable that people tend to be so nostalgic about their early years ; like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich , many feel that the wholehearted serenity of childhood , the undivided participation in the here and now , becomes increasingly difficult to recapture as the years go by . ### Highlight (orange) - The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes > Page 235 · Location 4855 There is much knowledge — or well - ordered information — accumulated in culture , ready for this use . Great music , architecture , art , poetry , drama , dance , philosophy , and religion are there for anyone to see as examples of how harmony can be imposed on chaos . Yet so many people ignore them , expecting to create meaning in their lives by their own devices . ### Highlight (orange) - The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes > Page 236 · Location 4869 Whatever one’s background , there are still many opportunities later on in life to draw meaning from the past . Most people who discover complex life themes remember either an older person or a historical figure whom they greatly admired and who served as a model , or they recall having read a book that revealed new possibilities for action . ### Highlight (orange) - The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes > Page 236 · Location 4878 At its best , literature contains ordered information about behavior , models of purpose , and examples of lives successfully patterned around meaningful goals . ### Highlight (orange) - The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes > Page 236 · Location 4880 And this is just literature ; what about music , art , philosophy , and religion ? ### Highlight (orange) - The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes > Page 238 · Location 4924 If a new faith is to capture our imagination , it must be one that will account rationally for the things we know , the things we feel , the things we hope for , and the ones we dread . It must be a system of beliefs that will marshal our psychic energy toward meaningful goals , a system that provides rules for a way of life that can provide flow .