The Secret Of Happiness Arises From The Passion For What We Do
Quality of life does not only depend on happiness, but also on what you do to achieve it.
If we don’t develop the goals that give meaning to our existence, if we don’t use our minds fully, the good feelings only fill a tiny fraction of the potential that we have.
After decades of research into states where people reach their maximum potential, studies by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi indicate that people are happiest when they reach a state of high concentration, called “ flow”.
This state is reached when we experience positive emotions such as happiness, strength or positive attitude, the famous states of “psychic negentropy”.
Since it does not need attention to ruminate or to feel sorry for oneself, psychic energy can “flow freely” towards any thought or task that we desire to do.
Conversely, negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, anxiety or boredom produce “psychic entropy”.
The state of “flow” plays the main role in the ability of people to be happy
To better understand what a state of “flow” is, it is interesting to analyze the opposite state, the state in which there is no order in consciousness, in which thoughts appear and disappear capriciously without that we can control them.
It is a very unpleasant condition which is often linked to other problems like insecurity, depression or anxiety and which, if recurring, can make you particularly unhappy.
The opposite is the state of fluidity, when the mind “flows”, that one feels completely attentive and in control of oneself, carefree and with the pleasant feeling of doing the right thing.
It all makes sense and the problems we find seem like exciting challenges that we gladly face, not threats to our well-being or personal safety.
Various studies seem to indicate that certain factors such as money actually have a relative role in our happiness.
Money, for example, is important when we have little – just as food is important when we are starving – but the more money we have, the less it affects happiness.
For people in developed countries with high purchasing power, there are more important factors than money in determining happiness.
Conversely, taking advantage of the “flow” makes a person feel more confident, less anxious and happier.
Happiness could be found in Monday
Mondays are often the worst days of the week, and that’s almost a dirty word for a lot of people, because it means back to work.
But Csikszentmihalyi, a university professor at Stanford, detected a paradox: work is more conducive than leisure to achieve what he calls “flow”, what can also be called happiness.
The key is that for many people leisure is a dead time and work is quite the opposite.
Having clear goals, being able to manage them and receive “feedback” is the key to being happy.
The state of “flow” is above all this: the ability to focus one’s psychic energy and attention on plans and objectives of one’s choice.
