The art of riding the wave – about flow and the conducive commitment to life by Kenneth Carstensen, career counsellor at The Danish Society of Engineers, IDA 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Flow and well-being What is flow? What are the advantages of flow? – and disadvantages How do you reach flow? Outer and inner ground rules and personality Starting barriers to reach flow Flow activities in the spare time Flow with others “I told the players before the cup final that there was a man named Albert Einstein who once said that there is a force more powerful than steam, electricity and atomic energy: WILL!” (Coach Jose Mourinho, 27/4 2011 - his team, Real Madrid, beat Barcelona) 1. FLOW AND WELL-BEING For positive psychology and its founder, psychologist Martin Seligman, there are 4 aspects of well-being. The Pleasant Life, the Engaged Life, the Meaningful Life and the Achieving Life where you should preferably have a part of all four aspects. The flow term springs from the Engaged Life; this is no coincidence. The founder of the flow theory as presented here, professor and researcher at Claremont University, California, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has been close business partners with Martin Seligman in the development of positive psychology. He, like the quote above, recommends that you use your will and place yourself in situations you associate with full commitment, absorption and initiative, as he believes it is in these exact flow situations he believes that people are the happiest. 2. WHAT IS FLOW? Flow is a state of positive intense concentration, where, for a shorter or longer period of time, all your attention is focused on one particular activity, which is so challenging and demanding that you have to use a lot of resources to succeed. You lose all sense of time. The flow activity is directed outwards and is selfforgetting. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) Do you know the feeling? You are so consumed with a task that you lose track of time and place, you do not think about whether you can perform the task or not, you just perform. Relaxed and extremely aware at The Danish Society of Engineers 31-33 Kalvebod Brygge DK-1780 Copenhagen V +45 33 18 48 48 ida@ida.dk ida.dk
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