Read Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning Online
Authors: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Tags: #Self-Help
A person is part of a family or a friendship to the extent he invests psychic energy in goals shared with other people. In the same way, one can belong to larger interpersonal systems by subscribing to the aspirations of a community, an ethnic group, a political party, or a nation. Some individuals, like the Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, invest all their psychic energy in what they construe to be the goals of humanity as a whole.
In the ancient Greek usage, “politics” referred to whatever involved people in affairs that went beyond personal and family welfare. In this broad sense, politics can be one of the most enjoyable and most complex activities available to the individual, for the larger the social arena one moves in, the greater the challenges it presents. A person can deal with very intricate problems in solitude, and family and friends can take up a lot of attention. But trying to optimize the goals of unrelated individuals involves complexities an order of magnitude higher.
Unfortunately, many people who move in the public arena do not act at very high levels of complexity. Politicians tend to seek power, philanthropists fame, and would-be saints often seek to prove how righteous they are. These goals are not so hard to achieve, provided one invests enough energy in them. The greater challenge is not only to benefit oneself, but to help others in the process. It is more difficult, but much more fulfilling, for the politician to actually improve social conditions, for the philanthropist to help out the destitute, and for the saint to provide a viable model of life to others.
If we consider only material consequences, we might regard selfish politicians as canny because they try to achieve wealth and power for themselves. But if we accept the fact that optimal experience is what gives real value to life, then we must conclude that politicians who strive to realize the common good are actually smarter, because they are taking on the higher challenges, and thus have a better chance to experience real enjoyment.
Any involvement in the public realm can be enjoyable, provided one structures it according to the flow parameters. It does not matter whether one starts to work with the Cub Scouts or with a group exploring the Great Books, or trying to preserve a clean environment, or supporting the local union. What counts is to set a goal, to concentrate one’s psychic energy, to pay attention to the feedback, and to make certain that the challenge is appropriate to one’s skill. Sooner or later the interaction will begin to hum, and the flow experience follows.
Of course, given the fact that psychic energy is in limited supply, one cannot expect that everyone will be able to become involved in public goals. Some people have to devote all their attention just to survive in a hostile environment. Others get so involved with a certain set of challenges—with art, for instance, or mathematics—that they can’t bear to shift any attention away from it. But life would be harsh indeed if some people did not enjoy investing psychic energy in common concerns, thereby creating synergy in the social system.
The concept of flow is useful not only in helping individuals improve the quality of their lives, but also in pointing out how public action should be directed. Perhaps the most powerful effect flow theory could have in the public sector is in providing a blueprint for how institutions may be reformed so as to make them more conducive to optimal experience. In the past few centuries economic rationality has been so successful that we have come to take for granted that the “bottom line” of any human effort is to be measured in dollars and cents. But an exclusively economic approach to life is profoundly irrational; the true bottom line consists in the quality and complexity of experience.
A community should be judged good not because it is technologically advanced, or swimming in material riches; it is good if it offers people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible, while allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater challenges. Similarly the value of a school does not depend on its prestige, or its ability to train students to face up to the necessities of life, but rather on the degree of the enjoyment of lifelong learning it can transmit. A good factory is not necessarily the one that makes the most money, but the one that is most responsible for improving the quality of life for its workers and its customers. And the true function of politics is not to make people more affluent, safe, or powerful, but to let as many as possible enjoy an increasingly complex existence.
But no social change can come about until the consciousness of individuals is changed first. When a young man asked Carlyle how he should go about reforming the world, Carlyle answered, “Reform yourself. That way there will be one less rascal in the world.” The advice is still valid. Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things worse all around.
D
ESPITE EVERYTHING
that has been said so far, some people may still think that it must be easy to be happy as long as one is lucky enough to be healthy, rich, and handsome. But how can the quality of life be improved when things are not going our way, when fortune deals us an unfair hand? One can afford to ponder the difference between enjoyment and pleasure if one doesn’t have to worry about running out of money before the end of the month. For most people, such distinctions are too much of a luxury to be indulged in. It is okay to think of challenges and complexity if you have an interesting, well-paying profession, but why try to improve a job that is basically dumb and dehumanizing? And how can we expect people who are ill, impoverished, or stricken by adversity to control their consciousness? Surely they would need to improve concrete material conditions before flow could add anything appreciable to the quality of existence. Optimal experience, in other words, should be regarded as the frosting on a cake made with solid ingredients like health and wealth; by itself it is a flimsy decoration. Only with a solid base of these more real advantages does it help make the subjective aspects of life satisfying.
Needless to say, the whole thesis of this book argues against such a conclusion. Subjective experience is not just one of the dimensions of life, it
is
life itself. Material conditions are secondary: they only affect us indirectly, by way of experience. Flow, and even pleasure, on the other hand, benefit the quality of life directly. Health, money, and other material advantages may or may not improve life. Unless a person has learned to control psychic energy, chances are such advantages will be useless.
Conversely, many individuals who have suffered harshly end up not only surviving, but also thoroughly enjoying their lives. How is it possible that people are able to achieve harmony of mind, and grow in complexity, even when some of the worst things imaginable happen to them? That is the outwardly simple question this chapter will explore. In the process, we shall examine some of the strategies people use to cope with stressful events, and review how an autotelic self can manage to create order out of chaos.
It would be naively idealistic to claim that no matter what happens to him, a person in control of consciousness will be happy. There are certainly limits to how much pain, or hunger, or deprivation a body can endure. Yet it is also true, as Dr. Franz Alexander has so well stated: “The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life.” Holistic medicine and such books as Norman Cousins’s account of his successful fight against terminal illness and Dr. Bernie Siegel’s descriptions of self-healing are beginning to redress the abstractly materialist view of health that has become so prevalent in this century. The relevant point to be made here is that a person who knows how to find flow from life is able to enjoy even situations that seem to allow only despair.
Rather incredible examples of how people achieve flow despite extreme handicaps have been collected by Professor Fausto Massimini of the psychology department of the University of Milan. One group he and his team studied was composed of paraplegics, generally young people who at some point in the past, usually as a result of an accident, have lost the use of their limbs. The unexpected finding of this study was that a large proportion of the victims mentioned the accident that caused paraplegia as both one of the most negative and one of the most
positive
events in their lives. The reason tragic events were seen as positive was that they presented the victim with very clear goals while reducing contradictory and inessential choices. The patients who learned to master the new challenges of their impaired situation felt a clarity of purpose they had lacked before. Learning to live again was in itself a matter of enjoyment and pride, and they were able to turn the accident from a source of entropy into an occasion of inner order.
Lucio, one of the members of this group, was a twenty-year-old happy-go-lucky gas station attendant when a motorcycle accident paralyzed him below the waist. He had previously liked playing rugby and listening to music, but basically he remembers his life as purposeless and uneventful. After the accident his enjoyable experiences have increased both in number and complexity. Upon recovery from the tragedy he enrolled in college, graduated in languages, and now works as a freelance tax consultant. Both study and work are intense sources of flow; so are fishing and shooting with a bow and arrow. He is currently a regional archery champion—competing from a wheelchair.
These are some of the comments Lucio made in his interview: “When I became paraplegic, it was like being born again. I had to learn from scratch everything I used to know, but in a different way. I had to learn to dress myself, to use my head better. I had to become part of the environment, and use it without trying to control it…. it took commitment, willpower, and patience. As far as the future is concerned, I hope to keep improving, to keep breaking through the limitations of my handicap…. Everybody must have a purpose. After becoming a paraplegic, these improvements have become my life goal.”
Franco is another person in this group. His legs were immobilized five years ago, and he also developed severe urological problems, requiring several surgical operations. Before his accident he was an electrician, and he often enjoyed his work. But his most intense flow experience came from acrobatic dancing on Saturday nights, so the paralysis of his legs was an especially bitter blow. Franco now works as a counselor to other paraplegics. In this case, too, the almost inconceivable setback has led to an enrichment, rather than a diminution, of the complexity of experience. Franco sees his main challenge now as that of helping other victims avoid despair, and assisting their physical rehabilitation. He says the most important goal in his life is to “feel that I can be of use to others, help recent victims accept their situation.” Franco is engaged to a paraplegic girl who had been resigned to a life of passivity after her accident. On their first date together, he drove his car (adapted for the handicapped) on a trip to the nearby hills. Unfortunately, the car broke down, and the two of them were left stranded on a deserted patch of road. His fiancée panicked; even Franco admits to having lost his nerve. But eventually they managed to get help, and as is usual after small victories of this kind, they both emerged afterward feeling much more confident of themselves.
Another sample studied by the Milan group was made up of several dozen individuals who were either congenitally blind or had lost their sight sometime after birth. Again, what is so remarkable about these interviews is the number of people who describe the loss of their sight as a
positive
event that has enriched their lives. Pilar, for instance, is a thirty-three-year-old woman whose retinas became detached from both eyes when she was twelve, and who has been unable to see ever since. Blindness freed her from a painfully violent and poor family situation, and made her life more purposeful and rewarding than it probably would have been had she stayed home with her sight intact. Like many other blind people, she now works as an operator at a manual telephone exchange. Among her current flow experiences she mentions working, listening to music, cleaning friends’ cars, and “anything else I happen to be doing.” At work what she enjoys most is knowing that the calls she has to manage are clicking along smoothly, and the entire traffic of conversation meshing like the instruments of an orchestra. At such times she feels “like I’m God, or something. It is very fulfilling.” Among the positive influences in her life Pilar mentions having lost her sight, because “it made me mature in ways that I could never have become even with a college degree…for instance, problems no longer affect me with the pathos they used to, and the way that they affect so many of my peers.”
Paolo, who is now thirty, lost the use of his eyes entirely six years ago. He does not list blindness among the positive influences, but he mentions four positive outcomes of this tragic event: “First, although I realize and accept my limitations, I am going to keep attempting to overcome them. Second, I have decided to always try changing those situations I don’t like. Third, I am very careful not to repeat any of the mistakes I make. And finally, now I have no illusions, but I try to be tolerant with myself so I can be tolerant with others also.” It is astonishing how for Paolo, as for most of the people with handicaps, the control of consciousness has emerged in its stark simplicity as the foremost goal. But this does not mean that the challenges are purely intrapsychic. Paolo belongs to the national chess federation; he participates in athletic competitions for the blind; he makes his living by teaching music. He lists playing the guitar, playing chess, sports, and listening to music among his current flow experiences. Recently he finished seventh in a swim meet for the handicapped in Sweden, and he won a chess championship in Spain. His wife is also blind, and coaches a blind women’s athletic team. He is presently planning to write a Braille text for learning how to play the classical guitar. Yet none of these astonishing achievements would matter much if Paolo did not feel in control of his inner life.
And then there is Antonio, who teaches high school and who is married to a woman who is also blind; their current challenge is to adopt a blind child, the first time such an adoption has been considered possible in the entire country…Anita, who reports very intense flow experiences sculpting in clay, making love, and reading Braille…Dino, eighty-five years old and blind from birth, married with two children, who describes his work, which consists in restoring old chairs, as an intricate and always available flow experience: “When I take a broken chair I use natural rich cane, not the synthetic fibers they use in factories…it feels so great when the ‘pull’ is right, the tension elastic—especially when it happens at the first try…When I get through, the seat will last twenty years.”…and so many others like them.
Another group Professor Massimini and his team has studied included homeless vagrants, “street people,” who are just as frequent in the great European cities as they are in Manhattan. We tend to feel sorry for these destitutes, and not so long ago many of them, who seem unable to adapt to “normal” life, would have been diagnosed as psychopaths or worse. In fact, many of them have proven to be unfortunate, helpless individuals whose strength has been exhausted by catastrophes of various kinds. Nevertheless, it is again astonishing to learn how many of them have been able to transform bleak conditions into an existence that has the characteristics of a satisfying flow experience. Of the many examples, we shall quote extensively from one interview that can stand for many others.
Reyad is a thirty-three-year-old Egyptian who currently sleeps in the parks of Milan, eats in charity kitchens, and occasionally washes dishes for restaurants whenever he needs some cash. When during the interview he was read a description of the flow experience, and was asked if this ever happened to him, he answered,
Yes. It describes my entire life from 1967 up to now. After the War of 1967 I decided to leave Egypt and start hitchhiking toward Europe. Ever since I have been living with my mind concentrated within myself. It has not been just a trip, it has been a search for identity. Every man has something to discover within himself. The people in my town were sure I was crazy when I decided to start walking to Europe. But the best thing in life is to know oneself…. My idea from 1967 on has remained the same: to find myself. I had to struggle against many things. I passed through Lebanon and its war, through Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Yugoslavia, before getting here. I had to confront all sorts of natural disasters; I slept in ditches near the road in thunderstorms, I was involved in accidents, I have seen friends die next to me, but my concentration has never flagged…. It has been an adventure that so far has lasted twenty years, but it will keep going on for the rest of my life….
Through these experiences I have come to see that the world is not worth much. The only thing that counts for me now, first and last, is God. I am most concentrated when I pray with my prayer beads. Then I am able to put my feelings to sleep, to calm myself and avoid becoming crazy. I believe that destiny rules life, and it makes no sense to struggle too hard…. During my journey I have seen hunger, war, death, and poverty. Now through prayer I have begun to hear myself, I have returned toward my center, I have achieved concentration and I have understood that the world has no value. Man was born to be tested on this earth. Cars, television sets, clothes are secondary. The main thing is that we were born to praise the Lord. Everyone has his own fate, and we should be like the lion in the proverb. The lion, when he runs after a pack of gazelles, can only catch them one at a time. I try to be like that, and not like Westerners who go crazy working even though they cannot eat more than their daily bread…. If I am to live twenty more years, I will try to live enjoying each moment, instead of killing myself to get more…. If I am to live like a free man who does not depend on anyone, I can afford to go slowly; if I don’t earn anything today, it does not matter. It means that this happens to be my fate. Next day I may earn 100 million—or get a terminal illness. Like Jesus Christ said, What does it benefit to man if he gains the entire world, but loses himself? I have tried first to conquer myself; I don’t care if I lose the world.
I set out on this journey like a baby bird hatching from its egg; ever since I have been walking in freedom. Every man should get to know himself and experience life in all its forms. I could have gone on sleeping soundly in my bed, and found work in my town, because a job was ready for me, but I decided to sleep with the poor, because one must suffer to become a man. One does not get to be a man by getting married, by having sex: to be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent.
Reyad spoke at much greater length, and all his remarks were consistent with the unwavering purpose of his spiritual quest. Like the disheveled prophets who roamed the deserts in search of enlightenment two thousand years ago, this traveler has distilled everyday life into a goal of hallucinatory clarity: to control his consciousness in order to establish a connection between his self and God. What were the causes that led him to give up the “good things in life” and pursue such a chimera? Was he born with a hormonal imbalance? Did his parents traumatize him? These questions, which are the ones that usually interest psychologists, shall not concern us here. The point is not to explain what accounts for Reyad’s strangeness, but to recognize that, given the fact he is who he is, Reyad has transformed living conditions most people would find unbearable into a meaningful, enjoyable existence. And that is more than many people living in comfort and luxury can claim.