THE FLOW MODEL

Over two thousand years ago Aristotle came to the unsurprising conclusion that what a person wants above all is to be happy. IN 1961, the US psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote: " While happiness itself is soughtly for its own sake, every other goal - health beauty money or power is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy'. Csikszentmihalyi  looked for a term that described the state of feeling happy. He called it the flow. But when we are 'in the flow?'

After interviewing over a thousand people about what made them happy, he found found that all responses had 5 things in common happiness and flow occurs when we are:

1. Intensely focused on an activity
2. Of our own choosing, that is
3. Neither under challenging (burnout) nor over-challeging (burnout), that has
4. A clear objective, and that receives
5. Immediate feedback

Csikszentmihalyi  discovered that people who are in the flow not only feel not only feel profound sense of satisfaction, they also lose track of time and forget themselves completely because they are so immersed in what they are doing. Musicians, athletes, actors, doctors and artists describe how they are happiest when they are absorbed n an often exhausting activity- totally contradicting the common held view that happiness has to do with relaxation.