moodwatchers The Psychology of Flow SESSION TWO Some principles - - PDF document

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moodwatchers

The Psychology of Flow SESSION TWO

Some principles from last session

• The Role of Thinking in Mood – Illogical and irrational

thinking ( Is it helpful? Fair? True?)

• It’s not events per se which determine our feelings but

the meanings that we attach to them.

• Information processing becomes distorted when we

experience emotional distress.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Flow is a term coined within Positive Psychology
• Being completely involved in an activity for its
• wn sake
• The ego falls away
• Time flies

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• A state of complete absorption in a complex and

challenging activity that stretches one’s skills.

• Csikszentmihalyi has made the exploration of

flow the centerpiece of his career because he believes that being in flow generates the peak experiences in our lives.

• The more flow we experience, he suggests, the

happier we are.

• Recent studies have shown that life satisfaction

and happiness correlate with better health and improved longevity (Veenhoven 2006).

• Not only does happiness feel good, but happy

people are more likely to engage in healthy behaviours, and experience less illness.

So what are the characteristics of a flow experience?

• They include clear goals, decisiveness, the merging of

action and awareness, complete (yet effortless) concentration, a sense of control, loss of self- consciousness, an altered sense of time, immediate feedback and an autotelic emphasis (Csikszentmihalyi 1993; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi 2002).

• The word autotelic is used to describe experiences

where one is focused solely on the activity itself, not

• n how it will affect one’s ego

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• Having plenty of flow experiences in our lives

enhances our well-being, yet in a German study

• nly 23% of people surveyed said they often

experienced flow and 40% rarely or never had flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi 1997).

• Especially crucial for children and adolescents to

develop skills and activities that produce flow, bringing life satisfaction, self-esteem and efficacy early in life.

Flow examples

• Toy soldiers
• Piano
• Old man in the cottage
• The manicurist
• Two brothers
• The surgeon

FLOW

• Doing things you love
• Doing things you’re good at
• Starting new things
• Being stretched
• Being positively selfish

4 The right balance

• Over-skilled – Bored
• Under-skilled – stressed
• Being stretched

The eight ingredients of flow

• The experience occurs usually when we are

involved in tasks that we have a good chance of completing.

• We are able to concentrate fully on the activity.
• The task has clear goals.
• The task is such that it gives us immediate

feedback on how well we are doing.

The eight ingredients of flow

• Our involvement is ‘deep but effortless’ and this ‘removes

from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life’.

• There is a sense of exercising a sense of control over our

actions.

• ‘Concern for the self disappears’ but paradoxically our

‘sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is

• ver’.
• We lose our normal sense of time – we can feel either that

is has speeded up (and passed quickly) or slowed down.

5 STRESS BUSTER FOR THIS WEEK

• FLOW
• Two New Syndromes
• Serious Boring Person Syndrome
• Serious Busy Person Syndrome

For next week

• 2 STRESS BUSTERS IN OPERATION
• APPLYING – TAPPING INTO YOUR OWN

INTERNAL DIALOGUE

• THE TWO QUESTIONS