Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [62]
Before exploring further how physical activity contributes to optimal experience, it should be stressed that the body does not produce flow merely by its movements. The mind is always involved as well. To get enjoyment from swimming, for instance, one needs to cultivate a set of appropriate skills, which requires the concentration of attention. Without the relevant thoughts, motives, and feelings it would be impossible to achieve the discipline necessary to learn to swim well enough to enjoy it. Moreover, because enjoyment takes place in the mind of the swimmer, flow cannot be a purely physical process: muscles and brain must be equally involved.
In the pages that follow we shall review some of the ways that the quality of experience can be improved through the refined use of bodily processes. These include physical activities like sports and dance, the cultivation of sexuality, and the various Eastern disciplines for controlling the mind through the training of the body. They also feature the discriminating use of the senses of sight, hearing, and taste. Each of these modalities offers an almost unlimited amount of enjoyment, but only to persons who work to develop the skills they require. To those who do not, the body remains indeed a lump of rather inexpensive flesh.
HIGHER, FASTER, STRONGER
The Latin motto of the modern Olympic games—Altius, citius, fortius—is a good, if incomplete summary of how the body can experience flow. It encompasses the rationale of all sports, which is to do something better than it has ever been done before. The purest form of athletics, and sports in general, is to break through the limitations of what the body can accomplish.
However unimportant an athletic goal may appear to the outsider, it becomes a serious affair when performed with the intent of demonstrating a perfection of skill. Throwing things, for instance, is a rather trivial ability; even small babies are quite good at it, as the toys surrounding any infant’s crib testify. But how far a person can throw an object of a certain weight becomes a matter of legend. The Greeks invented the discus, and the great discus throwers of antiquity were immortalized by the best sculptors; the Swiss gathered on holidays in mountain meadows to see who could toss the trunk of a tree farthest; the Scots did the same with gigantic rocks. In baseball nowadays pitchers become rich and famous because they can throw balls with speed and precision, and basketball players because they can sink them into hoops. Some athletes throw javelins; others are bowlers, shot-putters, or hammer throwers; some throw boomerangs or cast fishing lines. Each of these variations on the basic capacity to throw offers almost unlimited opportunities for enjoyment.
Altius—higher—is the first word of the Olympic motto, and soaring above the ground is another universally recognized challenge. To break the bonds of gravity is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. The myth of Icarus, who had wings fashioned so he could reach the sun, has been long held to be a parable of the aims—noble and misguided at the same time—of civilization itself. To jump higher, to climb the loftiest peaks, to fly far above the earth, are among the most enjoyable activities people can do. Yet some savants have recently invented a special psychic infirmity, the so-called “Icarus complex,” to account for this desire to be released from the pull of gravity. Like all explanations that try to reduce enjoyment to a defensive ploy against repressed anxieties, this one misses the point. Of course, in some sense all purposeful action can be regarded as a defense against the threats of chaos. But in that respect it is more worthwhile to consider acts that bring enjoyment as signs of health, not of disease.
Flow experiences based on the use of physical skills do not occur only in the context of outstanding athletic feats. Olympians do not have an exclusive gift in finding enjoyment in pushing performance beyond existing