the flow experience

How to have more flow experiences

2009-11-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

Flow can occur with any activity, provided it is mindful. What is important is how the activity is carried out. Take a look at the following tips to help you towards engaging in regular flow experiences:

Avoid multi-tasking. Trying to do two (or more) things at once is no way to achieve flow. It is not possible to give your all to two tasks at the same time. This will reduce your enjoyment and quite possibly the outcome may be compromised. Try to cut down on multi-tasking even for the most everyday chores.
Try not to check your email every five minutes if you are working on a computer. Choose a time to read it and give it your full attention.
Limit your distractions. Is there anything in your environment that is preventing you from achieving flow? Temperature, noise, layout, objects, other people, level of light can all make a difference.
Determine your goals and break them down into achievable chunks. Make sure these chunks are sufficiently challenging to keep your interest.
Try new activities and develop new skills. The more your skills develop, the more pleasure you will receive. You may experience boredom or frustration early on. So take care to monitor your progress to check the activity is interesting enough and within your capability. Modify your goals if you need to.
To keep experiencing flow with a particular activity you will need to increase the challenge -- one that you believe you can meet. As your skills develop, the activity can become boring as it no longer requires as much attention. A new challenge will not only up your interest but enhance your expertise.
How is your job? You spend a great chunk of your life in work, so you really want to obtain as many flow experiences as possible. If you are feeling bored, is there anything you can do to make it more challenging?
Try to obtain regular feedback on what you are doing. It could be from yourself or another person.
Avoid mindless activities which you do not actively get involved in -- for example, watching television.

by julia barnard

bukleler

2009-05-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

KEITH HENSCHEN:
No one can reach such levels by snapping his fingers,but the ultimate purpose of the exercises I use is to help an athlete get to the zone more frequently.

MONICA SELES:
When I am consistently playing my best tennis, I am also consistently in the zone. . . . once you think about being in the zone, you are immediately out of it.

JOCHEN RINDT
You ignore everything and just concentrate. You forget about the rest of the world and become part of the car and the track. It's a very special feeling. You're completely out of this world and completely into it. There's nothing like it.

SHAWN PHILLIPS

From the beginning, what I was connecting with in the gym was a universal energy source. I would just feel it flowing. Even when I was twenty years old, I called the gym my church. When I was there, it wasn’t about being social; it was about doing my practice. I was in it. I was in the zone.

ANTHONY DE MELLO

…As the great Confucius said, “The one who would be in constant happiness
must frequently change.” Flow. But we keep looking back, don’t we?
We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present...
Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don’t hold on to a few bars of the music.
Don’t hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow.
The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness
to allow the notes to pass...

WALTER RUSSEL

Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities
in common. The most conspicuous of these is that they all produce
a prodigious amount of work. The second is that they never know fatigue.
And the third is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older,
instead of less brilliant. Great men’s lives begin at forty,
where the mediocre man’s life ends.
The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement
until the very last breath he draws.

Ayrton Senna on Flow

2009-05-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

"I was already on pole, [...] and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel."

Components of The Flow.

2009-05-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following nine factors as accompanying an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).

2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.

5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).

6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Ron Palmer-My Perfect Run in The Zone

2009-05-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t initially intended to go for a run following a ten miler the day before. But as I looked out of the window at such a beautiful summer’s evening I became tempted.

Following a warm-up I headed out at around eight o’clock. I wasn’t disappointed. It was perfect evening for running with the faintest hint of a fresh breeze, warm air and the birds singing.

I headed off down the hill and started to run through my checklist – jaw is free not tight; I’m aware of my skull sitting on top of my spine so I’ve not stiffened my neck; my shoulders are relaxed and my arms swing freely from their ball and socket joints; I’m allowing the air to enter my nose and let the ribs move into the gap between my torso and arms. I think ‘light arms’ to open up the muscles in the upper back to keep my upper body poised.

Next I apply awareness to the space in front of my hips joints to allow the legs to swing freely from these points. I maintain all of these thoughts as I allow my lower legs to fall and bounce back from the road giving me a push right back up to the top of my head. That’s it! The hand break is off. A sudden lightness and simultaneous feeling of release and elation tell me I’m there. I’m now running in the zone. I pass the first mile mark – a turn in the road.

I have consciously reached the state where I am running in The Zone by removing all the obstacles that prevented it happening. Because it was a conscious process that brought me here I am able to consciously maintain it. Seemingly without effort, the hedgerows begin to flow by faster as I get a lift from the road’s surface. I keep up with my thinking, I call it ‘interactive awareness’, but it’s easier now as once there it requires no effort to maintain – its all encompassed in one thought.

Two, then three miles pass by and my pace is good. Perhaps slow by some standards but for me its fine; in fact it doesn’t really matter at the moment because I'm running in The Zone. Another turn in the road and I will start a climb of about half a mile. I consciously check for signs of my old habit of getting set to climb the hill. My face is free, no facial expression required to try harder in anticipation of this fairly steep section.

I allow my arms to open up a little to increase the swing and imagine my head is releasing forward and upwards to lead my body up the hill.

As the gradient gets steeper I become aware of a greater push (ground reaction force) and allow it to propel me up the hill as I keep my knees released so my lower legs stay swinging. My breathing has increased but I maintain an ‘upness’ and soon see the top of the hill.

Once over the brink I slow my pace a fraction and let the air flow into my lungs. With the hill out of the way and my breathing recovered I start to think about increasing speed. I hold this thought for a moment to prevent any inappropriate effort building up. Not too long ago this action would have brought my shoulders up and my head back as I pushed the pace. Now I just keep my shoulder and hip joints free and become aware of the direction my elbows and knees are moving. Even though I have followed this procedure thousands of times before, I still get a thrill from seeing it in action. With little perceived effort I am now moving much faster but still running in The Zone. I have about a third of a mile to go downhill. I check that I’m not braking in fear of falling over – again another old habit. Letting go of my legs and keeping the hip, knee and ankle joints free I release and let gravity bring me down the gradient.

Dark clouds are gathering but the evening sun is still peeping through a slit in the horizon bringing a reddish tint to the cornfields on either side of the road. A warm light rain begins to fall and I get a picture of Gene Kelly singing in the rain. I feel his joy and there is ‘a smile on my face ... because I'm running in The Zone'. I pass the old barn with the rusty green tractor and know that’s seven miles. In another half-mile the road forks; the right one takes me home in about a mile; the left fork opens up more options. On previous runs there would have been no debate as the short route home beckons. Tonight there is no question of ending it so soon and I head left taking me away from home. I don’t care about planning out any directions because at the moment I feel I could run all night.

I guess I’ve now covered about ten miles and start to feel the first signs of fatigue. I run though my checklist again to find my shoulders have lifted a fraction and I have collapsed a little in the torso. With this realisation I am able to release the shoulders, release my arms and return to a lighter state as my breathing opens up and I'm back running in The Zone.

I reach a crossroads and know it is three miles from home if I turn right; five miles if I go straight over; and God knows how far if I turn left. I make an informed decision, and turn right, after all I don’t want to spoil this evening my pushing myself too far. The last three miles are a joy, partly due to maintaining an efficient style and still running in The Zone but mainly because I know I’m nearly home where a well deserved cool drink and bath are waiting. The rain has stopped and I can just see the sun starting to sink below the horizon. I arrive home and stay on a high until I go to bed.

This is why I run. Not for glory, not for achieving personal bests, its for times like this when everything comes together creating a feeling like no other. I'm fully engaged, living in the moment, enjoying every moment. Knowing that this experience is repeatable is what keeps me going out for more. As I said at the start few sporting experiences can match running in The Zone.

müzik

2008-12-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

Irish fiddler Martin Hayes on flow experience:

“I’ve found that performance is the place where my mind is most focussed. Being in that situation my single focus is to get into the music and I don’t have an option to avoid going there. It’s a bit of a challenge. I have to go through a lot of mental hoops in order to be in a good place to make the music happen. You have to make yourself worthy of the occasion. It has to come through you and you have to be truly giving from inside. It does feel like the power of music is something beyond your own knowledge. I don’t remember putting together my musical ideas on an intellectual or a pre-meditated level.”

Things are happening that you didn’t expect and things are flowing. You feel almost invincible and you can’t believe that you ever thought it was otherwise. But soon enough you’re right back looking at it from a distance again and wondering what was the peculiar set of circumstances, feelings and moods and perspectives that landed you right in that spot. I’m always trying to retrace my steps. All I know is that you to have clear up the mess that’s in between the music and the muse. There is a clarity and openness required on a personal level to allow music to flow through you. But when you’re caught up with doubts, with fears, with egotism – all of those issues cloud the music. If you can eliminate those by whatever means, be it spirituality, yoga or whatever, then it happens.”

TED talks: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Creativity, fulfillment and flow

2008-12-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi'den inciler

2008-12-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.

A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to relect complexity.

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.

Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.

Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.

We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.

Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.

bir tanım daha...

2008-12-18T16:53:00.001-08:00

The term flow refers to a state of consciousness that is sometimes experienced by individuals who are deeply involved in an enjoyable activity. The experience is characterized by some common elements: a balance between the challenges of an activity and the skills required to meet those challenges; clear goals and feedback; concentration on the task at hand; a sense of control; a merging of action and awareness; a loss of self-consciousness; a distorted sense of time; and the autotelic experience.

söyleşiler

2008-11-25T16:21:00.001-08:00

yakın zamanda flow halini deneyimleyen kişilerin söyleşilerini koymak istiyorum, ama hala bulamadım.
bakalım, çıkacaktır.

the beginning of the flow

2008-11-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

In the early seventies, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered from the basis of thousands of interviews a common subjective experience of pleasure, interest, and even ecstasy that was derived from activities that perfectly matched one's skills with the demands for performance. Rock climbers, musicians, chess players, surgeons all reported this "flow" state when their activities possessed this perceptual structure (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977), and subsequently reported a greater interest in these tasks as a result of this experience. Csikszentmihalyi defined the flow response as a "holistic response" or an "optimal state of experience is one in which there is order in consciousness." "This happens when psychic energy, or attention, is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunity for action." (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) Flow "provides a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting a person into a new reality. It pushes a person to higher levels of performance, and leads to previously undreamed of states of consciousness. In this growth of self lies the key flow activities." "Potentially negative experiences can be transformed into flow by 1) setting clear goals to strive toward, 2) becoming immersed in the activity chosen, 3) paying attention to what is happening, and 4) learning to enjoy immediate experiences." The flow state has been defined as "an intrinsic reward for participation in an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977), as an optimal state that occurs when there is a balance between the perceived challenges of a situation and a person's skills or capabilities for action (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and as a centering of attention on a limited stimulus field (Webster, Trevino, and Ryan, 1993). Flow is also characterized by a heightened sense of playfulness (Webster and Martocchio, 1992), self control (Ghani and Deshpande. 1994), increased learning (Canter, Rivers and Storrs, 1985), and increased positive subjective experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). In keeping with the implied reality of multiple motivational processes, these definitions scarcely refer to information but rather to mind states such as levels of consciousness, attention, or playfulness or states of intentionality such as intrinsic reward, self control, goal setting, etc.

faideli linkler.

2008-11-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

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