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Flow P S Edition (08) by Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly [Paperback (2008)]
Flow P S Edition (08) by Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly [Paperback (2008)]
Paperback
Published January 1, 2008
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October 18, 2025
Learn how to Get to The Optimal State from the Psychology Classic, the Outstanding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
10 out of 10
Monty Python and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have in common the fact that they make people happy, the former with some of the best comedies ever, as in The Life of Brian is a candidate for the number One spot, and the latter with the Secrets that can Bring you to the top, reach the Zenith, the Peaks of Camelot, for the psychologist writer, climber and chess player has been studying for decades Flow…
There is another aspect that made me put Monty Python, the best comedy team ever, and Flow in the same context, and that is the scene in The Life of Brian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n3LL... where the hero is trying to escape, finds himself in the market place and when he tries to buy something, he asks the price, is ready to accept, only to find the seller outraged for ‘we’re supposed to haggle’ and then follows one of the most hilarious scenes one can imagine, for the buyer is willing to accept the offer (for he is worried by the Romans, fast on his tracks)
Only the merchant is not pleased, on the contrary, he is upset and so is Burt, brought in to show support, and the seller is showing Brian the game, how to reject the first price, with offense and lowering the price considerably, only to hear ‘Ten-Are you trying to insult me…Me -With a poor dying grandmother...Ten’ and the show goes on, with an extraordinary script, which made me think of something from Flow…
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentions something he has witnessed, when an American client entered a real shop, asked the price and offered to pay right away, only to be refused and when the psychologist asked the shop owner why he would refuse a transaction that was so simple and easy, the man said that he does not want this kind of commerce, he needs to be challenged, he wants to negotiate over the goods and their price, which brings us to one of the conditions of Flow, which is challenges meet expectations.
Contrary to what some, maybe most people expect, we are not experiencing a Peak, reach the Zenith when we just sit on the couch, in front of the television, but when we are challenged, Immersed in an activity that demands all our attention, to the point where one other condition for reaching The Optimal State is that All Else disappears from our radar, we are involved in that activity so much that we forget all else…
As the author says, when climbing on a mountain side, one is concentrated on the rock, the next support, and does not worry about having ravioli later tonight…incidentally, rock climbing is one of the demanding occupations that are prone to Flow and so is surgery…I remember the explanation given - the surgeon coming out of a difficult operation (surgery to remove a nail is important, but it tends to be the difficult task that bring such rewards) and saying let us have lunch, for we must be hungry, only to be told that it is already evening…
So this is something else that happens when one is In The Zone, time loses rigidity, it becomes fluid and changing…a ballerina will be on the stage for one minute or less, but it will feel like days, or infinity…another feature of Flow is that one is In Control and one way to do that is to set Goals (by the way, establishing concordant goals…I am thinking now of the Imagine The Best Possible Future Endeavor coupled with the Use Humor enterprise as in…What Best Possible Future do you mean, with Climate Change and all, there is nothing to expect but Calamity, deserts and water levels rising…then look at Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul yesterday, ergo the whole country in the hands of the Ultimate Savages…the Taliban
On the other hand, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks in the many lectures you can find on YouTube and surely elsewhere about the effects of adversity on people, giving the example of Winston Churchill (the one he calls the leader of the Western World in the most difficult period) and other great leaders, athletes who have had a very hard childhood…Harvard Professor Tal Ben Shahar speaks of the need to ‘Learn to Fail or Fail to Learn”, the fact that Edison had tried 10,000 versions before finding the secret for the bulb…hence, maybe there will be so many success stories coming out of Kandahar, if the Taliban do not kill everyone there…well, there was on BBC saying that they are reasonable…
As long as there is none of that decadent music, it will be all right…thieves will have hands cut off, adulterers will be executed, and stoning and other such punishments provided by the Koran will be enforced, but what of that…Days of Wine and Roses, maybe even competitions for Flow and Optimum Experience, although this will probably fall under corrupt Western science, which is equated by these barbarians with Satan’s work…
There are challenges there, that is a sure thing…on the issue of challenges and skills, there are some good examples, such when one is playing tennis, or something else and one is bored to death and ultimately annoyed and abandons a game with an opponent that is much weaker and similarly, he or she or they (we have to think of non-binary, pansexual, transgender, no gender and other categories) feels overwhelmed when set against someone who is so much better that any effort is futile and ludicrous, balls are thrown outside the park, when they are reached, which is seldom and the perfect balance is reached when one is facing the exact Aristotelian Golden Mean, between the two extremes…
Mobile phones are a huge challenge in an era when attention spans are set at about two seconds, as Bill Maher joked the other day, and people are constantly checking their screens and ergo it seems impossible to find the state where one forgets all else and reaches Flow, but Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says we can bring Optimal Experience into everyday tasks, such as washing our teeth, driving to work, with goals, being one with the car and other methods which you find reading his classic, listening to him explain it on YouTube and in other places on the net…
10 out of 10
Monty Python and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have in common the fact that they make people happy, the former with some of the best comedies ever, as in The Life of Brian is a candidate for the number One spot, and the latter with the Secrets that can Bring you to the top, reach the Zenith, the Peaks of Camelot, for the psychologist writer, climber and chess player has been studying for decades Flow…
There is another aspect that made me put Monty Python, the best comedy team ever, and Flow in the same context, and that is the scene in The Life of Brian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n3LL... where the hero is trying to escape, finds himself in the market place and when he tries to buy something, he asks the price, is ready to accept, only to find the seller outraged for ‘we’re supposed to haggle’ and then follows one of the most hilarious scenes one can imagine, for the buyer is willing to accept the offer (for he is worried by the Romans, fast on his tracks)
Only the merchant is not pleased, on the contrary, he is upset and so is Burt, brought in to show support, and the seller is showing Brian the game, how to reject the first price, with offense and lowering the price considerably, only to hear ‘Ten-Are you trying to insult me…Me -With a poor dying grandmother...Ten’ and the show goes on, with an extraordinary script, which made me think of something from Flow…
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentions something he has witnessed, when an American client entered a real shop, asked the price and offered to pay right away, only to be refused and when the psychologist asked the shop owner why he would refuse a transaction that was so simple and easy, the man said that he does not want this kind of commerce, he needs to be challenged, he wants to negotiate over the goods and their price, which brings us to one of the conditions of Flow, which is challenges meet expectations.
Contrary to what some, maybe most people expect, we are not experiencing a Peak, reach the Zenith when we just sit on the couch, in front of the television, but when we are challenged, Immersed in an activity that demands all our attention, to the point where one other condition for reaching The Optimal State is that All Else disappears from our radar, we are involved in that activity so much that we forget all else…
As the author says, when climbing on a mountain side, one is concentrated on the rock, the next support, and does not worry about having ravioli later tonight…incidentally, rock climbing is one of the demanding occupations that are prone to Flow and so is surgery…I remember the explanation given - the surgeon coming out of a difficult operation (surgery to remove a nail is important, but it tends to be the difficult task that bring such rewards) and saying let us have lunch, for we must be hungry, only to be told that it is already evening…
So this is something else that happens when one is In The Zone, time loses rigidity, it becomes fluid and changing…a ballerina will be on the stage for one minute or less, but it will feel like days, or infinity…another feature of Flow is that one is In Control and one way to do that is to set Goals (by the way, establishing concordant goals…I am thinking now of the Imagine The Best Possible Future Endeavor coupled with the Use Humor enterprise as in…What Best Possible Future do you mean, with Climate Change and all, there is nothing to expect but Calamity, deserts and water levels rising…then look at Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul yesterday, ergo the whole country in the hands of the Ultimate Savages…the Taliban
On the other hand, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks in the many lectures you can find on YouTube and surely elsewhere about the effects of adversity on people, giving the example of Winston Churchill (the one he calls the leader of the Western World in the most difficult period) and other great leaders, athletes who have had a very hard childhood…Harvard Professor Tal Ben Shahar speaks of the need to ‘Learn to Fail or Fail to Learn”, the fact that Edison had tried 10,000 versions before finding the secret for the bulb…hence, maybe there will be so many success stories coming out of Kandahar, if the Taliban do not kill everyone there…well, there was on BBC saying that they are reasonable…
As long as there is none of that decadent music, it will be all right…thieves will have hands cut off, adulterers will be executed, and stoning and other such punishments provided by the Koran will be enforced, but what of that…Days of Wine and Roses, maybe even competitions for Flow and Optimum Experience, although this will probably fall under corrupt Western science, which is equated by these barbarians with Satan’s work…
There are challenges there, that is a sure thing…on the issue of challenges and skills, there are some good examples, such when one is playing tennis, or something else and one is bored to death and ultimately annoyed and abandons a game with an opponent that is much weaker and similarly, he or she or they (we have to think of non-binary, pansexual, transgender, no gender and other categories) feels overwhelmed when set against someone who is so much better that any effort is futile and ludicrous, balls are thrown outside the park, when they are reached, which is seldom and the perfect balance is reached when one is facing the exact Aristotelian Golden Mean, between the two extremes…
Mobile phones are a huge challenge in an era when attention spans are set at about two seconds, as Bill Maher joked the other day, and people are constantly checking their screens and ergo it seems impossible to find the state where one forgets all else and reaches Flow, but Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says we can bring Optimal Experience into everyday tasks, such as washing our teeth, driving to work, with goals, being one with the car and other methods which you find reading his classic, listening to him explain it on YouTube and in other places on the net…
Displaying 1 of 1 review