Psychology of Happiness
Evaluation of “Flow: The mindset of ideal experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In the book, “Flow: the mindset of optimal experience, inches author Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi offers an alternative point of view in which to view how people have re-defined the concept of happiness and changed it according to the activities of people currently. Now that we now have a relatively higher level of comfort and ease is obviously, we have improved the way people measure and achieve delight: while others search for it through material points, others even now experience it without a whole lot effort. This is the primary big difference that Mihaly sets out in the first section of his book, folks who achieve delight without looking for it and others who were unable to achieve this even though they tried to.
Through this paper, the researcher evaluates Mihaly’s discussion of what aims the ‘happy’ individual from the ‘unhappy’ specific. In the first chapter of his publication, he offered characteristics that make the happy people happy and unsatisfied ones as such. This conventional paper argues that from Mihaly’s standpoint, joy should be cared for not as an idea that must be searched for or learned, but rather, as an experience that needs to be spontaneous, uncalled for, yet, very much liked though not really easily recognized. The concept-versus-experience theme became the author’s dominant motif in his exploration of happiness.
In the texts that follow, the researcher offers different points through which Mihaly experienced argued his stance with regards to happiness as experience. These kinds of arguments will be outlined as follows: (1) joy as an experience must be predicted, yet it should not buy in the way of living of the individual, to the point where s/he will fail to identify other experience worth going through as well; (2) happiness is definitely achieved when one is in control of his or her lifestyle – this means s/he contains a working objective, a course, in life; and (3) happiness is attained, finally, in changing their perspective from being a ‘realist’ to a ‘liberalist. ‘
The first debate claimed that in order to attain happiness, it should be anticipated as an experience, and not simply a simple express of feeling, as that which people usually believe and aspire intended for. Mihaly signifies that by experiencing, an individual need to actually live happiness. Just how is this possible? The author advises adopting his “theory of optimal knowledge, ” which can be best symbolized by the notion of “flow” (4). He defines flow while “the condition in which folks are so in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the ability itself is indeed enjoyable that individuals will do this even for great expense, for the sheer benefit of doing this. “
Mihaly meant, in simpler terms, that happiness could be achieved by 1 day one’s do it yourself to one’s chosen course of your life. Though this individual did not stipulate what particular kind of commitment in life we have to adhere to, he more or less provides an example: determination may be by means of becoming focused on one’s part as a employee, or a relative, or simply because an individual frequently interacting with others. His 1st recommendation in achieving delight is actually a course towards self-reflection and – discovery: once an individual can determine what hard disks him to dedicate his or her life to his/her work or selected career anytime, s/he is actually engaging in introspection, where the specific assesses what would be the way in which s/he should take, which in turn would likewise give them the travel to desire for increased things without having to sacrifice one’s possibility to experience your life with other people. Thus, circulation must be experienced through writing, for it is only in the company of other people that we truly realize that we could happy. Essentially, optimal knowledge is a balancing act of asserting your individuality accompanied by a unified social relationship with other people as well.
The other argument contains a more or less related assertion while the first argument. Actually from the dialogue above, anybody can surmise that Mihaly, as he provided evidence and example of flow as an ideal experience, was really leading us to the discourse on self-reflection and self-discovery.
Yet , what makes his argument crucial despite its common topic is that this individual emphasized the task in which people are gradually ‘stripping’ away the layers of happiness s/he has in every area of your life in order to obtain the core, which most of the people