Optimal experiences and ironic paradoxes of our time

[BlueFox]

Hello everyone!

I've just been reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience. His ideas fasinates me, and I like to share them with you.  :)

He writes, how one of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is the great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment. Compared to people living only a few generations ago, we have enormously greater opportunities to have a good time, yet there is no indication that we actually enjoy life more than our ancestors did. Opportunities alone seems not to be enough. Some people enjoy themselves wherever they are, while others stay bored even when confronted the most dazzling prospects. We need to take into account the internal conditions that make flow-experience possible. Mihaly writes, we need to know how to control conciousness - a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate.  :smt009

The paradox his writing about, seems to be obvious. What fasinates me is, how he think we all need to learn to control conciousness. What do you think? Can we actually learn such a thing? And if we can, what effects would it have in our lives?

[Bastard]

"Use it or lose it."

As passive consumers of commercial entertainment, we gradually lose the ability to create spontaneous joy from the mere moment.
Watch infants, they can often do it very well, (unless they've been steeped in the commercial consumer culture since the cradle).

People today in the, "do it for me", generation have lost the ability to do it for themselves.
We seem to have forgotten that each of us has the ability to create happiness inside of ourselves without the need for external causes.
Those external causes are conditions we impose on ourselves to make excuses for why we can't remember how to create happiness within.
Too often, once the momentary thrill of those conditions being satisfied is gone, we discover they didn't make us happy after all.
They don't have the power to make us happy.
Only we ourselves have that power, and instead of placing conditions on our happiness, we must just practice being happy with no excuse.
Just indescribably happy for no apparent reason, despite circumstances, rather than because of circumstances.

[BlueFox]

Hi Bastard,

You said it. We have the power to be happy with no excuses and because of circumstances, as you said. But why does it happen so rare?
I like your expression "Do it for me" -generation. What did we do wrong, when we tried to give all we could to our children, we tried to make them happy and all we could create was ... outwardly directed and easily manipulated people! Uuh, this sounds rather bad... but I admit, I forgot to encourage them to learn how to control conciousness. Their didn't learn to cultivate their control of conciousness, which might have been helpful for them in their searching for internal meaning in life. This might have caused lack the attentional fluidity needed to relate to activities for their own sake and difficulties to become interested in intrisic goals, to lose oneself in an activity that offers no rewards outside the interactin itself. It is worthy to remember, that happiness lies not in mindless hedonism, but in mindful challenge.