Building experiences that contain these 8 elements will promote enjoyment in your daily life. The pursuit of enjoyment is one of the oldest endeavors of humankind. What does it take to enjoy each moment? Across the ages, various thought leaders have shared different ways to build enjoyment in our lives. An approach to building a life worth living comes from the works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, presented in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. While his name may be a bit of a mouthful, some of the results of his research are condensed here to shed some light on what it takes to enjoy our days.
- Challenge and Skill – It can be hard to enjoy experiences if they are too easy or simple. It might seem contrary but a big part of the enjoyment in what we do is the testing of our skills, rising to meet the challenge, and overcoming it. This can be a big picture or little picture challenge. Maybe it’s a new recipe that is tricky, or it could be a career-making project. When we rise to meet the challenge and apply our skills we are well on our way to enjoyable experiences.
- Action and Awareness – Enjoyable experiences require our actions and awareness to dominate our mental space. Think here of the person playing a game, something many describe as enjoyable. The enjoyable game requires action and awareness to such a level that the mental capacity for thoughts of other things falls away.
- Goals and Feedback – Many of us have likely set various goals at some point in our lives and there is a reason for this, much of life is a cascade of different goals we are heading toward. In setting a goal we have formed a mechanism for us to receive feedback about our progress and this loop of information is essential to creating enjoyment in our activities. This can be any activity. Think of a conversation with a friend, there is a general goal of communicating with each other in a positive manner and there are countless different bits of feedback, such as body language, along the way. Sports is a more direct example with a goal to win the game and along the way the score provides feedback.
- Concentration – To enjoy something we must be able to concentrate on it. If the experience is boring or the surrounding environment chaotic, our ability to concentrate and enjoy the activity will be hindered. These days our lives are like a stream, there are a lot of things passing around us all the time. Think of things like sitting down for a cup of coffee with a friend, or working on a puzzle and nothing else. Or shutting everything else off and finishing that project for work or an important paper for school. Setting aside that dedicated concentration, focusing our mind on the activity, in combination with the other elements is essential for enjoyment.
- Control – Whether real or imagined, control is a primary ingredient of enjoyment. Think about driving, while not everyone would agree it is something that a lot of people enjoy. The thrill of acceleration, handling corners, and testing your skills on the path you take. Now think about how less enjoyable this would be if every so often, without your actions mattering, you would lose the ability to control the vehicle. Now you are a helpless passenger and this quickly moves closer to boredom than exhilaration.
- Loss of Self-consciousness – Enjoyable activities happen with minimal self-doubt but confidence present. In our enjoyment we let ourselves fall away and we engage in the activity without barriers of the self in the way. This is not to say that the activity is effortless or easy, but that the activity pushes out thoughts of the self when we are doing it. This can be reading a good book that pulls you in, playing an engaging game you love, or the sport you like.
- Transformation of Time – Have you ever been working on something and, before you know it, it is dinner time and the day has flown by, maybe you were playing a game or hanging out with someone special and before you knew it the sun was setting. Enjoyable experiences mess with our perception of time. Commonly it is this feeling of before you know it it is way later but sometimes time slows down when we are enjoying ourselves like when we are performing a task at the highest threshold of our skills and time seems to slow down. Like when I am writing a blog post and before I know it it is time for lunch.
- For the Sake of Itself – While there are many reasons we may do all the different activities we engage in there is a common factor that is a part of enjoyable experiences. We would do them anyway, even if we didn’t get paid, or praised for them. There is an old saying that goes something like – “If you find something you love to do and get paid for it you will never work a day in your life.”
It sounds a little tricky but in summary, the points find that if we love what we do, have the skills or can develop them for the situation, and would do it regardless of compensation or other pressure, we will find more enjoyment in our lives. If this still sounds difficult, check out my previous post that teaches 4 mindfulness skills for everyday success that will help you create enjoyable experiences throughout your days.
Andrew
