Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - The Greatest Unanswered Question in Psychology Today
In this episode we have one of the absolute living legends of psychology on the show - we discuss the GREATEST unanswered question in psychology, the biggest thing people mis-understand about flow, what advice young people can take away from our guest's incredible career, and what he thinks the absolute biggest takeaways from his own research are - and much more with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Your fate, your destiny, your future is not set out for you - you can shape it to be what you want it to be. You have the freedom to make life better for yourself and more worthwhile and meaningful for yourselves. Even the greatest traumas and struggles can be overcome. You don’t have to achieve fame and fortune to live a meaningful and wonderful life and to be truly alive.
Mihaly is Claremont Graduate University’s Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management. He is a bestselling author and the founder and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center. He is a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Leisure Studies and his work has been featured on NPR,TED, WIRED, and more!!
The key ideas supported by the data around how people respond to Trauma. People who are focused beyond themselves and their own wellbeing are more resilient to the things that happen to them.
When you focus on the wellbeing of others, society, your family, etc - you’re much more resilient to Trauma
How do you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself as the body in which you live? Do you see yourself as being part of a family, group, religion etc? This will shape your response to trauma.
The self is a very poor site for meaning - don’t put all your eggs in the fragile basket of the self
We are all connected - recognizing that helps contextualize our existence
Flow and happiness are not the same thing - but they are very related
Flow is a momentary state of experience and happiness is a general perspective towards life
If your life is full of flow - it will be a happy life!
How do we consistently create flow states in our lives?
2 Main conditions of your psychology
Seeing challenges as things that you can deal with and overcome
Having the skills to a actually do something about the challenge
If you have those 2 traits you are more likely to be in flow more often
Pay attention to the world around you and connect with it one way or another
Some people see life as full of opportunities, others see life as full of threats
Life is quite malleable - we often feel like we’ve been dealt a tough hand, but its often how we react to it that is the most important
How does Mihaly think about creating flow states in his own life?
What is the greatest unanswered question in psychology today?
The way in which children learn to process information and why they develop certain interests in certain areas or spheres of their lives
What is the biggest mistake or pitfall that younger people (in their mid 20s) can make?
You have to keep an open mind, be open to learning
Don’t be too instinctive, don’t become an ideologue too soon
What’s the biggest thing that people misunderstand about Flow and Mihay’s research?
We have the opportunity to shape ourselves into whoever we want to be- but we have to take into account where we came from and what our experiences have been.
What’s the biggest takeaway from all the research on Flow?
Your fate, your destiny, your future is not set out for you - you can shape it to be what you want it to be. You have the freedom to make life better for yourself and more worthwhile and meaningful for yourselves. Even the greatest traumas and struggles can be overcome. You don’t have to achieve fame and fortune to live a meaningful and wonderful life and to be truly alive.
It may not be an easy road to get there, but it’s possible for anyone to get there.
This is open to everyone, but it’s hard to do the work and get there.
Life can be much more fun than you think!
We have to look past the limited perspective of our own egos and experiences to understand the beauty of life.
Thank you so much for listening!
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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research
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Mihaly’s Faculty Profile
Media
Videos
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.
[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than four million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.
In this episode, we have one of the absolutely living legends of psychology on the show. We discuss the greatest unanswered questions in psychology, the biggest thing that people misunderstand about flow, what advice young people can take away from our guest’s incredible career and what he thinks about the absolute, biggest takeaways from his own research and much more with our guest, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
We had the incredible honor and privilege of interviewing Mihaly, who is literally one of the living legends of psychology. I'll be honest with you, the conversation wasn't easy. He's 84-years-old, he could barely use some of the interview equipment, it was hard to hear him at times and the interview was really tough. The audio quality is not amazing. We thought for a long time about whether or not we should air this interview.
Ultimately, we decided that the lessons and ideas and insights shared by Mihaly, who is one of the pioneers of psychology research, the person who coined the term ‘flow’ and has done so much powerful psychology research, we felt that we still needed to air this episode and share it with you.
I will tell you that the audio quality is not great. The content is really good, but it was a hard interview to do and we put a lot of thought into whether or not we should air this. It's a great conversation and I really hope you enjoy it.
Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com.
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In our previous episode, we showed you how to turn your fear into health, wealth and happiness. If you want something you've never had before, you have to do something you've never done before. That means suffering and taking risk. Building a positive relationship to suffering is one of the most important life skills you can master. Suffering is the true training ground of self-transcendence. With our previous guest, Akshay Nanavati, we showed you how to choose your struggle and build meaningful suffering into your life. If you want to overcome the fear that's been holding you back, listen to our previous episode.
Now for our interview with Mihaly.
[0:03:08.2] MB: Today, we have another legendary guest on the show, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Mihaly is a Claremont Graduate University’s distinguished professor of psychology and management. He's a best-selling author and the founder and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center. He's a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Leisure Studies and his work has been featured on NPR, the Ted Stage, Wired and much more. Mihaly, welcome to the Science of Success.
[0:03:36.1] MC: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
[0:03:38.6] MB: Well, we're very excited to have you on the show today. I'd love to start out with what differences you found in the research that you conducted around how people respond to trauma. I found that to be a really interesting piece of your work. I'd love to understand why do some people respond to trauma in a negative way and why do some people respond to it in a positive way?
[0:03:58.1] MC: We have of course, general notions, which are supported by the data and that people who have not only concern about themselves and their own well-being, more resilient to things that happened to them. They're more concerned about the well-being of society, or family at least, the country and so forth.
We suffer for different reasons psychologically. Physically, we suffer pretty much the same way. Although, even physically some people are much more sensitive and even more than this, but psychologically, we are different in what hurts us, what makes us feel bad and what makes us feel enraged and willing to fight and so forth.
There is no one reason, but certainly the overall issue is what do you identify yourself with? Do you think of yourself as being just the body in which you live, or do you see yourself as being part of a family, ethnic group, religion, or whatever. That depending on where you draw the boundaries of your own being will determine what will upset you and how much and what you're willing to do about it.
[0:05:40.1] MB: That makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from the book Learn Happiness, which is the idea that the self is a very poor site for meaning.
[0:05:49.3] MC: Oh, yeah, yeah. If that's all that you care about and consider, then you put all your eggs in a very fragile basket that sooner or later it’s going to be breaking down. It's good to define yourself in terms of larger and more stable entities. Then it’s through beyond that, not only is true that no man is an island, but we are all connected. If we recognize the connection and the size of and the permanence of our self as [inaudible 0:06:39.5]. I don't know if that's what you came – you conclusion is from that saying that that's how I would expand in that maxim that you had mentioned.
[0:06:53.0] MB: I think that's a great insight. Makes me think of – this is a tangential shift in the conversation, but in your work and research that you did around flow, how did you find, or what did you uncover around the root causes of happiness?
[0:07:10.5] MC: Yes. Flow and happiness is not exactly the same thing, because flow is a state that it's a momentary state of experience. Our happiness is a general stand towards life that doesn't change that much. Flow comes and goes depending on what we are doing at the moment. Of course, if your life is full of flow, it's going to be a happy life, a happier life than one that is more filled with boredom or anxiety. If you have more flow, you are likely to have a much better life, be happier overall.
[0:07:56.5] MB: How do we consistently create flow states within our lives?
[0:08:01.6] MC: Well. It means flow depends on two conditions of your consciousness, or your psychology. The two conditions are one, is that you see challenge that you think you can't deal with. Then the second is that you have the skills to do something about the challenge. If you have those two and you use them in your everyday life, you are more likely to be in flow more.
I knew a painter who lived in a garret across an alley from a house across the alley. If he looked out of his window, he could see the world, a blank wall of the house about 12 feet away from his window. He could put himself in a state of flow by looking at the bricks and their connections to each other and the different colors of the mortar around the bricks and imagine pictures and that he could draw on that, inspired by the momentary sight of the connection between the bricks.
This guy could get flow from the processing of visual information, because that's – he could walk across the intersection in the loop in Chicago and looked up and see the shadow of a building and a skyscraper, but a different skyscraper. He looked at that shadow and he would get ecstatic because, he said, “Wow, look at that. Look at that.” Then most people wouldn't even notice it. If they noticed it, they say there is a stupid shadow there on a building. What can help?
To him, the visual information that he got was enough to put him in a state of almost ecstasy, because he – it produced in his mind all kinds of connections and ideas that he could play with and that was enough. Most people, of course depend on external information that's produced to make them feel better, like comic strips, or television shows, or Broadway shows, or whatever, where the stimuli are organized by experts who make them pleasant and interesting and exciting to the viewer.
There are people who don't depend so much on the external organization of information, because they can do it on their own one way or the other. I mean, not just visually, but people who go around and are impressed by the expression on the face of children in the street, or other people they meet and they imagine where they last maybe and they feel the envy, or sorrow, or at what they see. That fills out their mind at the time and makes them want to do something on the other end.
They are always willing to help others and to get involved with others. That is the life they live. That's the world they live in. We make these worlds paying attention to what goes on around us and connecting with that information one way or the other. Either the information make you seem made, or makes you sad, or makes you want to do something, that makes you want to escape. The information is there and how we react to that will determine the quality of our lives. For some people, the life is full of opportunities to help others. For others, their life is full of things to escape from, because they don't want to see the – feel up, and so they want to get into a safe room where they are in control and powerful. They do that by taking drugs, or getting drunk or whatever.
In that respect, we are the masters of our faith. We can decide, learn to stop with our life that we linked to some, those that we set out. As I said, I am going to not to get upset about things, but try to help others and myself, or others who just try to see the beauty of what's around them and just – who’s mind is full of ideas that they hope to realize sometimes in the future. Our life is quite malleable. We offer to, “Oh, my God. I build out this deck of cards and I don't have any aces in it. I'm going to lose this game.” Others who say, “Okay, I don't have aces, but I still can get a good game of what I build out.” That's just what how I see the world. I don't know if that makes sense, but and that’s for me.
[0:14:23.9] MB: That definitely makes sense. I'm curious, how do you think about creating flow states and flow experiences in your own daily life?
[0:14:33.0] MC: Well, my life as a child was not that secure and safe as that of many others. Not as bad as many others either. I think the first time I realized that you can change your state of mind was during a train ride from Italy to Hungary with my family. I went across part of your Europe. There I was looking at the window and we were just entering the Alps in Norton Italy and we were crossing the Alps. I looked out the window and I looked at the mountains and they were so incredible, different from the seashore where I used to live.
I realized that by looking at this peak and glaciers around me, I could change my feeling of boredom, which has started with just being bored in the train and looking outside. I realized that the world had all kinds of things that sure can be interesting. If you look at them and try to follow and imagine what they could be and how it could to be there, then that would make your life much more interesting, than waiting for things to happen than to have fun.
That feeling stuck with me after the voyage, after, it took a long time and we were – the train was bombed by the artillery as we were crossing Yugoslavia and South [inaudible 0:16:33.2]. It was not an easy ride, but it was something that changed – I think I didn’t know that at the time of course, but looking back, I think that was when I first realized how your moods depends on how you – what you choose to look at and what you choose to think about when you look at things. That gave me a feeling that you could modify how you felt.
After that, I tried to look for that feeling, control over your environment by just changing the way you look at it and what you are thinking about it. I had a lot of brothers. A half-brother who was very good at paying attention, because he was a European champion of sail – how do you call the airplanes that go without engines? Just riding the currents of the air? Sailcraft? They are not really popular now, but the 1930s, 1940s, those were used – this airplane which was made of bamboo, or light wood, covered with really canvass and then you were pulled up by a regular plane, a small regular plane. Then your rope was – you were pulled by a rope by a plane and then when you got to a certain altitude, you disengage the rope and you were on your own.
What kept you up is that you went over currents of air and you had – you knew that the air above roads for instance was much more – the road would get warmed up by the sun and the air and there would be an updraft of air above the road. You will try to follow the road, but they were a few thousand above. You could stay up in the air, because of the updraft from the warm air on the road. Then you found other things; factories, lakes and so forth that changed the air.
This brother of mine who was the European champion and then it meant that he stayed up in the air for longer than everybody else during the competition. He stayed up I think 19 hours, 19 and a half hours without an engine, but just traveling across central Europe finding air currents. This brother was very influential, because his mind could get focused and process small bits of information that nobody else noticed that he could use to keep his plane aloft. It showed me that you have to do things, if you used your mind and paid attention to things, you could do things that most people don’t even notice there, or have idea that they exist.
[0:20:17.9] MB: Flow is definitely an amazing state that can transform the way you interact and engage with the world.
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[0:21:39.3] MB: I’m curious. Changing gears a little bit, what do you think is – as someone who’s been in this field for so long and done so much research, out of your own perspective, what do you think is the greatest unanswered question in psychology today?
[0:21:55.4] MC: There are of course – It depends – I’ll try it a little, but on what kind of things you are interested in and you an expert in, because some people will tell you very different things than what I will tell you. I don’t believe that these are the greatest alarms that crushes psychology. Whatever I tell you, they are the greatest alarms of question as far as I am concerned as a psychologist and in my expertise.
I really do think that what I would like to know a lot more about is the way which children learn to process information, in terms of what they get interested in. What is it that keeps them alert, awake, wondering about the world and so forth? Because that will determine the large extent of what they will do as adults, how they will spend their life. We really don’t know how to harness their energies and the drive that they have, point them in the right direction.
We tried to do that of course by teaching them good things, taking them to church and all these good things that we know would help them. That’s not necessarily what happens, because they don’t know why they are learning these things and they know that they have other things that they are interested in that they would rather do. They feel that they’re forced into a direction they don’t understand and they don’t want to depend, then don’t necessarily subscribe to.
The question is to what extent you have to change that, or to what extent the changing of their attention, what they attend to, what they try to accomplish. If you want them to become good, responsible and happy adults, what do you have to – how can you achieve that? How much freedom they need? How much encouragement, or exposure, or challenge to give them? That is varies a lot of child to child, then from environment to environment.
For instance, when we brought up our children, we tried very much to make sure that they have enough challenges in their environment, but not too hard ones and too difficult ones. Then we realized that we can do know exactly and we had to pay attention closely to what the children like, then harness their interest and curiosity by leaving them good opportunities to fulfill their curiosity, so that it could be a very good proposition that they enjoy what they do, they are motivated to what they do. Also, we know that what they are doing is rightful, then good for their growth and for their – they will be going in the right direction.
That is quite then difficult high-wire act for parents. Most of them luckily succeed without even thinking about it, but just follow things that they feel are right and they tend to do that more often than not, they are right. Our kids, where this is – took their own growth very quickly. I mean, we allowed them to explore what they like to do and they encouraged them and gave them new opportunities in-line what they were doing.
They both resulted – had very nice lives that they have children and they are very grateful. That’s very satisfying of course. It’s the things. I mean, you have to pay attention. You have to try to put yourself in their shoes and understand more they are living through and we try to have them on all [inaudible 0:27:08.6].
[0:27:10.4] MB: For somebody’s who’s listening, who let’s say is a younger person, 25-years-old something like that, what is the biggest mistake, or pitfall that you would warn them against falling prey to?
[0:27:25.9] MC: Well, I think there are so many crucial periods in life where you can go wrong. At that age, I think it’s not that different from before or after, but I think more – perhaps, it’s a more crucial period for becoming either too conservative and too traditional in your life and your profession and family and being too unconforming and thoughtless about what you are doing. I mean, there is a lot to learn from the culture, even the society we live in, with family, because entities have been alive for a long time.
They usually survive by not making too many – too drastic mistakes. You should be open to learning. At the same time, it’s important to trust your own experience, trust your own feelings and the actions to the world and that little ground between conformity and thoughtless, instinctive action, that middle ground is I think, it’s always a problem all through life to find the middle ground.
I think around 25, it really is the one of the crucial – if not the crucial moment, or period in which you have to establish the relation between yourself and the environment in which you have that comes to mind at the moment.
[0:29:28.5] MB: What is the biggest thing that people misunderstand about flow, or your research in general?
[0:29:36.3] MC: As I like to realize, that stage will work out only before you have developed a strong sense of identity of who you are. The stage before intimacy is identity formation. In the early 20s, late teens, you develop a sense of who you are and what you can do well, what you can do well, what you should be doing, or what you should be doing well. On the basis of knowing who you are and you can achieve intimacy on a more stable way, because you are less likely to get involved in intimate relations that are not build the whole personality of this thing.
Anyway, it’s not an easy thing to go through life, but especially the more complex the society is, the more opportunities there are to make bad mistakes, as well as good ones. I mean, the good thing about that, at times that you are not attached with an identity with the past. even a 100 years ago, if you are lucky you had the chance to develop into a person, with a strong identity and a strong intimacy.
Dependent, so much of the fickle senses of the development of the family, which will be a little exciting. Most people was not starting to condition where they were – they didn’t have the luxury to explore who they were and what they could do, so they had to follow the conditions and lived up to the conditions they were having by portion, by faith. They have that even to make ourselves more in the shape of what we want to become and what’s good for us, we have that opportunity.
Then on the other hand, what we are comforted with is social abundance of choice and so many different directions that it’s difficult to figure out what is really – who should be and what we should be doing. That’s possible. I thought more and more people will get to understand that task and trying to achieve it.
[0:32:36.5] MB: If you could really succinctly summarize in just one or two sentences for someone who’s not familiar with your work, what is the one thing you would want them to take away from the decades of research that you’ve done on flow and psychology and the human condition?
[0:32:52.2] MC: Well, I think one – I hope people would take away from some of the work I did is that the realization that their faith, their destiny, their future is not cut out for them to just follow on what happens to them on their side. They have the freedom to make life better and more worthwhile and meaningful for themselves. That even there is no – they don’t have to achieve fame and fortune and riches and comfort to be truly alive and involve and enjoy life.
It’s not an easy job to get there, but it’s really possible to everybody. Some of the happiest people I met and those who have been struggling with these issues, but had paid attention through their own life and discovered for themselves that they should trust their own instincts, but also trust the needs of people around them and the conditions around them and have to somehow harmonize, bring harmony between their own needs and the environment and [inaudible 0:34:29.7] and the possibilities that will be in there.
It’s not rocket science. It’s something that is open to everyone, but it’s hard. It’s hard, because we get so attached to the most obvious aspects of what surround us; the superficial, the loud, the colorful things that happen. These are parts of life. They are okay, but they’re not the secret, I don’t think of a good life. That you have to build up by yourself brick by brick and it can be a lot of fun. Much for fun than just enjoying the life of the rich and the famous that we get from so much of the media and that this is the life that’s part of it.
It’s hard, but it’s possible. I hope that everybody thinks about it and hears about it who have had to do it. In that sense, I give my best wishes to my ordeals. I don’t pretend to have the struggle the secret of life, but I do think that to the best of what I find possible resources, then I try to do it and it’s been fun in life, is the same from those who had taking and listening and had decisions.
[0:36:13.9] MB: Such a great insight that once we look beyond and look past our own limited perspective and our own ego and experiences, we can really start to uncover and understand the true of beauty of life. It may not be an easy journey, but it’s something that’s a path open to everyone.
[0:36:32.0] MC: To everyone, and it can be fun.
[0:36:34.8] MB: It could be fun. Exactly.
[0:36:37.7] MC: Okay. Okay.
[0:36:39.1] MB: Well, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, I really want to thank you for coming on the Science of Success. It’s been truly, truly an honor to interview someone as incredibly legendary as you. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us and our listeners.
[0:36:50.7] MC: Thank you very much.
[0:36:52.7] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.
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