What really makes people glad to be alive? What are the inner experiences that make life worthwhile?
For more than two decades, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been studying those states in which people report feelings of concentration and deep enjoyment. His studies show that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is flow - a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to complete absorption in an activity.
Everyone experiences flow from time to time and will recognise its characteristics: people typically feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious and at the peak of their abilities. Emotional problems seem to disappear and there is an exhilarating feeling of transcendence. Flow reveals how this pleasurable state can be brought about by all of us and not just left to chance. This book is the ideal introduction to a subject that is expected to become one of the most productive areas of psychological research.
Flow doesn't require education, income, high intelligence, good health or a spruce. It requires a mind . . . and this book illuminates the accuracy of what philosophers have been saying for centuries: that the way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism but in mindful challenge.
