Learn something new is great : “Flow State”

Have you heard of “Flow State”?  I hadn’t until received a eDM from Centre of Excellence this morning.

What is Flow State?

It is a state of mind that you felt completely immersed in an activity. You are 100% focused and nothing can disturb you or get into your mind. It is tranquil, enjoyable, maybe lost track of time and totally absorbed in the present moment.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s words, flow is “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” (1990).

The term State of Flow was coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist who was a Nazi Camp prisoner during Second World War. He witnessed pain and suffrage from other prisons which led him to the topic of happiness and contentment.

Have you ever experienced State of Flow? My first encounter was sketching or drawing during early childhood. But I stopped drawing after primary school. Then I got similar experience when I did Chinese Calligraphy but the feelings from drawing is much stronger.

Until recently, I started practising Meditation, I would say the state is very similar to the state when I was drawing. In medatative term, state of flow maybe similar to Samadhi. But state of flow is non-religious and broadly applicable.

I am excited when I learned this term because I have discovered something new and it is the experience that I could not name of but I can now. It is so interesting that I want to dig deeper and explore.