Most of the forces that shape our lives are outside our control. We don’t get to choose where we are born or who our parents are. We (still) cannot choose how tall we are or other genetic predispositions. There is nothing we could do to prevent a war or the economic collapse of our country. That’s why, most of the time, we feel like our lives are out of our hands.
In addition to this, great thinkers from time immemorial and up to this day have agreed that most of our lives are spent on a pendulum that swings from boredom to stress.
Also, how often are we really living in the present moment? How much of our lives are spent dwelling on the past or worrying about the future?
So far, the picture I've painted of an average human life isn’t very pretty. But if we are honest, we will recognize that it’s realistic.
However, this is not to say that our lives suck.
There are moments when we do feel a sense of control—moments when there is no boredom but no stress or anxiety either. There are moments when both the past and the future cease to exist and we inhabit the present moment in its entirety. Moments when we feel like we are reaching our full human capacity.
Or, as someone who spent decades studying these moments described them:
"Yet we have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like."
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called these moments "optimal experiences." The concept of flow, which Csikszentmihalyi is known for "inventing", describes a state that produces the optimal experience. That’s why, in the rest of the text, I will be using the terms "flow," "flow experience," and "optimal experience" interchangeably, as Csikszentmihalyi did.
"...optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery—or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life—that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine."
One thing that Csikszentmihalyi realized, and what got him to dedicate his life to studying optimal experiences, was that, even though these moments often feel mystical and you are blessed if they occasionally happen to you, it is in fact possible to live a life where optimal experiences are a daily part of your life.
And one of the first steps toward achieving this is understanding the structure of optimal experiences. The good news is that the research of Csikszentmihalyi and his colleagues showed that optimal experiences are described in the same way by women and men, young and old, regardless of the part of the world they are living in, cultural differences, and socio-economic situations. That’s why this architecture of enjoyment will apply to everyone’s life.
Every time an optimal experience is described, at least one, but often all, of the following eight components, will be mentioned:
1.There is a balance between our skills and the challenge.
It is certainly true that we experience enjoyment, even joy and ecstasy, in moments that present no challenge to us and don’t require us to possess or use any skills. However, by far the overwhelming proportion of optimal experiences are to be found in activities that have clear goals and rules, require the investment of our attention and energy, and cannot be performed without a specific set of skills. And one crucial condition that needs to be fulfilled is that the challenge of this activity is proportional to our skills.
As Csikszentmihalyi noticed, if the challenge is too low relative to our current skills, boredom ensues. On the other hand, if our current skills are far below the requirements of the challenge, the result is anxiety. In order for us to fall into the flow state and experience true enjoyment, there must be a balance between the challenge and our skills.
"Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act."
2.We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
When all your relevant skills are needed to deal with the challenge at hand, your attention is completely absorbed by that activity.
"There is no excess psychic energy left over to process any information but what the activity offers. All the attention is concentrated on the relevant stimuli."
A dancer interviewed about her optimal experience during a performance said:
"Your concentration is very complete. Your mind isn’t wandering, you are not thinking of something else; you are totally involved in what you are doing…. Your energy is flowing very smoothly. You feel relaxed, comfortable, and energetic."
However, we can also learn about optimal experience from a mother who devotes time to her daughter:
“Her reading is the one thing that she’s really into, and we read together. She reads to me, and I read to her, and that’s a time when I sort of lose touch with the rest of the world, I’m totally absorbed in what I’m doing."
The next two points go hang-in-hand.
“The task undertaken has (3.) clear goals and (4.) provides immediate feedback.”
The level of concentration we talked about in the previous point is possible because our activity has clear goals and provides us with feedback. The component of goals and feedback will look differently in different activities, as the rock climber and the dancer are receiving feedback every second, while the gardener's goals and feedback are stretched out over a far longer time period. However, the importance of goals and feedback is equal for all of them.
One thing to note is that we cannot "fix the game." We cannot set trivial goals and expect to receive enjoyment from achieving them. Csikszentmihalyi provides an example that, although comical, unfortunately, describes what most people’s lives amount to.
"If I set as my goal to remain alive while sitting on the living room sofa, I also could spend days knowing that I was achieving it, just as the rock climber does. But this realization would not make me particularly happy, whereas the climber’s knowledge brings exhilaration to his dangerous ascent."
5.Involvement in this activity removes from our awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
In our normal everyday existence, our minds are easy targets for unwanted negative thoughts and worries that do nothing but take us out of the present moment and project either into an uncomfortable memory or a negative vision of the future. And because most jobs and home life in general lack the demands of flow experiences, our concentration is rarely so intense as to eliminate these worries and anxieties.
"One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life."
This feature is a by-product of the fact that flow-inducing activities require a complete focus of our attention on the task at hand. This leaves no room in our minds for irrelevant information.
"This is one reason why flow improves the quality of experience: the clearly structured demands of the activity impose order, and exclude the interference of disorder in consciousness."
A professor of physics who was an avid rock climber described his state of mind while climbing as follows:
"It is as if my memory input has been cut off. All I can remember is the last thirty seconds, and all I can think ahead is the next five minutes."
Any activity that requires concentration has a similarly narrow window of time. For example, surfing has an even narrower window of time. As I was told by a Sri Lankan surfer:
"When you are surfing, the only thing that exists is this second right now, and right now, and right now."
6.Enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.
There is an important distinction to be made here. What people enjoy in these experiences is not a sense of being in control, but a sense of exercising control.
Being in control would mean being in a routine, in one’s comfort zone. The challenge wouldn’t be high enough relative to one’s skills. On the other hand, exercising control requires putting yourself in difficult and challenging situations that take you out of your comfort zone. Exercising control means using your skills and competence to move safely and successfully through a challenging task.
"It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines. Only when a doubtful outcome is at stake and one is able to influence that outcome, can a person really know whether she is in control."
7.“Concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.”
Besides optimal experience removing the past and future from our awareness, there is another item that gets removed from it. And according to Csikszentmihalyi, this one deserves special mention "because in normal life we spend so much time thinking about it: our own self."
"Preoccupation with the self consumes psychic energy because, in everyday life, we often feel threatened. Whenever we are threatened, we need to bring the image we have of ourselves back into awareness, so we can find out whether or not the threat is serious, and how we should meet it. For instance, if walking down the street I notice some people turning back and looking at me with grins on their faces, the normal thing to do is immediately to start worrying: "Is there something wrong? Do I look funny? Is it the way I walk, or is my face smudged?" Hundreds of times every day we are reminded of the vulnerability of our self. And every time this happens psychic energy is lost trying to restore order to consciousness. But in flow there is no room for self-scrutiny. Because enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules, and challenges well matched to skills, there is little opportunity for the self to be threatened. When a climber is making a difficult ascent, he is totally taken up in the mountaineering role. He is 100 percent a climber, or he would not survive."
But what about the paradox of the self emerging stronger after being lost in the flow experience? When looked at more closely, this relationship is not as paradoxical as it seems.
In flow, we are challenged to do our best, and we must constantly improve our skills. During the experience itself, we don’t have time, energy, or attention to spare for reflecting on what this growth and improvement means in terms of the self. If we allowed ourselves to become self-conscious, the experience would stop being deep.
"But afterward, when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements."
Occasionally giving up self-consciousness is necessary for building a stronger, higher self.
8.“The sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.”
Since everyone reading this has had at least a couple of flow experiences in their life, this would surely be one of the first things they mentioned when asked to describe their experience. The most frequent thing is to note that it felt like time was passing much faster. However, sometimes the opposite occurs. A ballet dancer described how a difficult turn that takes less than a second in real time stretches out for what seems like minutes:
"Two things happen. One is that it seems to pass really fast in one sense. After it’s passed, it seems to have passed really fast. I see that it’s 1:00 in the morning, and I say: ‘Aha, just a few minutes ago it was 8:00.’ But then while I’m dancing…it seems like it’s been much longer than maybe it really was."
What you can do with this information is pretty straightforward. Take a close look at how you are spending your time. What activities in your life tick at least one of these 8 "boxes," if not all? What activities that you’ve done in the past but decided "you don’t have time" for fit into this description? How about rearranging your priorities so that there is time in your life once again for those optimal experiences? What are some new activities that you could introduce into your routine that would fit this description?
I leave you with those questions and with a promise. I will dedicate my time to studying this topic further in the hopes of helping you live a life filled with optimal experiences. However, I must admit it’s a selfish promise, as one of my favorite optimal experiences in life is researching and writing for you.
Thank you for reading.
How lovely was this piece! 🥹 Again, the perspectives and reflections you offer really make me think deeply and allow myself to feel into the ideas you so generously and meaningfully conceptualize for us! Currently, I work in retail and honestly, I’m really enjoying my work. The fast pace, the frequent interactions… while this whole article resonates, #7 made me pause and smile. Because I know that feeling! I get lost in my interactions with consumers, fully immersed and I love seeing them feel safe and free and excited and open and happy to work with me. And when they leave, I get to reflect on my performance, what they taught me and how I see myself in relation to everything. Those moments really make it all worth it! I definitely plan to reread this one many times over. Thanks for always offering me such clarity 😊
point 2 focus has become a powerful superpower in today's society that needs to be tamed. Is there a way to chat via Instagram? (@Alfatih.aldhaatiu)