Honoring Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, With Gratitude
I had chills when I read the news. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist whose research and interviews with artists, writers, athletes and everyday creatives coined the term “flow” passed away yesterday, on the morning of Wednesday, October 20th.
That’s the very day we started our current 28-Day Flow Challenge. I almost always start Flow Challenges on Mondays. This time, something told me that Wednesday was the day, the day of the full moon, a day that just felt right.
Some of you know that Professor Csikszentmihalyi wrote the book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. When I was first working at Johnson & Johnson, my very first official job after graduating from college, I had a long commute.
During that time, the first edition of Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow was published. To make the miles go easier, I bought Flow as a book-on-tape. I would pop it into the tape deck and play it over and over again. I almost knew it by heart.
The concept of that beautiful state we all get into when we are doing something we love like our art, music, dance, writing, sport, reading, or while in deep conversation felt familiar. It resonated with me on a deep level.
It was that book, the memory of Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s insight and wisdom that I relied on when the pandemic first hit and I was looking to comfort myself and make good use of the lockdown. It was that book that became part of our parenting strategy.
When our kids were in flow, whether talking under their breath while playing imaginary games with toy ponies or Star Wars figures, or writing stories, drawing pictures or in flow on the trampoline, we didn’t interrupt. It was just sort of a general rule. Flow was sacred.
The thing I have come to love most, and be most humbled by in our 28-Day Flow Challenges is how synchronicities happen. People come together at just the right time. Energies align. Newcomers join. I never know what will happen, but I am always amazed and humbled at some point in the journey.
Today, I am deeply grateful to this gentle man who saw it within himself to interview those who experienced flow, who looked to the human experience as teacher, who embraced the everyday stories as much as he did the superstars.
I am also grateful to Professor Csikszentmihalyi for the role he has played in my own life, and who in many ways acted as a mentor I never met, whose work guided me to create something that led me to connect with so many incredibly creative, deep and insightful people—all of you.
I don’t know how or why these things happen, but I’ve come to respect synchronicities like these with deep gratitude. Something about beginning this Flow Challenge together in the very moments his life was coming to an end to me personally, feels deeply sacred.
I offer The Flow Challenge for free because I believe in the power of flow and joy so much. I have seen how making a simple commitment to flow has changed my own life and those of my friends, family and clients. It’s all about listening to your intuitive voice, your egoless self, that part of you that Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research showed we connect with when we are in a state of flow.
For our current 28 day session, we are focusing on how flow can be a form of deep self-care, but I am also dedicating this 28-day experience to Professor Csikszentmihalyi, in honor of him and his life, with deep gratitude. If you would like to learn more about him and his work, here are a few links.
Interview with Dr. Csikszentmihalyi
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi Quotes
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Ted Talk Interview
What is Flow?
Flow Q&A
Wishing you all deep flow, peace and joy. And wishing Professor Csikszentmihalyi’s family and all who loved and knew him deep peace.