Question: What drives us? Humans search for happiness and personal growth.
Answer: Flow state.
You’ve heard of flow state before. It’s when you’re in the zone. When you’re working on something and you’re so deep that an hour feels like 5 minutes.
Maybe you’ve felt this way on a trip with friends and the conversation is so good you can talk for hours and time flies.
If you’re lucky, you’ve felt this way at your job.
You can feel this way at your job.
It’s an incredibly productive way to feel at your job. Flow in the workplace is something to strive for.
Why?
Because it creates happiness.
According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (we’ll call him, The Psych). Happiness, he explains, isn’t just something that happens. We can’t buy it with money or command it to happen no matter how much power we have.
Happiness doesn’t depend on outside events – it depends on our interpretation of outside events.
Happiness is a condition which can be prepared for and cultivated. It’s the ability to control our own inner experience that will determine the quality of our lives.
We cultivate happiness through seeking what The Psych calls, flow.
Flow, at its essence, is the ultimate natural expression of the human desire to grow and stretch.
Great. Here’s your exercise.
Exercise Part 1:
Copy the text below, in your notepad, word for word:
Flow is the moment of struggling and reaching out your hand for a goal to overcome a challenge.
When asked to cite the most enjoyable moment of their lives, people usually recall these moments – the challenge of helping build something or raising a child.
A person who is chasing consciously chosen goals can’t help but grow into a deeper, more complex individual.
It’s in stretching skills, reaching up for higher challenges, that we become increasingly complex and more capable individuals and, consequently, more valuable to the marketplace.
Think back to the moments in your life where you remember being the happiest. What were the moments where you were working on something only to look up and realize hours had flown by? When time whizzed by in a blur because you were so immersed in the work.
These are the moments of Flow.
We cultivate happiness through seeking flow.
Exercise Part 2:
Now set your timer for 15 minutes and write down moments where you felt like you experienced a flow state. If you can’t think of a flow state then start writing down the first thing that pops into your head. Don’t stop writing until the 15 minutes is complete.
If you enjoyed this exercise, go deeper on how to master the almighty flow state.