The Secret Of Happiness Is Born From Passion For What One Does

The quality of life does not depend only on happiness, but also on what one does to be happy. If you don’t develop goals that give meaning to your existence, if you don’t use your mind to its full potential, then good feelings fill only a tiny fraction of your potential. This is where the secret of happiness is.

After decades dedicated to studying the states in which people reach their maximum potential, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s studies indicate that people are happiest when they reach a state of high concentration, which this author called  ” flow.”

This state is achieved when we experience positive emotions such as happiness, strength or positive attitude, the known states of “psychic negentropy”. By not needing attention to ruminate and feel sorry for ourselves, psychic energy can flow freely towards whatever thought or task we decide to put it on.

On the contrary, negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, anxiety or boredom produce “psychic entropy”; that is, a state in which we cannot effectively use our attention to cope with external tasks, because we need it to restore an internal subjective order.

The state of flow plays a major role in people’s ability to be happy

To better understand what a state of flux is, it may be convenient to first analyze the exact opposite state, the state in which there is no order in consciousness, in which thoughts appear and disappear capriciously without our being able to control them.

It is a very unpleasant state that is usually related to other problems such as insecurity, depression or anxiety and that, if repeated frequently, can make people very unhappy.

The opposite is the flow state, when the mind is flowing, one feels completely attentive and in control of himself, carefree and with a pleasant sense of doing the right thing. It all makes sense, and the problems we encounter seem like exciting challenges that we gladly face, not threats to our personal well-being or safety.

Various studies seem to indicate that some factors such as money actually have a relative role in our happiness.  There is no secret to happiness because money, for example, is important when we have little – just as food is very important when you are starving – but the more money we have, the less it influences our happiness.

For the levels of purchasing power that we enjoy in developed countries, there are factors much more important than money that determine our happiness. Instead, enjoying states of flux makes a person feel more self-confident, less anxious, and happier.

Mondays could be the secret of happiness

Mondays are usually the worst days of the week, almost a bad word for many people because it means going back to work. But Csikszentmihalyi, professor in neuroscience at Stanford University, has detected a paradox: work is more conducive than leisure to achieve what he calls a “state of flux”, something that could be interpreted as the secret of happiness.

The key is that, for many people, leisure is dead time and work the opposite. Having clear objectives, being able to manage them and receive feedback is key to flow.

The state of flow is essentially that: the ability to focus psychic energy and attention on plans and goals of our choice, and that it feels worth doing because this type of life has been decided and every moment of it is enjoyed. to be done.

And you? Have you already found the secret of happiness, of yours?