Happiness Activity No. 8: Increasing Flow Experiences

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Have you ever been so absorbed in what you were doing—writing, conversing, playing a board or computer game, woodworking, fishing, Web surfing—that you completely lost track of time? Perhaps you even failed to notice that you were very hungry or that your back ached from sitting for so long or that you needed to use the bathroom? Did nothing else seem to matter? If the answer is yes, then you have experienced a state called flow.

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Finding flow involves the ability to expand your mind and body to its limits, to strive to accomplish something difficult, novel, or worthwhile, and to discover rewards in the process of each moment, indeed in life itself. You can reach the state of flow by paying attention to everything you do, being open to new and different experience, learning new things, transforming routine tasks like waiting for the bus into something meaningful like solving puzzles in your mind, focusing entirely on the conversations you have, during your leisure activities truly concentrating, using your mind, or exercising your skills; viewing at your work as a calling rather than a job. 

 

Learn more here.

 

 

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Exercise

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During your next conversation - whether by phone or face-to-face - focus your attention as intensely as possible on what the other person is saying and your reactions to her words. Don’t be too quick to respond; rather, give her the space to expand on her thoughts, and prompt her with brief follow-up questions (e.g., “And then what happened?” or “Why did you think that?”). One way to smooth this process is to give yourself the goal of learning more about the speaker. What is on her mind? What emotions is she experiencing right now? Have you learned something about her that you didn’t know?