FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL
EXPERIENCE
(Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life)
One must
particularly achieve control over instinctive drives to achieve a healthy
independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels
good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for
their own ends.
The knowledge -
or wisdom - one needs for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative. It is not a cognitive skill and as well as
intelligence requires commitment of emotions and will. It is not enough to know how to do it, one
must do it consistently and it is a painfully slow process to modify our
own habits and desires.
Pleasure by
itself does not bring happiness. We can
experience pleasure (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex) without an investment of
psychic energy. Enjoyment on the other
hand, happens only as a result of an unusual amount of attention. Pleasure is fleeting and, unlike enjoyment,
does not bring complexity (growth) to the self. If one only invests energy in new directions solely for extrinsic
rewards, one may end up no longer enjoying life, and pleasures become the only
source of positive experience. Without
enjoyment life can be endured and can even be pleasant. But it can be so only precariously,
depending on luck and the cooperation of the external environment.
Eight Components
of Enjoyment
1. Confronting
tasks that we have a chance of completing.
2. Concentration.
3. Concentration is
possible because the task has clear goals.
4. Task provides
immediate feedback.
5. A deep, effortless involvement removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
6. Enjoyable
experiences allow one to exercise a sense of control over one’s actions.
7. Concern for self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
8. Sense of time is
altered - hours pass by in minutes.
When experience is
intrinsically rewarding, one’s life is justified in the present, instead of one
being held hostage to a hypothetical future, but we must constantly re-evaluate
what we do, lest habits and past ‘wisdom’ blind us to new possibilities. The flow experience - like anything else -
is not "good" in an absolute sense, but only in that it has the
potential to make life richer, more intense and meaningful. One must distinguish between useful and
harmful forms of flow, making the most of the former and limiting the latter.
Commencement of
learning something is a flow situation – everything is new and flow absorption
is present as one struggles to master the skill. As one progresses, either boredom will ensue because there is no
more challenge (the skill has been learned at that level) or anxiety occurs
because a bigger challenge than we can cope with presents itself. Either way,
one wants to get back to flow, either by overcoming the anxiety challenge by
becoming more skilled, or taking on a challenge that will overcome the boredom,
thus getting back into flow at a more complex level.
Effects of
Family on Autotelic (Self-contained Goal)Experience
Happiness (flow)
in a family depends greatly on how much energy members invest in the mutual
relationship and especially each other’s goals.
If a person is
unwilling to adjust personal goals when starting a relationship, then a lot of
what happens in that relationship will produce disorder in the person's
consciousness because new patterns of interaction will conflict with old
patterns of expectations. If not
revised, old goals will produce frustration and entropy - if goals are changed
the self will change too, a necessary transformation for a positive
relationship.
To make family
life enjoyable, positive goals are necessary to focus psychic energies of
parents and children on common tasks.
Some goals can be general and long-term e.g. planning a particular life
style. For such goals to result in
interactions that will increase the complexity of its members, the family must
be both differentiated and integrated.
Differentiation encourages each person to develop unique traits,
maximize personal skills, set individual goals. Integration guarantees that what happens to one affects all the
others - each person's goals matter to all others.
Short term goals are also important, planning a vacation, playing a
game that a family is willing to share so as to be physically together as well
as involved in an enjoyable joint activity.
Family activities, like other flow processes, should also provide clear
feedback - keeping open channels of communication. Unless this is so there is no opportunity to reduce inevitable
tension. Unless the members of the family invest psychic energy in the relationship
(creativity, communication) conflicts are inevitable, because each has goals
that are somewhat divergent from the goals of the other members. Without good lines of communication, the
distortions will become amplified, until the relationship falls apart.
Instead of
abandoning this plan as children mature and express the opinion that family
activities as a group are "dumb", the more fruitful if more difficult
strategy is to find a new set of activities that will continue to keep the
family group involved.
Involving
children in the flow activities of the parents at an early stage may attract
their attention and, finding them challenging, will help them grow. Also, if parents talked more about their
ideals and dreams - even if these had been frustrated - the children might
develop the ambition needed to break through the complacency of their present
selves.
Unconditional
acceptance of the child by the parents allows him to relax and explore the
world without fear; otherwise psychic energy is directed to his own protection,
reducing the amount he can use for flow experiences. Without emotional security it is difficult to let go of the self
long enough to experience flow. This
doesn't mean no standards or no punishment for breaking the rules. When there is no risk attached to transgressing
rules, they become meaningless, and without meaningful rules an activity cannot
be enjoyable. Children must know
parents expect certain things from them and that specific consequences will
follow if they don't obey. But they
must also know that no matter what, the parents' concern for them is not in
question.
Children raised
in a stable environment are more apt to experience autotelic flow. They know what their parents expect - goals
and feedback are clear; they know their parents are interested in the here and
now of their lives, not whether they will get into a good college/get a good
job; they have freedom of choice including breaking the rules as long as they
are ready to face the consequences; commitment/trust allows the child to set
aside defenses and get totally involved; parents challenge the child through
increasingly complex opportunities.
When a family
has a common purpose and open channels of communication, when it provides
gradually expanding opportunities for action in a setting of trust, then life
in it becomes an enjoyable flow activity. Its members will spontaneously focus
attention on the group relationship and to a certain extent forget their
individual selves and their divergent goals to experience the joy of belonging
to a more complex system that joins separate consciousness in a unified goal.
Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for
one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting
investment of attention. Otherwise it is just an empty gesture, a hypocritical
pretence indistinguishable from disinterest.
In unstable
families a lot of energy is used in constant negotiations and strife and in the
children's attempts to protect their fragile selves from being overwhelmed by
other people's goals.
When adversity
threatens to paralyse us, we need to reassert control by finding a new
direction for psychic energy - a source outside the reach of external
forces. Narcissistic people, mainly
concerned with self, fall apart when external forces turn threatening. The panic prevents them from doing what they
must do; attention turns inward to try to restore order to consciousness and
not enough remains to negotiate outside reality and without interest in the
world - a desire to be related to it - a person becomes isolated into himself.
Bertrand Russell
said "Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies;
I came to centre my attention increasingly on external objects, the state of
the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt
affection." This is how to build
an autotelic, self-actualized personality.
Unless a person
knows how to give order to his/her thoughts, attention will be attracted to
whatever is most problematic at the moment; it will focus on some real or
imaginary pain, on recent grudges or long-term frustrations. Entropy (chaos) is the normal state of
consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
Those who try to
make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives
first usually end up making things worse all around.
Why are some
weakened by stress, while others gain strength from it? The ones who grow have learned to transform
a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled, enjoy
themselves and emerge stronger.
Three Steps in
the Transformation:
1. Unselfconscious
self-assurance - evidenced in severe physical ordeals. Arctic explorers wandering alone believe
their destiny is in their hands but
the ego is absent. They do not see themselves in opposition to the environment but realize they have to
sublimate or adapt their goals to the system in which they must operate at the
time (e.g. car won't start when in a hurry to get somewhere so it is necessary
to adapt - call a cab, cancel appointment, etc. instead of getting more and
more frustrated by turning the ignition key.)
2. Focus attention
on the world - by paying attention to what is occurring around oneself, looking
outward, the effects are lessened. One
becomes part of the environment, participating in it, helping one find a better
way to adapt to a problematic situation.
New possibilities are likely to emerge which may suggest new responses
and one is less likely to be entirely cut off from the stream of life.
3. Discovery of new
solutions - one can focus on the obstacles to one's goals and move them out of
the way or focus on the entire situation to discover if alternative goals
wouldn't be better - thus different solutions would be possible.
The Making of
Meaning
As long as
enjoyment follows piecemeal from activities not linked to one another in a
meaningful way, one is still subject to the vagaries of chaos. The ultimate
goal - no matter what it is - must be compelling enough to order a lifetime's
worth of psychic energy and give significance to one's life. This is achieving purpose.
The purpose must
result in strivings, intent has to be translated into action which is
resolution in the pursuit of one's goals.
"He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." - William
Blake
Someone who
knows his desires and works with purpose to achieve them is a person whose
thoughts, feelings and actions are congruent and has therefore achieved inner
harmony.
Four Stages to Cultivate
Purpose
[Note the In/Out
'tide flow' of the 4 steps - A is 'in', B is 'out', C is 'in', D is 'out'.[
A.
Everyone begins with a need to preserve self, to keep the body and its
basic goals from disintegrating (survival, comfort, pleasure).
B.
When bodily safety is no longer in doubt, one may expand one’s horizons
to include family, neighbourhood, religious or ethnic groups leading to more
complexity even though it usually implies conformity to conventional norms and
standards. Many get 'stuck' in this
mode, not desiring to go beyond.
C.
The next step is reflective individualism, turning inward to find new
grounds for authority and value. One no
longer blindly conforms but develops an autonomous conscience. The main goal becomes the desire for growth,
improvement and actualization of potential.
Fewer still reach this level.
D.
The fourth step, building on all the others, is a final turning away
from the self, back toward an integration with others and with universal
values. This extremely individualized
person willingly merges his interests with those of a larger whole - a cause,
an idea, a transcendental entity.
Forging Resolve
Purpose gives
direction but doesn't necessarily make life easier. Goals can lead to all sorts
of trouble and one is tempted to give them up and find some less demanding
script to order one's actions. However, the price paid for changing goals
whenever opposition threatens is that while life may become more pleasant and
comfortable, it is likely to end up empty and void of meaning. Because there is
such a wide variety of choices, increasing as humans and life in general become
more complex, it is imperative that one knows oneself. A review of one's actions one or more
times a day to see if what one has been doing is consistent with long term
goals is one route to self-knowledge (the Jesuits' meditation). Action by itself is blind, reflection by
itself impotent. It pays one to raise
the fundamental questions: is it something I want to do; - do I enjoy it; -
will I enjoy it in the foreseeable future; - is the price I (and others) will
have to pay worth it? If one doesn't
know oneself, these seemingly simple questions are difficult or impossible to
answer.
Unification of
Meaning in Life Themes
Goal-directed
actions provide shape and meaning to one's life, giving it a 'life-theme' and
consciousness achieves harmony.
However, not all
life themes are equally productive.
Authentic projects tend to be intrinsically motivated, chosen for what they
are worth in themselves; inauthentic ones are motivated by external focus. A similar distinction is that which is
between discovered life themes, when a person writes the script for her
actions out of personal experiences and awareness of choices; and accepted
life themes, when a person simply takes on a predetermined role from a script
written long ago by others.
Discovered life
themes can seem crazy or destructive to others because they come from personal
struggles to define the purpose of life and they may have less social
legitimacy, being outside the norm, yet be absolutely essential for one to
find, via the trial/error process, what has true value for the self.
Accepted life
themes make one vulnerable to the intentions and agendas of others and can trap
the person into perverted goals.
To find purpose
in suffering, one must interpret it as a possible challenge. What transforms the consequences of a
traumatic event into a challenge that gives meaning to life is one's
development of a "dissipative structure", i.e. the ability to break
down an unusable whole into useable parts, to draw order from disorder. If one assumes that external events must
determine psychic outcomes, then it makes sense to see the neurotic response to
suffering as normal; and the constructive response as 'defence' or
'sublimation'. But if one assumes that
people have a choice in how they respond to external events, in what meaning
they attribute to suffering, then one can interpret the constructive response
as normal and the neurotic one as a failure to rise to the challenge, as a
breakdown in the ability to flow.
According to
Dante in "The Inferno", in Hell one can witness the sufferings of
those who had never chosen a goal, and the even worse fate of those whose
purpose in life had been to increase entropy - the so-called sinners.
To extract
meaning from a system of beliefs, one must first compare the information
contained in it with one’s own concrete experience, retain what makes sense,
and then reject the rest.
Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
Home
|
Our Stories
|
The Sublime
|
Our World and Times
|
Book Reviews
|
Marnie's Images
|
The Journal
|
Gleanings
|
From The Writings Of. . .
|
Allegories
|