Foreword
You must have experienced this experience in your life. For example, if you are particularly immersed in your work one day and problems that you initially thought were particularly complicated will soon be solved one by one by yourself, and after finishing these tasks, you will not only not feel tired, but also feel very comfortable and refreshed. Feeling good. At the same time, you will also feel that time flies by quickly, and the entire afternoon seems to have passed in the blink of an eye.
Yes, this is a flow experience. Similar experiences occur not only in modern life. It also existed in ancient times. For example, Wang Xizhi, the great calligrapher of the Eastern Jin Dynasty who is known as the "Sage of Calligraphy", mistook ink for minced garlic and ate it with steamed buns because he was focused on reading calligraphy and writing when he was a child; he also left the sentence "Birds lodge in the tree beside the pond" , the Tang Dynasty poet Jia Dao, who was caught in the thought of whether to use "the monk knocks on the door under the moon" or "the monk pushes the door under the moon", collided with Han Yu's traveling guards, etc. They At that time, we were all in a flow experience.
The first person to discover and propose the concept of flow through research and research was the author of this book, the famous psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He not only proposed the flow theory for the first time, but also systematically explained what flow is and what affects it. Today our explanation starts with the first question: What exactly is flow?
What is flow?
The official definition of flow refers to the state of being fully focused and selfless when we are doing something. In this state, you don't even feel the existence of time. But when it's done we feel empowered and very satisfied.
The book gives a very vivid example: It is like a sailor, holding the rope of the full sail, letting the sea wind roar by, and only feeling the pleasure of the ship moving forward through the waves. . At this time, the sail, the ship, the wind and the waves produced a harmonious roar in the sailor's veins.
This can’t help but remind me of Mr. Jin Yong’s description of a swordsman in a martial arts novel, the state of “no sword in hand, sword in heart, man and sword become one” when he reaches the highest level of sword practice. I believe that the swordsman at this time must be in a flow experience.
However, what we need to know is that the flow experience is not exclusive to the top elite groups, but a common phenomenon in the human world. Whether you are the elderly, children, young people, office workers, stay-at-home mothers, etc., you can all feel this experience.
So, as ordinary people, how can we obtain a flow experience?
Control your consciousness and eliminate mental entropy
First of all, you need to control your consciousness and eliminate mental entropy in order to achieve the best flow experience.
To control our own consciousness, we need to first understand what is consciousness?
The so-called consciousness refers to the information that has been deliberately arranged and combined in our brains. After hearing this definition, many friends may still find it difficult to understand, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s give an example:
Suppose, after getting up in the morning, you look at your phone and it’s already 9:30, and then you He will quickly estimate how long it will take to wash himself, how long it will take to go downstairs, how long it will take to take the bus or subway to the company, and will also make multiple choices, such as how long it will take to take a taxi to the company, trying to find the optimal solution. plan. After this series of evaluations, you suddenly realize that it's over. No matter which plan you choose, you will definitely be late today. This is the complete process by which we develop consciousness.
In this process, a series of information such as the time on the mobile phone, washing, going downstairs, taking the bus, subway, taking a taxi, etc., are deliberately arranged and combined by our brains, resulting in "I will be late today." "Consciousness. However, in this process, we also produced something, which is "intention". It refers to the mysterious force that prompts us to arrange this information in an orderly manner. In the above example, the force that supports our efforts in making various attempts is our intention of "not wanting to be late."
So, what is the specific relationship between flow experience and consciousness and intention?
Mihaly pointed out: Flow is a state of harmonious and orderly consciousness.
For example, when a pianist plays passionately in a music hall, he consciously remembers every movement of his fingers, the sounds heard by his ears, every note in the music, and the overall formal structure. All have clear perceptions.
So we often see pianists playing so ecstatically, like they are possessed. At this time, the pianist is in a state of flow, and his consciousness is harmonious and orderly.
But whenever information threatens or conflicts with established intentions, there will be inherent disorder. In other words, our consciousness has lost its order and our hearts have fallen into a state of chaos. What follows is pain, anger, anxiety, fear and other negative emotions that people often talk about.
This phenomenon of internal disorder is also called "mental entropy." We should note that this is a very important psychological concept.
The word "entropy" of spiritual entropy is the word "fire" with a businessman's "commerce" next to it. "Entropy" was originally a measure used to measure the degree of disorder of a system in the second law of thermodynamics. It belongs to the category of physics, but Mihaly borrowed it from psychology.
Here, we briefly explain what entropy is. Take the male dormitory of the university as an example. Because they are boys and they are relatively lazy, they adopt the method of cleaning once a week. From Monday to Friday, the dormitory will become more and more chaotic, which is a process of increasing entropy. When the dormitory is cleaned and tidy at the weekend, it is a process of reducing entropy.
But there is a certain difference between mental entropy and entropy in thermodynamics. Mental entropy simply represents a state of disordered consciousness, and its opposite is a state of flow. Mental entropy is divided into two types, one is short-term mental entropy and the other is long-term mental entropy. Let’s introduce them separately below.
Short-term mental entropy
Short-term mental entropy does not exist for a long time. It may be a short time or three to five days, but it causes huge troubles to people. of. The book cites the story of Julio, a technical factory worker.
The problem Julio encountered was actually very simple. When he drove home, he found a punctured tire. But the problem was that he would not receive his salary until next week. Before that, Julio could not make up the money. Enough money to fix the tire. So he thought of a way to hold on until his salary next week, which was to fill up the tires at a gas station near his home every day, and then quickly drive to the company. After get off work, I fill up my tires at a gas station near the company, and then drive home quickly.
Julio knew that tire deflation happened very quickly. So he was worried every day: "Is the tire going to leak all the air? Will I be able to get home tonight? Will I be able to get to work on time tomorrow?" His mind was completely occupied by these worries, which led to him I had no intention of working at all, and my mood began to become uneasy. Later, because he was out of shape at work and failed to complete the work within the specified time, which slowed down the work progress of the entire team, he was complained by his colleagues, and Julio's mood became worse and worse.
In this story, we can see that the most important goal for Julio is to work hard and wait until the salary is paid next week to repair the tire. However, the flat tire directly affected his commute to and from get off work, which generated a series of bad signals, requiring him to spend a lot of energy to deal with these messages, so his concentration on work was greatly reduced. This is the information we mentioned above that threatens the established goals, and this is also the fundamental reason for the chaos in Julio's inner world.
Long-term mental entropy
Compared with short-term mental entropy, long-term mental entropy is more harmful. Mihaly told the story of a boy named Jim.
One day, Jim was alone at home. He lay quietly in bed, listened to the "Grateful Dead" for a whole week, swallowed 70 aspirin, and committed suicide.
Why does this happen? The reason is the long-term mental entropy that tortured him. Jim's parents were divorcing and had begun to separate a year earlier. So Jim lived with his mother Monday through Friday and went to his father's new apartment on the weekends. This arrangement kept Jim busy running around and never had time to spend time with his friends.
However, this is not the worst. Worst of all, the parents were constantly fighting for custody of Jim. In order to win over him, his parents did not hesitate to slander each other behind their backs. This makes Jim feel a strong sense of guilt when he expresses care or love for the other party in front of his father or mother. This sense of guilt makes him at a loss what to do.
A few days before committing suicide, Jim sent a distress signal in his diary. He wrote: "Help, I don't want to hate my mother, and I don't want to hate my father.
I hope they stop pushing me like this! ”
Fortunately, Jim’s sister found the empty aspirin bottle and called her mother immediately. Jim was sent to the hospital in time for gastric lavage, and he recovered and was discharged after a few days. Because of what happened this time, his parents also realized the seriousness of the problem, and they began to seek professional treatment for Jim to re-establish a stable parent-child relationship.
What is worth pondering about this incident is that there are some. Many children are not as lucky as Jim. Many patients with depression also suffer from long-term mental entropy and finally choose to die. Therefore, the harm that mental entropy brings to us is immeasurable. When "spiritual entropy" becomes the norm, it will be extremely scary.
But fortunately, human consciousness can be completely in our own hands. We can obtain flow by controlling self-awareness, thereby resisting those fatal threats. Mental entropy. Then, in the next lecture, I will give you a detailed introduction to the several elements that constitute flow and the physical characteristics that appear after flow occurs to help you obtain flow experience faster and better. p>
Summary
Okay, today’s main content ends here. Earlier we mainly talked about the meaning and influence of the three concepts of flow, consciousness and mental entropy. At the end of the article, we have prepared a knowledge card for you. If you like today’s content, please save it or share it with your friends.