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How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences.
The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present.
The unwarranted sense of security sooner or later results in a rude awakening.
If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders.
control over the quality of experience.
consciousness has developed the ability to override its genetic instructions and to set its own independent course of action.
one must find ways to order consciousness so as to be in control of feelings and thoughts.
an individual can experience only so much. Therefore, the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and the quality of life.
Information enters consciousness either because we intend to focus attention on it or as a result of attentional habits based on biological or social instructions.
Some people learn to use this priceless resource efficiently, while others waste it.
The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer.
disciplining her attention and refusing to diffuse it on unproductive thoughts or activities.
Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy—as
The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used.
Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life either rich or miserable.
I, or the self as we shall refer to it from now on, is also one of the contents of consciousness.
we are usually aware of only a tiny part of it, as when we become conscious of how we look, of what impression we are making, or of what we really would like to do if we could. We most often associate our self with our body, though sometimes we extend its boundaries to identify it with a car, house, or family.
the self is in many ways the most important element of consciousness,
Attention shapes the self, and is in turn shaped by it.
experience depends on the way we invest psychic energy—on the structure of attention.
even these marvelous events must take their place in consciousness, and be connected in positive ways to our self, before they can affect the quality of life.
One of the main forces that affects consciousness adversely is psychic disorder—that is, information that conflicts with existing intentions, or distracts us from carrying them out.
more attention is freed to deal with the outer and the inner environment.
When a person is able to organize his or her consciousness so as to experience flow as often as possible, the quality of life is inevitably going to improve,
In flow we are in control of our psychic energy, and everything we do adds order to consciousness.
The “battle” is not really against the self, but against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness.
The self becomes more differentiated as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled.
After each episode of flow a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.
consciousness is unusually well ordered.
Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal.
Experience is in ...
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A bond like that with other people is in itself an ecstasy.”
When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable.
This is the way the self grows.
Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable,
builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.
to create more harmony in it and to liberate the psychic energy that otherwise would be wasted in boredom or worry.
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.
To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.
Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur.
But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the self.
confront tasks we have a chance of completing.
able to concentrate on what we are doing.
clear goals and provides immedia...
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one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the ...
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concern for the self disappears,
the sense of the duration of time is altered;
Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.
Games, sports, and artistic and literary forms were developed over the centuries for the express purpose of enriching life with enjoyable experiences.
Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety,
