![]() ![]() ![]() And that’s ‘as close as any of us can come to being happy’. ‘People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives,’ he once said. By losing himself in chess, he was able to create an inner life that was not just tolerable but positively enjoyable. Mike’s early immersion in chess at a prison camp had convinced him that the content of our inner lives is as important in determining our happiness as the outer circumstances. They begin by noting how, as a young boy, Csikszentmihalyi coped with an experience being in an Italian prisoner of war camp in WW2, by becoming lost in chess as a “different world”. So we’re delighted to find this appreciation of Csikszentmihalyi written by Tim Jackson (familiar to these pages) and Amy Isham at CUSP, which zeros in on exactly this point. We have been interested in the category of this kind of “ practice” since the beginning of A/UK - with a side agenda of how such an absorption might be an alternative to the needs answered by materially-excessive consumerism. But to be in “flow” is to be pleasurably “lost” in the activity. Too easy, it’s boring too difficult, it’s frustrating. To be in “flow” is to occupy a sweet spot between your skills, and the difficulty of your challenge. The recent passing of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reminds us of his brilliant concept of the mental state known as “flow”, which Csikszentmihalyi developing from engaging with artists and sportspeople. ![]()
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