You must have experienced such an experience in your life. For example, after a day's work, you are particularly involved, and at first you feel particularly complicated, and you will soon solve it yourself. After completing these tasks, you will not only feel tired, but also feel very comfortable and refreshed. At the same time, you will feel that time passes quickly, and the whole afternoon seems to have passed in a blink of an eye.

Yes, it is a flow experience. Similar experiences happen not only in modern life. There were also in ancient times. For example, Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who is known as a "book saint", mistook ink for garlic paste and ate it with steamed bread because he concentrated on reading posts and writing when he was a child. Jia Dao, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, left the phrase "Birds perch on trees by the pool, and monks knock on the door on the moon", which fell into the thinking of knocking on the door or pushing the door on the moon, and collided with the guards of Han Yu's trip. They were all in a flow experience.

The first person who discovered and put forward the concept of flow through investigation and study was the author of this book, the famous psychologist Mihaly csikszentmihalyi Lai. He not only put forward the flow theory for the first time, but also systematically explained what flow is and what will affect it. Today, our explanation begins with the first question: What is traffic?

What is traffic?

The official definition of flow refers to the state of concentration and ecstasy when we are doing something. In this state, you don't even feel the existence of time, but when this is done, we will feel energetic and very satisfied.

The book gives a very vivid example: it is like a sailor, holding a cable full of sails, letting the sea breeze roar by, only feeling the pleasure of the ship breaking the waves. At this time, sails, boats, wind and waves have a harmonious resonance in the sailor's blood vessels.

This reminds me of the state of a swordsman described by Mr. Jin Yong in his martial arts novels. He practiced the sword to the highest level, that is, "there is no sword in his hand, there is a sword in his heart, and man and sword are one." I believe that the swordsman at this time must be experiencing flow.

However, what we need to know is that flow experience is not exclusive to the top elites, but a common phenomenon in the human world. Old people, children, young people, office workers, stay-at-home mothers and so on can feel this experience.

So, as ordinary people, how do we get the flow experience?

Control consciousness and eliminate spiritual entropy

First of all, you need to control your consciousness and eliminate psychological entropy in order to achieve the best flow experience.

To control our consciousness, we need to understand first, what is consciousness?

The so-called consciousness refers to the information that has been deliberately arranged and combined in our brains. Hearing this definition, many friends may still find it difficult to understand, but it doesn't matter. Let's give an example:

Suppose you get up in the morning and watch your mobile phone at 9: 30, and then you will quickly estimate how long it will take you to wash yourself, how long it will take you to go downstairs, how long it will take you to get to the company by bus or subway, and you will make a variety of choices, such as how long it will take you to take a taxi to the company and try to find the best solution. After a series of evaluations, you suddenly realize that everything is over. Either way, you must be late today. This is a complete process of our consciousness.

In this process, a series of information such as time on the mobile phone, washing, going downstairs, taking bus, subway, taking a taxi, etc. , are deliberately arranged and combined in our brains, resulting in the consciousness of "I will be late today". However, in this process, we also produced something, that is "intention". It refers to the mysterious force that urges us to arrange this information in an orderly manner. In the above example, the strength that supports our efforts to make various attempts is our intention of "not wanting to be late".

So, what is the relationship between the concreteness of flow experience and consciousness and intention?

Mihaly pointed out that mobility is a harmonious and orderly state of consciousness.

For example, when a pianist plays passionately in a concert hall, he has a clear perception of every movement of his fingers, the sound heard by his ears, every note in the music and the overall form and structure. So I often see pianists infatuated. At this time, the pianist is in a flowing state, and his consciousness is harmonious and orderly.

However, whenever information threatens or conflicts with established intentions, internal chaos will occur. In other words, there is something wrong with our consciousness and our hearts are in a state of chaos. Followed by people often say that the pain, anger, anxiety, fear and other negative emotions.

This internal disorder phenomenon is also called "spiritual entropy". We should pay attention to this is a very important psychological concept.

The word "entropy" of spiritual entropy is to add a businessman's "quotient" next to the word "fire". Entropy was originally used to measure the degree of chaos in the second law of thermodynamics. It belongs to the category of physics and was borrowed from psychology by Mihaly.

Here, let's briefly explain what entropy is. Take the male dormitory in the university as an example. Because he is a boy, he is lazy, so he cleans once a week. From Monday to Friday, the dormitory will become more and more chaotic, which is a process of entropy increase. At the weekend, once the dormitory is cleaned and restored, it is a process of entropy reduction.

But there is a certain difference between spiritual entropy and entropy in thermodynamics. Spiritual entropy only represents the disordered state of consciousness, and its opposite is the state of flow. Spiritual entropy can be divided into two types, one is short-term spiritual entropy and the other is long-term spiritual entropy. The following are introduced separately.

Short-term psychological entropy

Short-term spiritual entropy does not exist for a long time, maybe for a short time, maybe for three or five days, but it has caused great trouble to people. This book tells the story of Julio, a skilled worker in a factory.

Julio's question is actually very simple. When he drove home, he found a flat tire, but the problem is that he won't get his salary until next week. Before that, Julio couldn't raise enough money to repair the tires. So he thought of a way to send his salary to next week, that is, every day at the gas station near his home, fill up his tires and then drive quickly to the company. Fill up the tires at the gas station near the company after work, and then drive home quickly.

Julio knew that a flat tire was actually very fast. So he worries every day: "Is the tire flat? Did I go home tonight? " ? Can I go to work on time tomorrow? "His mind was completely occupied by these troubles, which caused him to have no will to work at all, and his mood began to become uneasy. Later, because the work was not in the state and the work was not completed within the specified time, the progress of the whole team slowed down, and Julio's mood became worse and worse.

In this story, we can see that Julio's most important goal is to work hard and wait until next week to get the salary for repairing tires. However, the flat tire directly affected his commute and produced a series of bad signals, which made him need to spend a lot of energy to process this information, so his attention at work would be greatly reduced. This is why the information we mentioned above has threatened the established goal, which is also the root cause of Julio's inner world chaos.

Long-term spiritual entropy

Compared with short-term spiritual entropy, long-term spiritual entropy is more harmful. Mihaly told the story of a child named Jim.

One day, Jim was alone at home. He lay quietly in bed, listened to Grateful for the Dead for a whole week, swallowed 70 aspirin and committed suicide.

Why is this happening? The reason is that the long-term spiritual entropy tortured him. Jim's parents are getting divorced. They separated a year ago. So Jim lives with his mother from Monday to Friday and goes to his father's new apartment on weekends. This arrangement keeps Jim busy at both ends and never has time to get along with his friends.

However, this is not the worst. Worst of all, parents have been fighting for custody of Jim. In order to win him over, his parents did not hesitate to slander each other behind his back. This makes Jim feel guilty when he shows his concern or love for his father or mother, which makes him feel at a loss.

A few days before committing suicide, Jim sent out a distress signal in his diary. He wrote: "Help, I don't hate my mother or my father. I hope they will stop pushing me like this! "

Fortunately, Jim's sister found the empty bottle of aspirin and called her mother at the first time. Jim was sent to the hospital for gastric lavage in time and was discharged after a few days. Because of this incident, his parents also realized the seriousness of the problem, and they began to seek professional treatment for Jim and re-establish a stable parent-child relationship.

It is worth pondering that there are many children who 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 brought by spiritual entropy is immeasurable. When this "fatal spiritual entropy" becomes a normal state, it will be extremely terrible.

But fortunately, human consciousness can be completely in our own hands. We can gain flow by controlling self-consciousness, thus resisting those deadly spiritual entropy. Then in the next lecture, I will introduce several elements that make up the flow and the physical characteristics that appear after the flow. Help you get a flow experience faster and better.

abstract

Well, that's the end of today's main content. We mainly talked about the significance and influence of the three concepts of flow, consciousness and spiritual entropy. I prepared a knowledge card for you at the end of the manuscript. If you like today's content, please save it or share it with your friends.