Go with the Flow~

It was #WorldBookDay on 23 April and I came to know rather late through someone’s LinkedIn post. Unfortunately, not much hype and press that the day deserves!

I am using this opportunity to strongly recommend a book I completed reading recently. After a long time, a book that has left me inspired and energized!

The book's name is Flow and is written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I am sure many of you have already heard about the book. It features in many lists as a must-read book but somehow, I got my hands on it only recently. The author is a well-renowned Hungarian-American psychologist and a revered academician and whose TED videos are also extremely popular.

A book that tells you what is flow, where you can find it, who can achieve it, and also how it can be achieved. In today's world full of distractions and information overload, concentration is the limited currency of high value.

Sharing with you ten gems extracted from the book that I found useful and worth pondering. I am sure some of them will resonate with you too:

1) Know thyself - Often preached by many ancient philosophies and philosophers but rarely practiced in the truest sense by most of us. How much time do we really give for self-reflection, knowing our uniqueness and limitations, understanding which strengths/skills to hone, and understanding our true purpose. [It all starts with the basics; being self-aware.]

2) The information we allow into consciousness is extremely important as it determines the content and quality of our life. [We need to be cautious of what we consume i.e. news, knowledge, conversations, what we see, and how we translate it in our own minds.]

3) Attention is psychic energy. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Our memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use our attention. Hence, attention is the most important tool in improving the quality of our experience. When a person cannot control this psychic energy, neither learning nor true enjoyment is possible. [ Complete focus on the right things is important.]

4) Optimal experience can be achieved when our skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear feedback. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left to think about anything irrelevant. Self-consciousness disappears and also the sense of time. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people want to do it for its own sake with little concern for what they will get out of it. [The ingredients and system for creating flow situations]

5) The quality of life depends on two factors- how we experience work and our relations with other people. The most detailed information about who we are as individuals come from those we communicate with, and from the way we accomplish our jobs. [What and how we do and share with others]

6) How we define and interpret a social situation makes a great difference to how people will treat one another and how they will feel while doing it. [What you see is a reflection of you.]

7) The most useful of all virtues and also the one that can improve the quality of life is the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. To admire this quality means we pay attention to those who embody it and we thereby have a chance to emulate them if the need arises. [Start by appreciating courage as a virtue]

8) Almost every situation we encounter in life presents possibilities for growth [Positive Mindset and perspective]

9) Autotelic self is the self that has self-contained goals and is a person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on and is in flow most of the time.

10) To develop an autotelic self means setting goals that provide constant purpose, being immersed in the activity, paying attention to what is happening, ability to sustain involvement, getting rid of self-consciousness, and eventually cultivating inner harmony (feelings, thoughts, and actions are congruent with one another to achieve life's purpose that you have identified)

P.S: There is always the knowing and doing gap I suffer from. I see this book as an app that can help to fill the gaps. An app that I see going back to again and again in the future.

Will be curious to know which gems resonated with you.

#flow #book #gowiththeflow #inspirational #mihalycsikszentmihaly