In this PN TV episode, we take a quick look at some of my favorite Big Ideas from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s GREAT book, “Flow”–including the importance of learning how to control the contents of our consciousness as well as how to get ourselves more consistently into the state of optimal experience known as Flow. Hope you enjoy!
P.S. I mention this blog post you might like: How I Mind Map!
(And, yes, I know. I got my x– and y-axis confused in the video. D’oh! 
)
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Bri–
No doubt that if you’re in the flow, you will have gas to go!! Definitely, agree about it takes practice to build your skills, even in the old coconut upstairs.. I like the way you describe the flow, and the story of the two workers with the same job, and what one did opposed to the other.. Man my head is screwed back on again and it look like I have a lot more work to do (that would be on myself).. Thanks! ☺
RW
hehe. love it, randy!
Brian, I just listened to your notes on “Flow”. Help me to understand something. I live with a man that works on an assembly line and loved what you said about how a person can train his mind to the positiveness and making it a challenge. I see him give his all at work but when he comes home at night (he works 3–11 pm shift) he has nothing to give and in the morning he has nothing to give because he is geering up his mind to go back and start the flow all over again. He does this over and over again, six or seven days a week. He flows so much at work that his personal life is nill. He thinks that as long as he can perform sexually some mornings our relationship should not suffer, but it does. Oh man, after re-reading this email, I sound like I am the one that does not know how to flow. Thanks for listening…
hey jackie: i love your conclusion.
i think the best way to handle relationship challenges is always to start by looking at what WE can do–not what *they* can do. so, my question for you would be this: what can YOU do to build flow in your life?!
–bri
The idea that came through to me in this episode is having the right balance of skills and challenges for an effective flow. I have been in an idle state for a while due to my physical health and I found that I created challenges to keep my mind occupied while I worked on healing. It has been a period of great growth and when I am in the balance between challenge and skills the growth on both fronts accelerates. Knowing what it feels like to be out of balance (out of flow) vs. what it feels like to be in the flow is a perfect mind/body barometer.
Your show is a great start to my day…Thanks!
love it, russ!! he talks about exactly those kinds of things in the book, too. prisoners of war who would play golf in their minds or recite poetry with other inmates to focus their minds and stay healthy!
excited to start your day with you and thx for sharing!
–bri
Sounds like you took a potential problem and turned it into opportunity. I’m inspired, thanks for sharing
Thanks! Yes I’m 61 years old and life has taught me nothing if it hasn’t taught me that every situation has numerous possibilities. The choice you make determines the outcome and always leads to growth.
Amen. I’m 26, and I’ll take that advice to heart
Thanks for sharing.
Brian,
I agree with the idea that you need to practice getting into flow or anything else. So many times, we think about something that would have a very positive impact on our lives but don’t act on it.
I also like the example of looking at your skills vs the challenge. If we paid attention to that, we could just keep making little adjustments to get back into or at least closer to flow.
Thanks!
Sally
awesome, sally.
so true on how often we think about the positive things but don’t implement em!! and YES! on the skills and challenge!
thx for sharing and have an awesome day!
–bri
Hi Brian,
I have only recently discovered this place and have been enjoying your videos in sequence (which are awesome by the way! Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us all!). I had to skip to this one however, because I noticed you talking about something that I have previously come across at work. I thought it was really interesting when I first heard about it, but didn’t think about applying it to myself. (Some background: we have an online school survey evaluation system, which aims to help increase student engagement amongst other things. One of the measures we look at is this idea of flow. We can map students who take our survey on the grid you described, and show what percentage is in each quartile. The purpose of this is to help increase student engagement, student retention, achievement, and obviously happiness & mental health, and all the good things that come along with that). Anyway, my point is that even though this idea of flow was right in front of me, I didn’t think of it in terms of my own happiness until you pointed it out, so I would like to say thank you for that! The concept of flow is something that has been lacking in my life for too long, and now I’m thinking about it, it is strangely something that occurs much for naturally and freely when you’re younger. I think I need to get back to that.
wow! thx for your awesome comment, helen. gave me goosebumps!
i’m thrilled you experienced how you could apply the idea that you already knew so much about to your own life. this is really why i’m so excited about sharing PN–inspiring us to take the stuff we already know and really live it!
thx again for sharing and here’s to flow!
Brian,
What do you think the biggest ideas are for helping the dominant consumer culture in the world enter into more of a flow state?
I think one solution may be to encourage individuals to produce more than they consume and learn to live while consuming less (kind of like “the leavers & the takers” metaphor in Daniel Quinn’s book “Ishmael.”
hey chris:
part of a much longer chat. quickly: i agree on the produce more than you consume. don’t agree on training peeps to consume less per se. i think it’s misguided to think we’re going to get peeps to consume less. i say we enjoy life and consume BETTER/more wisely. let’s find super creative sustainable solutions including going cradle to cradle a la McDonough & co.
http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
the real problem as it relates to Flow is the fact that peeps have their ideas on what will make them happy TOTALLY backwards. from the Note:
Flow at Work and in Leisure
“Thus we have a paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.”
That’s funny.
We’ve got such a poor idea of what actually makes us feel good. And, work has a really bad rap for some weird reason. Put the two together and you’ve got, well, our modern society.
The key here: Let’s remember what brings us into flow (goal directed activities that match our skills with the challenge!) and enjoy the opportunities we naturally have at work to get into flow while consciously creating more opportunities to do so in our leisure time!
And, let’s not forget: “Because work is so universal, yet so varied, it makes a tremendous difference to one’s overall contentment whether what one does for a living is enjoyable or not. Thomas Carlyle was not far wrong when he wrote, ‘Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessings.’ Sigmund Freud amplified somewhat on this simple advice. When asked his recipe for happiness, he gave a very short but sensible answer: ‘Work and love.’”
hey chris:
part of a much longer chat. quickly: i agree on the produce more than you consume. don’t agree on training peeps to consume less per se. i think it’s misguided to think we’re going to get peeps to consume less. i say we enjoy life and consume BETTER/more wisely. let’s find super creative sustainable solutions including going cradle to cradle a la McDonough & co.
http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
the real problem as it relates to Flow is the fact that peeps have their ideas on what will make them happy TOTALLY backwards. from the Note:
Flow at Work and in Leisure
“Thus we have a paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.”
That’s funny.
We’ve got such a poor idea of what actually makes us feel good. And, work has a really bad rap for some weird reason. Put the two together and you’ve got, well, our modern society.
The key here: Let’s remember what brings us into flow (goal directed activities that match our skills with the challenge!) and enjoy the opportunities we naturally have at work to get into flow while consciously creating more opportunities to do so in our leisure time!
And, let’s not forget: “Because work is so universal, yet so varied, it makes a tremendous difference to one’s overall contentment whether what one does for a living is enjoyable or not. Thomas Carlyle was not far wrong when he wrote, ‘Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessings.’ Sigmund Freud amplified somewhat on this simple advice. When asked his recipe for happiness, he gave a very short but sensible answer: ‘Work and love.’”
LOVE. IT.
thank you Brian. thank you thank you! embrace the greatness.
thx, craig!!!
to embracing and expressing our greatness!
Bri — I like the ideas in Flow, but I’m partial to “Overachievement” by John Eliot
Any plans for a TV episode on that one?
Thanks again for a great start to the day.
hah! nice, chris! love it. soon…
Hi Brian,
Great info on flow. I found a missing link for my life in the teachings. In my experience it has been oh so common to go from bored to stressed to overwhelmed to collapse onto recovery and then the cycle starts again with a different challenge (work) to ge me fired up. Sure I would excel at whatever I was doing at the time but ultimately would find myself burning out. Very destructive.
I got a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) when you did your axis example.
Thank you for this great session.
AWESOME, karen!! so excited to hear about the BFO and really appreciate you sharing!
here’s to laying with our edges and finding the rhythms that work for us!