Is Flow the Secret to Happiness?

Have you ever been so absorbed in a task that time just seemed to fly by? You were so immersed that it was just you and the moment and everything else ceased to exist.

It’s called being in “the zone”, or flow. A state that has been described many times by athletes, artists, and yes….even doctors. It’s often described as the state of optimal experience. We are often our happiest, when we are in flow.

What exactly is flow?

Flow is a term coined by the researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Chick-sen-mee-high). It’s a state where the degree of skill and the degree of challenge match up in this magic sweet spot. We are concentrating hard and feel challenged, but have enough skill and experience to be able to perform successfully.

This is often represented by the following graph.

On the x-axis is the degree of skill we might possess at a task. It’s important to note that one’s skill level at a task can increase with training. In the medical field, you can think of a medical student as someone that possesses a low skill on a task, say suturing, and perhaps and experienced surgeon as a highly skilled person.

On the y-axis is the degree of challenge that a task requires. Something really easy results in a low challenge level and something more difficult, a higher challenge.

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How Hedonic Adaptation Affects Your Happiness and What to Do About It

I can admit that I easily fall into the category of a Type A personality. And, so do most of my colleagues. We are ambitious people by nature. We’re constantly looking at the next thing, the next goal.

In many respects, I think that’s great. It’s great to be motivated. But this can lead to problems if we’re motivated for the wrong reasons. Chasing after things that aren’t giving us what we really want.

Why do I see many of us caught in the pursuit of more? I think that many of us falsely get caught in the belief that once we attain that “more”, be it a new job, a nicer car, or a higher salary that we will be happier and better off than we were before. But is this true?

Often times, it simply isn’t. And that’s because of what is termed hedonic adaptation. Its described as: “the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes” (Wikipedia).

A set point
 

 

The basic idea is that we as people have a happiness “set point” and that good things that happen to us can increase that happiness temporarily, but over the long term, we end up right back where we were beforehand.

A lot of the things we pursue in order to find happiness – more money, the perfect partner, a bigger house, a better body – don’t actually make us any happier in the long term.

For more information please visit: https://www.mdhealthyself.com/how-hedonic-adaptation-affects-your-happiness-and-what-to-do-about-it