Flow — the psychology of optimal experience — is the theory developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on how we can develop a continual sense of joy, creativity, and total involvement with life.

Over decades of research Csikszentmihalyi and his team discovered eight elements to enjoyment. The first is a challenge that requires appropriate skills to accomplish and that is just out of reach. "Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act (Flow 52)."

When we are fully immersed in a challenging and stimulating experience our activity becomes spontaneous; we cannot separate ourselves from our actions. In our 'normal' life we are constantly second-guessing ourselves, interrupting with doubts and questions. But in flow there is no need to question: the action carries us forward in confidence.

When goals are clear we have a sense of our progress--and our purpose. For a rock climber it is to scale the cliff without falling. For the writer it is to communicate thought and experience in ways that others can understand and enjoy. Where goals are not clear in advance, a person must learn to know what she wants to accomplish.

Goals require feedback to be achieved and enjoyed. "Almost any kind of feedback can be enjoyable, provided it is logically related to a goal in which one has invested psychic energy (Flow, 57)."

One of the most enjoyable aspects of flow is that it blocks out irrelevant information or thoughts that distract and depress us. In flow, the demands of the activity create order and crowd out the disorder. Our consciousness is alive with the challenge at hand.

There is a positive and healthy thrill, says Csikszentmihalyi, controlling potentially dangerous forces. The important thing is to realize that activities that produce flow allow us "to reduce the margin of error to as close to zero as possible (Flow, 60)."

What we enjoy is not the sense of being in control as the sense of exercising control (61).

Because we often feel threatened by our anxieties or thoughts of what others might think of us, we have an exaggerated consciousness of self. "But in flow there is no room for self-scrutiny. Because enjoyable activities have clear goals, stable rules, and challenges well matched to skills, there is little opportunity for the self to be threatened (Flow 63)."

We don't lose our self and we don't lose consciousness, but we do lose consciousness of the self. "Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward (Flow 64)."

Those experiencing flow often report that their relation to time changes. Sometimes hours pass like minutes, but sometimes an action that takes seconds can stretch out for what seems like minutes. In effect, that dance turn goes in slo-mo or the release of the ball off the fingertips toward the hoop slows down so that we see every detail. And in that moment you know it will be perfect!

"The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself (Flow 67)."

The autotelic experience is one that is done not as a means to another end, but because the doing of it is reward enough. It is a self-goal, a self-contained activity.

"The autotelic experience, or flow, lifts the course of life to a different level . . . When experience is intrinsically rewarding life is justified in the present, instead of being held hostage to a hypothetical future gain (Flow 69)."

The more complexity in the experience the more challenges we face. If we have the skills to meet the challenges we have the possibility of flow.

"It is not skills we actually have that determine how we feel, but the ones we think we have (Flow75)." As we are challenged and rise to it our consciousness is enlivened, we get the feedback we need to adapt and improve, and the experience becomes one of increasing complexity--and increasing enjoyment.