The psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihalyi wrote in his book Flow, “It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have” (emphasis added). When I first encountered that sentence, I reread it four or five times, convinced that it must be a misprint, or perhaps Csíkszentmihalyi was strung out on consonants. He seems to be advocating a delusional outlook on life. If I think I’m a violin virtuoso but in fact I’m tone-deaf, aren’t I fooling myself? Yes, but it doesn’t matter, Csíkszentmihalyi argues. Either way, we experience flow, a state of mind where we
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