Happy Brains Increase Flow Experiences
Have you ever lost yourself in something, so much so that you lost track of time? Being consumed by a task or activity, while it can be rare for most people, is a state of being called Flow. It’s an optimal experience that can make you happy. From hiking to gardening, reading or even watching a particularly engrossing movie or TV show, flow basically describes the inherent sense of satisfaction.
In his best-selling book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, credited with popularizing the flow state with his research in the 1980s and 90’s describes flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”