Basic process of finding happiness in work: Flow

We are among the 8 billion other slightly smarter monkeys living on a tiny planet. Earth is one of eight planets revolving around a star, the Sun, which is just an ordinary star. There are billions of other stars in a galaxy called the Milkyway. Milkyway is one of the billions of billions of other galaxies. And all of this is part of just the observable universe. Scientists say everything, space-matter we see is a mere 5% of the actual universe. We do not understand where is rest of 95% is. heck! Finding happiness in such a vast universe is truly remarkable.

So I ask, who are you? Why are you living? Why are you running for something? Do your dreams even matter? Do you even enjoy this seemingly meaningless life?

But what if we look in the opposite direction? Instead of looking outward, looking at our own self? So there comes a state which everyone wants to achieve, Passion. In simple terms, something which gives us happiness!

Pick any good artist or athlete you like, and see them play. What makes them legendary in their field? They enjoy what they are doing. They get happiness from it. Hence have meaning for what they are doing. How can we all achieve this flow?

Note: this is not a how-to guide. I can’t do it. If you know what you are doing and enjoying it. Stop reading! I don’t want to make your life more complex. I am not a philosopher and honestly just a young 26 year old human, so this is just my take on life, a process, I’m still mastering. 🙂

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Stage 1) Managing chaos, inside and outside

In the first stage, we are confused. We don’t understand the world. I don’t like what I am doing. I don’t know what I like. These are the sentences that you will hear the most. You might have too many desires at once, too many goals to complete. Or you may know what you like but you have too many things that you want to do/ achieve at once. I like to paint but like to sing as well, what to choose?.

This happens because human consciousness, by default, is chaotic.

It has no order. Scientifically speaking, our brain can handle only a certain amount of information at once. There are 5 sensory organs. We don’t process everything that we hear, see or touch. Our consciousness decides what to process and what not to. And when our already disordered consciousness takes this info, it creates utter chaos! We lose our Focus.

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

The most obvious thing we should do at this stage is to stop wasting our limited psychic energy on random things!. It’s easier for our mind to mindlessly scroll through social media for hours than to focus on some particular thing.

Freeing up psychic energy from these jarring tasks is the most fundamental step. It helps us be self-aware. You can also read how to manage anxiety here.

Stage 2) Finding a tool for happiness : Expression

Who am I? This question has no answer in the chaotic mind. But even if we bring that chaos to somewhat manageable levels, we wouldn’t be able to answer it. Because our mind has no language to express itself. I call this language, simply, expression.

The most famous form of expression is Art. Painting, dancing, writing, etc. These are straightforward art forms. People who master it, know how to express themselves through them. This is true with every profession that we see. A good athlete feels like he is expressing himself through his sport, an engineer feels the same for his work. Some people find themselves expressing through bringing joy to other’s lives, helping those are who in need or feeding the hungry.

Expression is not something that just comes to us. We need to find it.

I like to paint. Now, I will not be able to achieve the Picasso level of mastery in my first painting. There would be a big difference between what I want to paint and what I can paint. For achieving my expression, I would have to invest hours learning and mastering the skills. Until I close the gap between what I want to paint and what I can paint, the expression will not be enjoyable.

But the expression is not just a one-way process. Enjoying other’s expressions is also crucial to achieving happiness. Learning how to see a good painting, learning how to listen to good music or learning how to taste fine food is also very rewarding. This does require a lot of investment of psychic energy.

Not to forget, finding any expression can be a long process. We would need to try hundreds of things and invest hundreds of hours before finding our expression.

Stage 3) Final stage of Happiness: Flow

There’s one terminology in machine learning called fitting the AI. By this we mean, if the complexity of the AI matches the complexity of the task it is performing. We can use this for our final discussion.

Under-fitting: happens when our skill level is higher than the work we are doing. This is the same as solving maths problems from your child’s textbooks. If we know our goal is easy, it will be hard to get satisfaction after completing it. Completing goals will not be a happy and enjoyable activity.

Over-fitting: is opposite to under-fitting. This happens when our skills are not polished enough to perform the task. If I set a goal of painting Mona Lisa on my first try itself, I would severely get depressed for not completing my goal. This time too, I will find it hard to get any satisfaction or happiness in the process.

Happiness comes when our skills match the task we are doing. This is only possible when we have achievable goals. We can set achievable goals only when we have a clear understanding of our expression. And we can only have a clear expression when we are self-aware. You can read how to become good at self learning here.

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To truly enjoy something, the challenges in front of us must be rewarding. If this is true, we should be focusing on the process than just completing that challenge. It becomes a process, a process of constant challenges & rewards. When we invest more time in something, our skills develop, we start facing the under-fitting problem. To mitigate this, we make our goal more complex and achieve a higher level of satisfaction. The process goes on…

People who achieve Flow, achieve a great level of happiness, that’s why we see these great artists/athletes loving what they do!

Obviously, this is a never-ending discussion. Each person has his/her own journey to achieve his/her happiness. So I am not gonna pretend to know everything.

I just want to give the last tangent to those who are willing to explore it more. Hinduism goes in much more depth for achieving happiness. Understanding and practicing this may require an entire lifetime. Through this perspective, we can only achieve happiness when we escape from the material world: Samadhi¹

Thanks for reading! 🙂

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1. This is more spiritual than philosophical/scientific, I refrain myself from putting out spiritual knowledge, but readers can read it through philosophical lens too ↩︎