introduction

• subjective experience is not just one of the dimensions of life, it is life itself. material conditions are secondary: the only affect us indirectly, by way of experience. flow and even pleasure, on the other hand, benefit the quality of life directly. health, money, and other material advantages may or may not improve life. unless a person has learned to control psychic energy, chances are such advantages will be useless

tragedies transformed

• yet is is true, as dr. franz alxander has so well stated, "the fact that the mind rules the body is in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life"
• the relevant point to be made here is that a person who knows how to find flow from life is able to enjoy even situations that seem to allow only despair
• the reason tragic events were seen as positive was that they presented the victim with very clear goals while reducing contradictory and inessential choices. the patients who learned to master the new challenges of their impaired situation felt a clarity of purpose they had lacked before
• I have tried first to conquer myself; I don't care if I lose the world
• one does not get to be a man by getting married, by having sex, to be a man means to be responsible to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent

coping with stress

• this different in how a person responds to stressful events has been called "coping ability" or "coping style"
• there are two main ways people respond to stress. the positive response is called "mature defence" or "transformational coping". the negative response to stress would be a "neorotic defense" or "regressive coping"
• the ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a very rare gift
• therefore admirigin courage is in itself a positive adaptive trait;those who do so may be better prepared to ward off the blows of misfortune
• but simply calling the ability to cheat chaos "transformational coping" and people who are good at it "courageous", falls short of explaining this remarkable gift

the power of dissipative structures

• the nodel prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine calls physical systems that harness energy which otherwise would be dispersed and lost in random motion "dissipative structures"
• human beings have also managed to utilize waste energy to serve their goals
• the integrity of the self depends on the ability to take neutral or destructive events and turn them into positive ones
• sooner or later everyone will have to confront events that contradict goals: disappointments, severe illness, financial reversal, and eventually the inevitability of one's death. each even of this kind is negative feedback that produces disorder in the mind
•  it if for this reason thatcourag, resilience, perseverance, mature defense, or transformational coping - the dissipative structures of the mind - are so essential
• on the other hand, if we do develop such positive strategies, most negative events can be at least neutralized, and possibly even used as challenges that will help make the self stronger and more complex
• transformational skills usually develop by late adolescence
• we have learned from experience sampling method studies that a healthy adolescent stays depressed on the average for only half an hour. (an adult takes, on the average, twice as long to recover from had moods)
• it is at this age[17,18] that most people the ability to control consciousness begins
• the peak in the development of coping skills is reached when a young man or woman has achieved a strong enough sense of self; based on personally selected goals, hat no external disappointment can entirely undermine who he or she is
• why are some people weakened by stress, while others gain strength from it? basically the answer is simple: those who know how to transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled will be able to enjoy themselve, and emergy stronger from the ordeal
• there are three main steps that seem to be involved in such transformations
  • unselfconscious self-assurance - basically, to arrive at this level of self-assurance one must trust oneself, one's environment, and one's place in it
  • focusing attention on the world - people who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves. in a threatening situation it is natural to mobilize psychic energy, draw it inward, and use it as a defense against the threat. but this innate reation more often than not compromises the ability to cope
  • the discovery of new solutions - there are basically two ways to cope with a situation that creates psychic entropy. one is to focus attention on the obstacles to achieving one's goals and then to move them out of the way, thereby restoring harmony in consciousness. this is the direct approach. the other is to focus on the entire situation including oneself, to discover whether alternative goals may not be more appropriate, and thus different solutions possible
• but these transformations require that a person be prepared to perceive unexpected opportunities
• but how does one fo about discovering these alternative strategies? the answer isbasically simple: if one operates with unselfconscious assurance, and remains open to the anvironment and involved in it, a solution is likely to emerge

the autotelic self: a summary

• the difference between someone who enjoys life and someone who is overwhelmed by it is a product of a combination of such external factors and the way a person has come to interpret them - that is, whether he sees challenges as threats or a opportunities for action
• the "autotelic self" is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony
• setting goals - a person with a autotelic self learns to make choices - ranging from lifelong commitments, such as getting married and settling on a vocation, to trivial decisions like what to do on the weekend or how to spend the time waiting in the dentist's office - without much fuss and the minimum of panic
  • selecting a goal is related to the recognition of challenges. goals and challenges imply each other
  • as soon as the goals and challenges define a system of action, they in turn suggest the skill necessary to operate within it
  • and to develop skills, one needs to pay attention to the results of one's actions - to monitor feedback
  • one of the basic differences between a person with n autotelic self and one without it is that the former knows that it is she who has chosen whatever foal she is persuing. because it is her decision, an autotelic person's behavior is both more consistent and more flexible
• becoming immersed in the activity - after choosing a system of action, a person with an autotelic personality grows deeply involved with whatever he is doing.
  • to do so successfully one must learn to balance the opportunities for action with the skills one possesses. to achieve involvement with an action syste, one must find a relatively close mesh between the demands of the environment and one's capacity to act
  • involvement is greatly facilitated by the ability to concentrate. to be distracted against one's will is the surest sign that one is not in control
• paying attention to what is happening - concentration leads to involvement, which can only be maintained by constant inputs of attention.
  • having an autotelic self implies the ability to sustaininvolvement. self-consciousness, which is the most common source of distration, is not a problem for such a person
  • in some cases it is the depth of involvement that pushes self-consciousness out of awareness, while sometimes it is the other way around: it is the very lack of self-consciousness that makes deep involvementpossible
  • the elements arethe autotelic personality are related to one another by links of mutual causations. one can start anywhere, because once the flow experience is in motion the other elements will be much easier to attain
  • the autotelicindividual grows beyond the limits of individuality by investing psychich energy in a system in which she is included. because of this union of the person and the system, the self emerges at a higher level of complexity. this is why 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
• learning to enjoy immediate experience - the outcomeof having an autotelic self - of learning to set goals, to develop skils, to be sensitive to feedback, to know how to concentrate and get involved - is that one can enjoy lie even when objective circumstances are brutish and nasty. being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy.
  • to achieve this control, however, requires determination and discipline. flow drives individuals to creativity and outstanding achievement. the necessity to develop increasingly refined skills to sustain enjoyment is what lies behind the evolution of culture
  • but to change allexistence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. it is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make sense.
  • to create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to those who wish toattain optimal experience; it is a task that involved transforming the entirely of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.