I recently participated in an online course at Sophia University in the United States, where the founder taught "Positive Psychology", and I gradually gained some attention and understanding of mindfulness, flow, and spirituality.

Mindfulness means maintaining full awareness of the current state and integrating with the environment, thereby achieving the state of unity of body and mind.

Flow, which represents the power of concentration, has a strong relationship with happiness.

If human consciousness is compared to "spiritual entropy", it is essentially disordered and scattered.

Only when you focus on doing challenging things, a lot of disordered consciousness will form a certain order and a certain strength. This state is the flow experience.

After this process is over, people will feel great satisfaction and happiness.

Spirituality refers to people's innate wisdom and intelligence. It is an external manifestation of the burst of thinking in the process of living beings' evolution. It reflects behavioral differences externally and psychological changes internally.

Whether it is good or bad changes, they are manifestations of spirituality. Physics is about variables, variables of the soul.

But to be honest, although I feel a little bit interested in listening to the theory, it still feels very nihilistic.

Later, after classmates recommended the article "Ten Years Later, I Finally Understand What Flow Is" written by Zhao Yukun, a professor of psychology at Tsinghua University, I gained more understanding.

Teacher Zhao is also the earliest expert in promoting positive psychology in China.

This article is now transcribed, hoping to help more friends who are interested in this understand positive psychology.

Speaking of flow, what exactly is flow?

Seems like a popular and easy-to-understand concept.

However, flow is not that simple.

Listen to the experience of Mr. Zhao Yukun, director of the Office of Positive Psychology Center of Tsinghua University and speaker at the first Wisdom Opening Conference, who read the book "Flow" three times in more than ten years.

How to stay simple in a complex world?

How to continuously achieve flow?

How to construct the meaning of life?

I believe you will gain a lot from reading this article by Teacher Zhao.

The first time: The review was not high. When I read the book "Flow" for the first time, I didn't have a good impression.

That was when I was a graduate student in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. The author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was also our instructor and required us to read the first three chapters of this book before class.

At that time, my studies were very heavy and time was tight, so I read very quickly.

Since I am particularly interested in the issue of the meaning of life, I also read the last chapter.

Later, when Csikszentmihalyi taught us a lesson, I skipped and read some of the middle parts.

Of course, there is not much gain from reading it this way.

To make matters worse, I had already read an introduction to flow in some introductory books on positive psychology, such as Seligman's "Authentic Happiness", so when I read this book

, but lost the amazing feeling.

Secondly, I come from a science background, and I have always been disgusted by the "liberal arts" borrowing scientific concepts such as quantum mechanics and relativity to endorse their theories.

The metaphor of "spiritual entropy" in "Flow" strikes me as quite nondescript.

Thirdly, after I studied psychology, I became more wary of extending scientific research results under specific conditions into universal laws.

Csikszentmihalyi applied flow to entertainment, interpersonal relationships and even the meaning of life. In my opinion, there is a suspicion of "having a hammer in your hand, everything you see is a nail".

Of course, I agree with the core concept of flow, because I often experience flow experiences when writing, reading, playing soccer, and playing games. I completely agree with Csikszentmihalyi’s description and research on it.

That is indeed a beautiful feeling.

In my real life, I also adopt Csikszentmihalyi's suggestions and use the three principles of "clear goals", "immediate feedback" and "matching difficulty" to transform some tasks so that I can produce more in them.

flow experience.

Not to mention, after taking Csikszentmihalyi's class, I became a loyal fan of him - this unkempt, white-bearded old man with a strong Central European accent, but he was as active as a twenty-year-old in the lecture hall.

He is a young man with profound thinking and knowledge. He makes all kinds of dry and humorous jokes, but he is extremely amiable and approachable to others.

I was lucky enough to have dinner with him during class break, and he took the initiative to mention that he had a son who studied Eastern philosophy and talked to me about traditional Chinese culture, which suddenly brought me closer to him.

I have never met anyone who didn’t like Mihaly after taking his class.

However, my evaluation of the book "Flow" is still not high. I just regard it as a relatively common popular reading book. When recommending positive psychology books to others, this book basically ranks higher.

Finally, just because flow is such an important concept in positive psychology, I have to recommend it, but always add: "Just read the first three chapters." Four years later, I returned to China and needed to teach others about positivity.

In psychology, flow is an unavoidable lesson, so I reread this book.

This time I just wanted to excerpt some of the first three chapters of the book to teach people, but "output is the best input". In order to teach people, I forced myself to really understand what Csikszentmihalyi was saying.

Instead of just handing in the homework like last time.

I was so amazed when I read it this time!

Yes, surprise doesn’t necessarily only happen when you fall in love at first sight, it can also happen when you look back suddenly.