Yes And No

Flow and Positive Psychology

Naturally, the next point of interest for positive psychologists became how Flow could be created, controlled, and understood in relation to other aspects of the self that allow us to flourish.

Flow became fascinating to positive psychologists already looking at performance, goal orientation, creativity, attention, and of course, emotions. Only a little after that, the concept grew more popular with researchers such as Deci and Ryan (1985), who were interested in Flow within intrinsic motivation.

Most importantly, it’s been considered a huge part of improving our human experience for its role in living a meaningful life (Seligman, 2002: 249). A life in which we use our virtues and strengths for ‘something much larger’ than we are, where we spend less time worrying about the inauthentic and the mundane. Where we’re less annoyed by the boredom of the too-easy, or overwhelmed by the frustration of the too-challenging.

Understanding how to enter the flow state, and maintain it, therefore, is seen as a great way to enjoy the activities we get engaged in.

The Work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Csikszentmihalyi often describes Flow as an autotelic experience. An autotelic experience quite simply describes an activity that’s pleasant, enjoyable, and intrinsically motivating.

It’s perhaps a little easier to understand how Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work has impacted the field of positive psychology if we consider the nine different dimensions that comprise the concept.

The universal factors of flow, per Csikszentmihalyi’s studies (1990; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002), include:

• Challenge-skill balance;
• Action-awareness merging;
• Clear goals;
• Unambiguous feedback;
• Concentration on the task at hand;
• A sense of control;
• Loss of self-consciousness;
• Transformation of time; and
• Autotelic experience.

We’ll look a little closer at these throughout the rest of this article, as well as some Flow state triggers that help to put them into context.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s popular book, the Flow state encompasses the meaningful instances in life that make it worth living: “You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and a sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger.”