Positive interventions are one of the building blocks for the application of positive psychology in our day-to-day lives. In this course taught by Dr. James Pawelski, we explore positive interventions through theory, research and practice. We provide learners the basic tools for using and measuring positive psychology in professional or personal contexts. Suggested prerequisite: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science.
4.5 Flow
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From the course by University of Pennsylvania
Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions
595 оценки
University of Pennsylvania
595 оценки
Course 2 of 5 in the Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology
Meet the Instructors
James Pawelski, Ph.D.Director of Education and Senior Scholar
Positive Psychology Center
This week we've been talking about the importance of goal setting for well being.
We've talked about the importance of having goals,
what kinds of goals we should aim for and
what we can do to help ensure that we follow through on those goals.
In this section, we will turn to a very special kind of experience
that can sometimes arise as we are pursuing our goals.
This experience is known as flow and it was first identified and
studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Csikszentmihalyi was at the university of Chicago when he first developed this work.
He is a cofounder of the field of positive psychology, and
is now at Claremont Graduate University
where he started the world's first PhD Programs in positive psychology.
Csikszentmihalyi was interested in what motivated people like rock climbers,
chess players, and amateur musicians to spend hours and hours of time
engaged in difficult activities for which they're not even paid.
He discovered that these individuals were in a powerful and
rewarding psychological state that made all of their effort seem worth it.
Csikszentmihalyi called that state, flow, and noted that it occurred when people
were so involved in what they were doing that nothing else seemed to matter.
The activity was so enjoyable that they engaged in it just for
the sake of being able to do it,
even if it cost them a significant amount of money and was difficult to do.
Csikszentmihalyi devised what he called the Experience Sampling Method and
used it to study the experiences of a broader range of individuals.
When he first started, he asked study participants to wear pagers
which went off at random intervals throughout the day.
When the pagers went off, participants immediately answered questions about
what they were doing and how they were feeling.
Eventually, Csikszentmihalyi came to see that Flow was a more general part
of human life.
He found that we can experience it not just during intense amature sporting or
musical activities.
But more broadly, when we're engaging in a project at work,
socializing with family members, or reading by ourselves.
When we are fully concentrating on something,
we sometimes find ourselves in the zone where we lose track of time.
And even of ourselves as we become one with the activity.
What surprised Csikzszentmihalyi was that,
although Flow can be induced through a wide variety of activities,
individuals described the flow experience in very similar terms.
He was able to identify a number of key characteristics of flow experiences.
First of all,
flow tends to happen in situations where skills are closely matched to challenges.
If our skills are greater than the challenges, we're likely to be bored.
Conversely, if the challenges are greater than our skills,
we're likely to feel anxious.
One thing to keep in mind about flow is that it is growth oriented.
This is because as we engage in an activity, our skills strengthen, and
what used to seem like a challenge now seems humdrum.
So the challenge must be increased to keep us in flow.
But if the challenge is increased too much,
we begin to feel anxious until we can increase our skills and
get back into the flow channel between boredom and anxiety.
This is why video games, for example,
typically get harder the more you advance through them.
Initially, we need the game to be fairly each to match our low level of skill.
But the more we play, the better we get and
the greater we need the challenge to be if we are to stay engaged.
Second, flow experiences tend to be completely absorbing.
When we are not completely absorbed in an activity, we may find our minds
wandering and our attention distracted by other things in our environment.
When reading a textbook for a class we're not that interested in, for
example, we may suddenly realize that we missed an entire page of information.
Because of instead of concentrating on what we were reading,
we were thinking of the last conversation we had with our best friend.
Or while at a boring sporting event, we may find ourselves distracted
by the vendor selling popcorn or by airplanes passing overhead.
When we're engaged in our reading by contrast, we may not even notice that
the sun has gone down until we realize it's too dark to read without a light.
Or at an engaging sporting event,
we may not realize how chilly it has become until the game has ended.
Most closely connected to this week's theme,
flow tends to happen in situations where there are clear goals and feedback.
A game like tennis, for example, can be a great flow inducer.
This is in part due to the fact there are clear rules
about the kinds of place allowed.
If every valley resulted in a dispute about whether or not points could be
awarded, it will be hard to get lost in the activity of the game.
Not only are the rules of tennis clear, but each
player is able to get immediate feedback on whether their serve was in bounce or
whether their backhand clear the net.
Two final characteristics of flow, I will mention,
are the loss of self consciousness and the transformation of time.
During flow experiences,
we become to absorbed in the activity that even our sense of self disappears.
We're still able to make decisions and act on them, but our concept
of ourselves as the one making these decisions and acting on them is lost.
And this can result in a sense of self-transcendence,
like we have somehow overcome the boundaries that usually constrain us.
And when we're in flow, time doesn't seem to behave normally.
We may have the sense that just a few minutes have passed,
only to look up at the clock and see that it's been a couple of hours.
Or conversely, we may have the sense that time has slowed down and
minutes seem like hours.
I'll close with a story about how one person learned about flow.
Last week,
I mentioned my student who went on to play professional women's basketball.
Her final semester in college she asked to take an independent study course with me.
Before our first meeting, I went to one of her games.
She was one of two-stars senior players on the team.
In the first few minutes of the game, the other player was injured and
unable to return to the game.
I watched as my student rose to the occasion and
led her team to a hard-fought victory.
When we met the next day, I complimented her on her performance.
And she mentioned that she had felt really good, she was in the zone.
She said this happened to her from time to time but
she couldn't predict when it would happen.
I told her there was a name for this experience, and assigned her
the first half of Csikszentmihalyi's book on flow for that week.
A few days later, I went to her next basketball game.
The other senior star player was still out with her injury.
And it was another very tough game.
But this time something very special happened.
Not only did my student go into a state of flow, but the entire team did as well.
Working together in a thrilling way, after the game, I sent my student an email
congratulating her on the win and she wrote back in all caps, it works,
it works, everything in that book works.
From then on and into her professional career,
she made reading flow part of her pre game warm up routine.
It helped her concentrate more and perform better.
Before learning about flow, she told me, she had gone to her games distracted by
things like trying to make sure her uniform shirt stayed tucked in or
wondering what questions the reporters would be asking her afterwards.
But after learning about flow, she cleared her mind so
that she could stay completely focused on the game.
Let's stop here for
an exercise to see how you can experience more flow in your life.
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