The Flow, the secret of happiness

From the document : « The flow : The secret of happiness. » a TED talk by Mihaly CSIKSZENTMIHALYI.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian positive psychologist born on September 29th 1934 in Fiume, Italia (now Croatia), took part in our understanding of happiness, creativity, human fulfillment and the notion of « flow » (the notion of flow is a state of heightened focus and immersion in activities such as art, play and work) with his innovative work. He has been curious about those concepts since an early age. Indeed, when growing up in Europe during World War II, he witnessed the pain and suffering of many people around him, and how they were unable to live a life of contentment after their jobs, homes and security were taken away from them, so he asked himself : « Why aren’t adults able to stand against all the tragedies brought by the war ? ». To answer that question, he started to focus on what creates a life that is worth living, searching at first in philosophy, art or religion, until a lucky encounter with psychology during a lecture by Carl Jung who talked about traumatized psyches of the European people after World War II.

Csikszentmihalyi emigrated to the United States at the age of 22 to study psychology. He eventually became Director of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago and of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forrest College. He is the author of numerous books, as well as more than 120 articles and book chapters. He is also an honorary member of the Budapest Club and won Thinker of the Year Award in 2000.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi American study on happiness

Csikszentmihalyi studied psychology in the US in order to better understand the roots of happiness. After doing some research on the subject, he found that the results of a social survey conducted from 1956 to 1998 in America showed that only 30% of the population interviewed said they were very happy in their life, despite the raise of personal income.

This discovery lead him to conduct a study on the following subject : In our common experience, when do we feel really happy ? He interviewed over 8000 participants, mostly creative people such as artists and scientists, in order to answer to that question.
During his speech, Csikszentmihalyi gave multiple examples of what those participants had said, and one of them appeared to be very interesting, about an American composer in the 70’s who explained how it was like when he was in a phase of creation : « You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And (the music) just flows out to itself ». In this example, we can understand how a human being, in order to create something, needs to step into a new reality, a mental state in which a moment of ecstasy so intense is created that his own existence doesn’t seem to be real anymore.

A scientific explanation of a psychic experience : the « flow experience »

The American composer said that « The music just flows out », in kind of an automatic and spontaneous way. That is typically the « flow experience » Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his team analyzed during their study, which can be related to the process of created something new for an artist and how it becomes a transcendent experience for him, that can make him feel very happy. This « flow experience » can also happen during others activities, such as poetry, mathematics, play or work. Though his research, he began to understand that people were most creative, productive and often happiest when they were in this state of flow.

This phenomenon can actually be explained by science. Indeed, our nervous system is not able to process more than 110 bits of information per seconds. If we take the example of a conversation between two persons, the brain needs to process 60 bits per second in order to understand what the interlocutor is saying. That’s why you can’t understand more than two people talking at the same time. When it comes to the example of the American composer given above, we can easily grasp how the phase of creation is processed : when someone is completely focused on creating something new, he can’t be aware of anything else, including how his own body feels or his problems at home. According to Csikszentmihalyi, your body even disappears from the consciousness, as well as your identity, because all the attention revolves around something else. Thus, existence is temporarily suspended.

Csikszentmihalyi study led him to discover that seven conditions are necessary for a person to be in a flow state, regardless of education, culture or gender :

1. Complete concentration on the activity you are doing
2. Having a sense of ecstasy, of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity and immediate feedback
4. Knowing that the activity is doable, that our skills are adequate to the task.
5. Having a sense of serenity, no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Being in a kind of timelessness, thoroughly focused on the present.
7. The experience in intrinsically rewarding

How to put more and more everyday life into the « flow channel » ?

In his studies, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his team depicted the mental state people were in during their everyday life, by measuring two elements : The amount of challenge people experience and the amount of skill they think they had at that same time. An average was established based on the measurements, and located in the center of the diagram. You can be in flow when your challenges and skills are higher than the average.

For everyone, that flow channel would be when you’re doing what you really like to do. In the end, the balance between perceived challenges and skills is essential. Indeed, when a challenge is greater than the skill level, you can become anxious and stressed.

Moreover, when skill level exceeds the challenge, you can become bored and distracted. « Arousal » and « control » are complementary areas from which you can easily enter flow, you will only need a little more skills if you are in arousal, and increased challenges if you are in control. The other areas are progressively less optimal, « apathy » being the lowest. Oddly, this area is also the one most people find themselves to be in, while watching television for example. The question that is brought out from this is how to put more and more everyday life into that flow channel ? We could think that the proper way to do so would be challenging yourself as much as you can, knowing you have the abilities to succeed. This point of view is actually very interesting, in the line of positive psychology concepts based on what strengths each human being have and their abilities to improve themselves.

This TED Talk enlightens us on the fact that happiness is a necessary condition to make a life that is worth living. We can also conclude that happiness seems to be an internal state of being, as opposed to an external one, and that it can be improved by the introduction of more flow. It infers that happiness is not a rigid state, that it can be changed and that each individual has the responsibility to take control of it.