The Secret To Happiness Lies In Having A Passion For What You Do
Your quality of life does not just depend on happiness. It also depends on what you do to be happy. If you do not develop goals to give meaning to your own existence, if you do not use your head to its full capacity, the good feelings will only fill a small fraction of the potential we possess.
After dedicating decades to studying the states in which people reached their maximum potential, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s studies show that people are happier when they reach a state of high concentration. A condition that this author called “flow” .
This state can be reached when we experience positive emotions such as happiness, strength or positive attitude. All conditions called “psychic negentropy” . By not wasting attention on discussing and feeling sorry for ourselves, the psychic energy can flow freely towards any thought or task in which we decide to invest.
On the other hand, negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, anxiety or boredom, give “psychic entropy” . That is, a state in which we cannot effectively use our attention to meet external tasks, because we need it to restore an inner subjective order.
The state of “flow” plays an important role in people’s ability to be happy
To better understand a state of “flow” , it may be appropriate to first analyze the opposite state. It would be a state where there is no order in the consciousness, one where thoughts appear and disappear by whim. We can not control them. It is a very unpleasant condition that tends to be linked to other problems, such as insecurity, depression or anxiety. And if it repeats itself often, it can make people very unhappy.
The opposite of this would be a state of flow, where the mind flows, one feels completely awake and in control of oneself. You feel carefree and with a comfortable feeling of doing the right thing. Everything makes sense, and the problems we face seem like exciting challenges that we face with joy. We do not see them as threats to our well-being or personal safety.
Numerous studies suggest that some factors such as money actually play a relative role in our happiness. Money, for example, is important when we have a little of it. The same goes for food. It is very important when you are starving to death. But the more money you have, the less it affects our happiness.
Given the levels of purchasing power we enjoy in developed countries, there are other factors that determine our happiness that are far more important than money. Instead, enjoying states of flow will make a person feel more confident, less anxious and happier.
Happiness can be found on Mondays
Mondays tend to be the worst days of the week. It’s almost a curse word for many people, because it means going back to work. But Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Stanford, has discovered a paradox . Jobs are more leading than leisure in the direction of what he calls the “flow zone”. And this state is comparable to happiness.
The key is that for many people, leisure is a waste of time, and work is the complete opposite. Having clear goals, being able to handle them and receiving feedback is the key to achieving “flow”. The state of flow is really that. The ability to concentrate your mental energy and attention on plans and goals of your choice. And in addition to that you feel that it is worth doing them, because you have chosen this type of life, and you enjoy every second of what you do.
