Flow, The Secret to Happiness | Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
This video was originally recorded at a TED talk conference in 2004. In this video Mihaly discusses his pioneering research on achieving a state of flow.
From the TED website, Mihaly “has contributed pioneering work to our understanding of happiness, creativity, human fulfillment and the notion of “flow” — a state of heightened focus and immersion in activities such as art, play and work.”
“Now, “ecstasy” in Greek meant simply to stand to the side of something. And then it became essentially an analogy for a mental state where you feel that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routines. So ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality. And it’s interesting, if you think about it, how, when we think about the civilizations that we look up to as having been pinnacles of human achievement — whether it’s China, Greece, the Hindu civilization, or the Mayas, or Egyptians — what we know about them is really about their ecstasies, not about their everyday life. We know the temples they built, where people could come to experience a different reality. We know about the circuses, the arenas, the theaters. These are the remains of civilizations and they are the places that people went to experience life in a more concentrated, more ordered form. “
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi