Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. - J. S. MILL
Go with the flow. Catch the wave. Ride the big Kahuna. Wouldn't I just love to! How about you?
But real life these days rarely includes a stop at Surf City unless you live in Malibu.
Whenever we experience the Flow, we experience a luminous liftoff: we're alert, soaring, unselfconscious, authentic, moving at the peak of our abilities.
We forget food, drink, sex, sleep. Why?
We're fueled by high-octane Love. Calling forth our gifts at the top of our lungs to a celestial "Bravo!" Reveling in our passion.
We don't need positive-thinking mantras to motivate us; happiness propels us at Warp 9 toward our aspirations. Obstacles dissolve in the Flow. Toxic emotions, anxieties, and depression disappear. We're in this world, but certainly not of it. Here we experience a profound pleasure not found in the erogenous or erroneous zones, a peace that surpasses our puny understanding.
Exhilaration. Joy. Transformative transcendence.
What you're really looking for when you ask the doctor for Prozac.
What you thought sex was when you were sixteen.
The bad news is that we don't ride the big Kahuna often enough. The good news is that the Flow can be invoked and induced; it's even expected to become one of the most productive specialties of psychological research in the next decade.
For the last twenty years Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been pioneering the scientific study of joy, scrutinizing altered states of "optimal experience," those moments when we feel deeply connected with Real Life, which he labels "flow."
He believes that exhilaration can be part of everyday life, and I'm a believer. Reading his incredible book Flow: The Psychologyoif Optimal Experience might make a believer out of you.
What’s more, going with the Flow is most often attained with simple pleasures, even work, when we bring the right attitude and attention to our tasks.
Complete consciousness-focusing our psychic energy on what we're doing-induces the Flow. As we learn to shut out chaos, concentrating our creative energies within, our attention fuels our ability to accelerate beyond our normal capacities.
When working, playing, or creating, ritual plays an important role in preparing our minds, bodies, and souls to tap into the mother lode. The particular way you arrange your desk at the beginning of the day, the soft pencil you prefer, the music you listen to when you write in your discovery journal is an invocation to the Flow.
Small moments-reading, gardening, cooking, arts, and, crafts-take on new meaning when we honor them as waves on which to catch the Flow.
Exploring your family's heritage, commemorating special moments or people in your life by collecting and displaying talismans, can invite the Flow by linking the past with the present.
Exploring your family's heritage, commemorating special moments or people in your life by collecting and displaying talismans, can invite the Flow by linking the past with the present.
Varying the routines of your daily round can induce the Flow because novelty increases the frequency of the waves; thinking of lovemaking in new ways can fan waves of desire previously doused with familiarity.
Memorizing favorite quotes, poetry, songs, and facts and enlivening our conversation with them, evokes the Flow.
Mastering a game, sport, or new skill activates the Flow process. But so does solitude and daydreaming.
Indulging your imagination brings the big Kahuna within reach, because your imagination is your soul's way of communicating with your conscious mind.
"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences," Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reminds us. "Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe."
