TED Talk Tuesday: Flow, The Secret to Happiness

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a man obsessed with happiness.

For more than three decades, he has been trying to identify with some scientific exactness what people mean when they say they are enjoying themselves, how they achieve that enjoyment and how the successful ones manage to keep themselves from falling out of it. But more precisely, Csikszentmihalyi (which is pronounced Chick-SENT-me-hi, for the record) finds himself focusing on one aspect of human experience in particular—and that’s something he calls “flow.”

“Regardless of the culture, regardless of education, there are seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in flow. There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: You know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a TED Talk. “Once these conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.”

Achieving true happiness sounds kind of confusing, right? Good news: It’s not. Stripped down to its simplest form, the state of flow is actually something we’ve all experienced. Otherwise known as being “in the zone,” imagine the times you’ve participated in a challenging exercise or worked on a difficult project. These were probably moments in which your mind became so entirely absorbed in the activity that you “forget yourself” and begin to act effortlessly, with a heightened sense of awareness of the here and now.

In order for a state of flow to occur, you must see the activity as voluntary, enjoyable (intrinsically motivating), and it must require skill and be challenging with clear goals towards success. Interestingly, flow is often characterized by the absence of emotion—a complete loss of self-consciousness. But in retrospect, the flow activity may be described as enjoyable and even exhilarating, and Csikszentmihalyi believes that flow is highly correlated with happiness itself. Studies also show that people who experience a lot of flow in their daily lives also develop other positive traits, such as high concentration, high self-esteem and even great health.

In the end, the million dollar question we all want an answer to is this: “What makes life worth living?” In this TED talk, Csikszentmihalyi recommends looking to find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of flow.

Click here to watch the full video.

Nick Powills, CFE, founded No Limit Agency in 2008 and serves as Chief Brand Strategist for the Chicago-based firm. No Limit is a full-service communications agency that establishes and elevates brands by bridging Public Relations, Social Media, Marketing, Advertising, Digital, and a lot of creativity, to best strategize well-rounded and successful campaigns for 50+ global franchise brands. By presenting visionary ideas and building real relationships, No Limit is able to create effective media branding strategies to help companies grow. Nick currently leads a staff of writers, media strategists, designers, social media experts and digital producers in an office think-tank where brands are humanized for strong, compelling media stories. Prior to starting No Limit at the age of 27, Nick spent four years working at a franchise PR agency where he mastered the art of building rapport with media outlets and creating newsworthy pitches for earned media placements. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Drake University in Iowa.

TED Talk Tuesday: Flow, The Secret to Happiness

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