本书是5月家族读书分享会我选的书。
《生命的心流Finding Flow-The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life》（美国1997年、中国2009年出版）是积极心理学领军人物米哈里·契克森米哈赖Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi（匈牙利裔美国人，芝加哥大学心理学系教授）的名作。米哈里·齐克森米哈里可能是第一个将“心流”概念提出、并以科学方法加以探讨的西方心理学家，不过他并非第一个注意到“心流现象”、或发展出“心流技法”的人。超过2500年的时间里，东方精神传统实践家，如佛教家及道教家，运用“心流技法”为其发展精神力的重要技法。日本禅宗使用“心流”来决定其表现形式。在佛教圈中，“心流”早已是一个被广泛使用的词。
开始我以为此书文风会类似于许多身心灵作品（尤其是华人系的）的灵巧自由的主观经验，却发现：虽“心流”观来自东方宗教思想，此书却完全是西方心理学家的研究与写作姿态，含有大量扎实的实证调查（ESM经验取样法）和心理学语言，读起来并不“禅意”，却给人以扎实可信、客观务实的印象。
此书基于现代心理学，结合宗教智慧、哲学家们的观念、与历史与今天的人类生活状态，配合现代方法的大量调查与分析，探讨了：1))美好人生的含义、2)如何获得水到渠成、不费吹灰之力、心无旁骛、灵思泉涌、处于巅峰的“心流”状态、3）如何提升生活品质
What makes a good life? Is it money? An important job? Leisure time? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes our obsessive focus on such measures has led us astray. Work fills our days with anxiety and pressure, so that during our free time, we tend to live in boredom, watching TV or absorbed by our phones.
What are we missing? To answer this question, Csikszentmihalyi studied thousands of people, and he found the key. People are happiest when they challenge themselves with tasks that demand a high degree of skill and commitment, and which are undertaken for their own sake. Instead of watching television, play the piano. Take a routine chore and figure out how to do it better, faster, more efficiently. In short, learn the hidden power of complete engagement, a psychological state the author calls flow. Though they appear simple, the lessons in Finding Flow are life-changing.
This book is about gratifying work, which is the basis for a truly satisfying life. I've heard most of these ideas before, and experienced them firsthand during an intensive writing retreat I set up for myself, but this spells out how it works in theory and detail.
High points:
People feel good when they do something they want to do, bad when they do something they think they have to do, and worst when they do something because they can't think of anything else to do. Being goalless or directionless is the most unpleasant state.
When you like something, you can concentrate on it easily, even if the task itself is objectively difficult.
Flow experience: requires concentration; is challenging but a good match for your skills; provides immediate feedback; represents a harmony between what you feel, want, and think. You get "in the zone" and lose awareness of everything but what you're doing. This is that makes a truly satisfying life.
We often pass up flow opportunities to sit on our asses instead, because it requires less energy. We're choosing less happiness when we do so.
I agree with nearly everything in this book, but there are two big assumptions he takes as givens that don't match my reality: women are primarily responsible for cooking, cleaning, and house maintenance; and people are uncomfortable/bored/edgy when alone. He must be writing for old-fashioned extroverts? Or maybe most of society still is this way?
Quotes:
"[To live] must mean to live in fullness, without waste of time and potential, expressing one's uniqueness, yet participating intimately in the complexity of the cosmos." (2)
"To live means to experience--through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested." (8)
"Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved." (22)
"It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand... Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience--then, in retrospect, we are happy... The happiness that follows flow is of our own making, and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness." (32)
"In an ideal situation, a person would be constantly growing while enjoying whatever he or she did." (33)
"The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention." (129)
