‘Find what happiness really means to us, thus we can understand what the meaning of life is.’
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of ‘flow’)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of the famous flow theory is a professor of psychology with a Hungarian origin living the United States of America. Flow is a state of mind, in which the person doing an activity is fully immersed. He is a professor at the University of Chicago, and a member of the Academy of Sciences in the USA and in Hungary.
He has dedicated his time to researching positive psychology. Together with Martin Seligman, the former director of the Association of Psychologists in the USA he laid the groundwork for positive psychology in 2009. They intended to induce a change in the scientific perspective by including the positive point of view into the branch of science mainly focussing on human negativism
The Flow…
According to his definition, the basics of the perfect experience is the flow i.e. the phenomenon when a person immerses themselves in an activity so deeply that nothing else matters, the experience itself becomes so exciting that we want to carry on with the activity just for its sake. The perfect experience happens when we feel self-assurance, completion and satisfaction after having finished the activity.
If we can find the activity that causes joy and fulfilment for us, we will enjoy ourselves, be happier, our performance will improve, we will be able to move society and humanity forward. Every person finds the meaning of life in different activities, the main thing is for everybody to find their own. Flow helps us with dealing with hardships and surviving.