Weekend Viewing: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Watch this video to learn how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pronounces his name! Just kidding. He never says it out loud, but I've since learned that you pronounce his last name "chick-sent-me-HIGH-ee." See if you can remember that!

In this TED Talk, Csikszentmihalyi (a living advertisement for copy-and-paste if ever there was one) gives a presentation about creativity and how to maximize flow experiences. What's interesting is how he and his team can predict what activities give each person flow. A nice companion piece to my previous post. I'll stop typing now so you can watch:

Casual Friday: Flow

Welcome to Friday, everyone! Today I'm going to discuss flow and how it affects happiness. Flow is a concept proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (don't even ask me how to pronounce that) in his 1990 book Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

So what is flow? Even if you don't know what it is, you've probably experienced it at some point in your life. It's basically the feeling of losing yourself in an activity that you are excellent at. Some people describe it as being "in the zone." Along with social connections and an optimistic viewpoint, positive psychologists consider regular experience of flow to be one of the most important components in longterm human happiness.

Here is a basic recipe for flow (from Wikipedia):

1. One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals. This adds direction and structure to the task.^[8]
2. One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable to do the task at hand.^[8]
3. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state.^[8]

Maybe you do all of these things already, so this recipe is a bit like stating the obvious in more difficult language. In that case, just keep doing what you're doing! The thing I like about flow is that it's not dependent on other people, like social connections and other forms of happiness may be. So even if your friends aren't around, you can still be happy and productive. Just lose yourself in your favorite activities!

(On a slightly unrelated blogging note, be sure to check out 5 Minutes for Mom and Jenny on the Spot, especially all you parents out there!)

Weekend Viewing: Martin Seligman

Here he is, the father of modern happiness science:  Martin Seligman. Mr. Seligman coined the term "positive psychology" in the early '90s as a response to most psychologists' focus on mental disorder (as opposed to the good parts of the human psyche). Psychology students may also recognize him as the creator of the learned helplessness concept.

In this TED Talk, Seligman gives a good introduction to his theories. He starts out being maybe a little too down on regular psychology, but he soon moves on to discuss the difference between real happiness and "Hollywood happiness," flow, and optimism. He gives very practical advice on finding happiness, especially after the 18-minute mark, so give it a watch! Hopefully it'll get your weekend off to a (meaningfully) happy start!