Quotes About Flow

Involvement is greatly facilitated by the ability to concentrate. People who suffer from attentional disorders, who cannot keep their minds from wandering, always feel left out of the flow of life.

But if one assumes that people have a choice in how they respond to external events, in what meaning they attribute to suffering, then one can interpret the constructive response as normal and the neurotic one as a failure to rise to the challenge, as a breakdown in the ability to flow.

Two terms describing states of social pathology apply also to conditions that make flow difficult to experience: anomie and alienation. Anomie—

To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.

So the first step in improving the quality of life consists in engineering daily activities so that one gets the most rewarding experiences from them.

In a really enjoyable game, the players are balanced on the fine line between boredom and anxiety. The same is true when work, or a conversation, or a relationship is going well.

it's very clear to me that my ability to think and write at the same time depends on the flow of ink. The thing I enjoy most is the flow of my own ideas and getting them down on paper. I will not write with a ballpoint pen, because it doesn't really flow. That's why I use a fountain pen. And only a fountain pen that really works very well.

Many of the peculiarities attributed to creative persons are really just ways to protect the focus of concentration so that they may lose themselves in the creative process. Distractions interrupt flow, and it may take hours to recover the peace of mind one needs to get on with the work. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself in it, and the easier it is to get distracted.

Unfortunately, many people find the only challenges they can respond to are violence, gambling, random sex, or drugs. Some of these experiences can be enjoyable, but these episodes of flow do not add up to a sense of satisfaction and happiness over time. Pleasure does not lead to creativity, but soon turns into addiction—the thrall of entropy.

the secret to a happy life is to learn to get flow from as many of the things we have to do as possible.

Flow tends to occur when a person's skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable.

People who view television more often than the average tend also to have worse jobs and worse relationships. In a large scale study in Germany, it was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claimed to have. While the opposite trend was found for watching television. The most flow was reported by individuals who read a lot and watched little TV. The least by those who read seldom and watched often.

It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life.

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.

success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue...as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.

It's good Feng Shui.' 'What's that?' 'It's Chinese for throwing out your crap.

that is, trust in you-the-soul's plan for you-the-personality's life, in the power of the collective consciousness and the flow to bring the "just right" next thing, in your ability to notice what you need to notice and make it meaningful in an accurate way, and in the deep inner goodness of all people and their desire to cocreate and help one another evolve.

And over the village slipped the days, passing into the nights; the weeks flowed by, the months crept on, the wind howled, and glassified with an autumnal, translucent, greenish-azure, The Don flowed tranquilly down to the sea.

When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where today it flows in shallows like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, tomorrow it will flow richly and fully.

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

A moving door hinge never corrodes. Flowing water never grows stagnant.

It is best to realize the transitory nature of things and work with it. Understanding the world's ephemeral nature can be the biggest advantage of all.

The follower of Tao is always flexible and adaptable to circumstance.