Flow Activities example essay topic

Happiness is something that can be achieved by anyone no matter what circumstances they find themselves in. The person is always in the prime circumstance to be truly happy and experience what Cskszentmihalyi, the author of the book, Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience, refers to as the "optimal experience". While the process is not difficult, it does involve dedication, desire, and a striving to be happy, no matter what. Flow is an optimal experience that is characterized by a sense of playfulness, a feeling of being in control, concentration and highly focused attention, mental enjoyment of the activity for its own sake, a distorted sense of time, and a match between the challenge at hand and one's skills The author does not attempt to outline a step-by-step method for being happy, but rather concentrates on enlightening the reader to methods of improving their outlook and motivation.

He directs their thoughts to their inner selves and to the knowledge of finding within themselves the ability to truly accomplish an amazing feat, that of finding and being in flow. He refers to flow as order in consciousness. Flow can be generally defined as the ability to be at one with one's self, with one's thoughts, with one's actions, and with one's circumstances. Although there is no real order to flow, there is a path that once take to get there and that includes six separate steps.

The first step is to make it a game, look at your task as a game, and establish rules, objectives, challenges to be overcome, and rewards. Next one should provide them with a powerful goal. As you play the game, remind yourself frequently of the overriding spiritual, social, or intellectual purpose that drive your efforts. Then simply focus, release your mind from all distractions, from within or without, focus your entire attention on the game. Then, let go don't strive or strain to achieve your objective, just enjoy the process of work. Next, you will feel ecstasy.

This is the natural result of the preceding four steps; it will hit you out of nowhere and possibly take you by surprise. Finally, your ecstatic state opens vast reservoirs of resourcefulness, creativity, and energy. Your productivity and quality of work will shoot through the roof. Some sources of flow are "making music, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, chess, and so forth (Cskszentmihalyi 72)". These activities are flow activities because they allow the person involved to learn a certain skill, set up some goals that they plan to achieve, they provide a certain feedback that is necessary, and they make control a necessary part of the activity. These activities also take the participant out of the reality of everyday life and separate them from the mortals for the time that are performing the activity.

Another example of flow activities is games and there are four types of games that one can compete in. The first is agnostic games, where your skills are pinned up against the skills of another. Second are aleatory games, which give the person the illusion of controlling the inscrutable future. Agon includes agnostic and contains games that include competition and i lnx is the name of games that involve chance such as gambling (Cskszentmihalyi 72-73.