[打卡]阅读打卡第52天 (Feb 03, 2022) - Flow

Progress: 53

• My own self exists solely in my consciousness --> others only have a version of it, which may be very different from the origin - myself as I see me
• self = all that have passed through our consciousness: memories, actions, desires, pleasures, and pains; contains the hierarchies of goals that we have built up over the years; represents symbolically of all of consciousness' contents & their interrelations
• attention shapes the self, and is in turn shaped by it --> circular causality
  
• experiences depends on how we invest our attention --> attention is related to goals & intentions --> goals & intentions are connected to each other by the self
• Psychic entropy: information that conflict with our existing intentions, distracts us from carrying them out (e.g. pain, fear, rage, anxiety, jealousy) --> disrupted internal order of the self --> impaired effectiveness
• Flow = the opposite state of psychic entropy --> when the info is congruent with our goals --> more attention is freed to deal with the inner & outer environment --> attention flows effortlessly --> disciplined concentration --> flow state --> experience an improved quality of life
• The self becomes more complex following the flow --> the self has grown
• Complexity is the result of 2 psychological processes: 
• 1) differentiation --> move towards uniqueness & separation from the others --> becomes a unique individual, possessing rarer skills (great individual accomplishments, risk mire in self egotism)
• 2) integration --> a union with others, with ideas & entities beyond the self --> feel connected & secure, but lacks the individual autonomy
• A complex self is one that combines both differentiation and integration
• Flow helps to integrate the self --> the self becomes more complex
• aim to act freely: the action itself should be our ulterior motives --> the present instant becomes more enjoyable & we build our self confidence --> allows us to develop skills & make significant contribution to the humankind
• 2 main strategies to improve our quality of life:
• 1) make external conditions match our goals
• 2) change how we experience the external conditions to make them fit our goals better
• Quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own
• material success are relevant to happiness, only if they help us to feel better

Pleasure & enjoyment

• Pleasure = a feeling of contentment when one achieves the expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning
• pleasure by itself does NOT bring happiness
• pleasure can be achieved without investing in attention
• pleasure helps maintain order, but cannot create new orders in consciousness --> does not produce psychological growth
• Enjoyment = "occurs when one has not only met some prior expectation or satisfied a need or desire, but has gone beyond what he or she has been programmed to do, achieved something unexpected, something unimagined before"
• enjoyment = a forward movement, characterized by a sense of novelty & accomplishment
• we achieve growth and become more complex after an enjoyment

The 8 components of enjoyments:

1) needs to engage in a challenging activity that requires skills

• how enjoyable an activity is depends ultimately on its complexity --> one needs to face more demanding challenges & use higher level skills
• enjoyment occurs at the boundary b/n boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act

Reflection: To reach the flow state, a task needs to be sufficiently challenging, yet within my capacity to attain. What are the ways to implement this in my daily life?