Csikszentmihalyi's Essay 'Finding Flow'

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Almost everyone has experienced a moment in their life when they were doing something they loved, and got so wrapped up in the task at hand that they lost all track of time. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s essay “Finding Flow,” he describes this experience as the “flow.” Csikszentmihalyi has been recognized as the founder of positive psychology, and has written many books and articles on these studies. This article in particular presents his “flow” theory, and is one of his best-known works. Csikszentmihalyi believes it is flow experiences, not happiness, that leads to a better life overall. Csikszentmihalyi begins his essay by discussing what it means to live. He states that everyone can live in a biological sense, but to truly live in fullness…show more content…
He believes it is the activities in life that will make you happy, rather than something that will just make you happy for the time being and then vanish. On the other hand, there are also several areas of weakness in his essay. First, he does not include any accurate evidence defending his points. An example of this is seen through his evidence pertaining to flow experiences, but there is no exact way to measure flow, so these statistics essentially mean nothing to the reader. He also includes many hasty generalizations in his essay; for example, he states that when people are too lazy to move into the flow zone, they will turn to drugs or alcohol. This is a huge assumption, and he provides no evidence as to how he came to this conclusion. Another weakness in this essay involves his assumption that when you are in the flow, you aren’t happy. There are many people that would describe being “in the zone” while doing something they love, and are perfectly happy. Maybe that task doesn’t require as much thinking as something else in the “flow,” but that goes to show that everyone and every activity is different and cannot be compared. Lastly, he states that “flow activities provide immediate feedback,” but many activities in the flow may not give any feedback at all (546). For example, someone might describe his or her flow activity as lying on the beach. But

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