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creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow.
The intent of this book is to use some of the tools of modern psychology to explore this very ancient question: When do people feel most happy?
Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. 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.
Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful. But in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery—or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life—that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.
The concept of flow has been found useful by psychologists who study happiness, life satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation;
Flow will examine the process of achieving happiness through control over one’s inner life. We shall begin by considering how consciousness works, and how it is controlled (chapter 2), because only if we understand the way subjective states are shaped can we master them.
This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action.
It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
This chronic dissatisfaction is the second obstacle that stands in the way of contentment.
Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
A vital new religion may one day arise again. In the meantime, 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.
To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.
Some people produce more than the usual amount of androgens and therefore become excessively aggressive.
On the one hand, official institutions like schools, churches, and banks try to turn us into responsible citizens willing to work hard and save. On the other hand, we are constantly cajoled by merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to spend our earnings on products that will produce the most profits for them. And, finally, the underground system of forbidden pleasures run by gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers, which is dialectically linked to the official institutions, promises its own rewards of easy dissipation—provided we pay. The messages are very different, but their outcome is
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how human depends on social
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.
Solution
The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment.
Flow
We must also become independent from the dictates of the body, and learn to take charge of what happens in the mind. Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there. As long as we obey the socially conditioned stimulus-response patterns that exploit our biological inclinations, we are controlled from the outside.
And the great emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.” PATHS
A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness. We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the force of their personalities.
