Euro
British Pound
Product Description
"Each year sees hundreds of titles published with advice on how to stay trim, how to avoid stress, how to grow rich when the market crashes, or how to develop self-confidence. While these self-help books do occasionally, help the reader, in the long run they are likely to be unsatisfying, for, in fact, they do little to enhance the quality of experience: It is all too common an occurrence in our culture that success leads only to frustration, to anxiety, to further disillusionment. What, then, does make people glad to be alive? What are the inner experiences that make life worthwhile? For more than two decades Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has been studying states of "optimal experience," or those times when people report feelings of enjoyment, concentration, and deep involvement. Systematic studies on happiness by other psychologists have confirmed his research findings that involve not only determining what people really mean when they say they are enjoying themselves but also learning how they reach that state of contentment - and how some fortunate individuals are able to maintain themselves in that peak state. These investigations have revealed that what makes experience genuinely enjoyable is a state of consciousness that Csikszentmihalyi calls flow - a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. Everyone experiences flow from time to time and will recognize its characteristics: People typically feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and as if they were performing at the peak of their abilities. Both the sense of time and emotional problems seem to disappear. There is an exhilarating feeling of transcendence, of breaking out of the boundaries of identity. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience reveals how this pleasurable state can, in fact, be controlled and not just left to chance. The key is to set challenges for ourselves, tasks that are neither too difficult nor too simple for our abilities. With such goals, we learn to order the information that enters consciousness and thereby improve the quality of our lives. While flow is most often achieved in leisure settings, such as when listening to music, playing a sport, or pursuing a hobby, Professor Csikszentmihalyi explains how every activity or situation can be enhanced if one understands the principle of the flow experience.
Originally 1991.
This book is second hand, and while you may not get the same publication/version/reprint/edition shown in the picture it will be the same author and title.
Removing existing stickers from a second hand book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so.
Even if the picture shows no price stickers on the book they may be there on the copy you receive.
All of our books are in very good condition.
Please be aware that there will be a sticker with an identifying number on the spine of this book.
