What makes us happy is a question that people have been raising over the years. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has an answer. He describes the state of feeling happy by the term, flow.
He examined hundreds of people about what made them happy and found out the conditions for flow.
- Intense focus on a task. A person focuses on one activity that she forgets about everything else.
- Freedom from all self-scrutiny. The job is not imposed upon, but it’s own choice. No fear, no doubt.
- Get immediate feedback. An actor gets it when her opposite person reacts; a climber knows how far she must climb before the summit.
- Optimally challenging: neither over-challenging nor under-challenging.
