Get into your own FLOW
If you ask someone what happiness is, variable definitions or explanations can pop up. Deep diving further into different theories, researches and opinions, it gets even more complicated, ending up being a personal and highly subjective definition, that each one of us will finally give. There are observed though, some common findings regarding happiness definition, so over last decades there has been a great effort from researchers to identify drivers and cluster them, in order to enable our insights and navigation towards this desired destination. In stats, it is highly observed the perception that Happiness is more about multiplying happy moments or making them last longer, rather than a long lasting achievement of a HAPPY life. Also Happiness is usually described as a state of mind, with a short-medium time duration, influenced by several factors, highly variable & subjective rather than objective and fact based. Talking more and more often about creating moments and extending frequency, TIME pops up once again as a key element contributing to this state of mind.
Time can be a key contributor to happiness related to below context:
· Where I spend my time
· How I spend my time
· With Whom I spend my time
“Where I spend my time", "What keeps me Inspired" and other factors that give me the drive to "Keep Going", is described in positive psychology, with the word “FLOW”. Have you ever been completely and utterly immersed in a task? Oblivious to the outside world, focused only on your own progress and what’s going on right here and now? Maybe you’ve been doing something you love, like playing music or a certain sport, before realizing that time has totally passed you by? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, it’s likely that you’ve been experiencing a state of Flow.
When I started deep diving in this content of "FLOW" further, I must admit that excitement was the less that I felt. Word FLOW by itself is deliberating, providing highly inspirational context. Trying to stay relevant to "well-being" FLOW context, I read several researches of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, (a founding father of Positive Psychology and of the concept “Flow.”). The essence of flow by Csíkszentmihályi outlines a theory that people are happiest when they are in a state of flow—a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what they are doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfilment, and skill, during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.
"…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost."
What are the main FLOW ingredients?
· Involvement with something that is meaningful & valuable
· Accelerated Focus that keeps you highly involved
· Balanced challenge that drives capabilities excel
· Absence of Time Sense- Time flies without even noticing
· Win -win feeling after each and every action
Flow key benefits:
· Development of a creative insight, source of continuous inspiration and passion.
· Enabler for persistence in goals achievement and well being
· Upskilling, via health challenge drive yourself into next level
· Performance accelerator, Motivational and engagement boost factor.
There is no frontier, no end point in our capacity for optimal adjustment– to be well or to love. There is only our capacity to push ourselves a little further than where we have been before. As we grow and our definition of self, intimacy and achievement expands; we chose to encompass the world within our spheres and a sense of life purpose and joy arises.
Flow is highly experiential, can be in a more poetic and abstract way described as captured in Constantine Cavafy’s poet "ITHAKA", a poem reminding us that the journey is more important than the destination, where experiences themselves, challenging enough, will enrich life make it meaningful, getting you into a real FLOW worth leading it. Emphasizing on the importance of enjoying the process - "the journey" and not only longing for a its end (final destination). The Goal (destination) is there to guide you -not to rule you, you are in charge of your own way, of your own experiences gain. Poet's metaphor \can be extended to many of life’s processes.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.