Flow, the secret to happiness

心流，幸福的秘密

I grew up in Europe, and World War II caught me when I was between seven and 10 years old. And I realized how few of the grown-ups that I knew were able to withstand the tragedies that the war visited on them -- how few of them could even resemble a normal, contented, satisfied, happy life once their job, their home, their security was destroyed by the war. So I became interested in understanding what contributed to a life that was worth living. And I tried, as a child, as a teenager, to read philosophy and to get involved in art and religion and many other ways that I could see as a possible answer to that question. And finally I ended up encountering psychology by chance.

我在歐洲長大，7 到 10 歲時趕上了第二次世界大戰(zhàn)。我意識到，在我認(rèn)識的成年人中，很少有人能夠經(jīng)受住戰(zhàn)爭給他們帶來的悲劇--一旦他們的工作、家庭和安全被戰(zhàn)爭摧毀，他們中很少有人能夠過上正常、滿足、滿意和快樂的生活。因此，我開始有興趣了解是什么促成了有價值的生活。在孩提時代和青少年時期，我嘗試閱讀哲學(xué)書籍，涉足藝術(shù)和宗教，以及其他許多我認(rèn)為可以解答這個問題的方法。最后，我在一個偶然的機(jī)會接觸到了心理學(xué)。

I was at a ski resort in Switzerland without any money to actually enjoy myself, because the snow had melted and I didn't have money to go to a movie. But I found that on the -- I read in the newspapers that there was to be a presentation by someone in a place that I'd seen in the center of Zurich, and it was about flying saucers [that] he was going to talk. And I thought, well, since I can't go to the movies, at least I will go for free to listen to flying saucers. And the man who talked at that evening lecture was very interesting. Instead of talking about little green men, he talked about how the psyche of the Europeans had been traumatized by the war, and now they're projecting flying saucers into the sky. He talked about how the mandalas of ancient Hindu religion were kind of projected into the sky as an attempt to regain some sense of order after the chaos of war. And this seemed very interesting to me. And I started reading his books after that lecture. And that was Carl Jung, whose name or work I had no idea about.

我當(dāng)時在瑞士的一個滑雪勝地，因?yàn)檠┮呀?jīng)融化了，也沒錢去看電影，所以沒錢真正享受一下。但我在報紙上看到，有人要在蘇黎世市中心的一個地方發(fā)表演講，是關(guān)于飛碟的。我想，既然我不能去看電影，至少我可以免費(fèi)去聽聽飛碟。晚上講座上的那個人非常有趣。他沒有講小綠人，而是講了歐洲人的心理是如何受到戰(zhàn)爭創(chuàng)傷的，現(xiàn)在他們又把飛碟投射到天空中。他談到了古印度宗教的曼陀羅 是如何被投射到天空中的 一種試圖在戰(zhàn)爭的混亂之后 恢復(fù)某種秩序感的方式 我覺得這很有趣。那次講座后，我開始讀他的書。這就是卡爾-榮格，我對他的名字和作品一無所知。

Then I came to this country to study psychology and I started trying to understand the roots of happiness. This is a typical result that many people have presented, and there are many variations on it. But this, for instance, shows that about 30 percent of the people surveyed in the United States since 1956 say that their life is very happy. And that hasn't changed at all. Whereas the personal income, on a scale that has been held constant to accommodate for inflation, has more than doubled, almost tripled, in that period. But you find essentially the same results, namely, that after a certain basic point -- which corresponds more or less to just a few 1,000 dollars above the minimum poverty level -- increases in material well-being don't seem to affect how happy people are. In fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources does not increase happiness.

后來，我來到這個國家學(xué)習(xí)心理學(xué)，開始嘗試了解幸福的根源。這是許多人提出的一個典型結(jié)果，其變種很多。但是，舉例來說，這表明自 1956 年以來，在美國接受調(diào)查的人中，約有 30% 的人表示他們的生活非常幸福。這一點(diǎn)沒有任何變化。而在此期間，為適應(yīng)通貨膨脹而保持不變的個人收入?yún)s增加了一倍多，幾乎是原來的三倍。但你會發(fā)現(xiàn)基本相同的結(jié)果，即在某個基本點(diǎn)之后--或多或少相當(dāng)于比最低貧困線高出幾千美元--物質(zhì)福利的增加似乎并不影響人們的幸福感。事實(shí)上，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)缺乏基本資源、物質(zhì)資源會導(dǎo)致不幸福，但物質(zhì)資源的增加并不會增加幸福感。

So my research has been focused more on -- after finding out these things that actually corresponded to my own experience, I tried to understand: where -- in everyday life, in our normal experience -- do we feel really happy? And to start those studies about 40 years ago, I began to look at creative people -- first artists and scientists, and so forth -- trying to understand what made them feel that it was worth essentially spending their life doing things for which many of them didn't expect either fame or fortune, but which made their life meaningful and worth doing.

因此，我的研究更多地集中在--在發(fā)現(xiàn)了這些與我自身經(jīng)歷實(shí)際相符的事情之后，我試圖理解：在日常生活中，在我們的正常經(jīng)歷中，我們在哪里感到真正的快樂？為了開始這些研究，大約40年前，我開始研究有創(chuàng)造力的人--首先是藝術(shù)家和科學(xué)家等等--試圖理解是什么讓他們覺得值得用一生的時間去做一些事情，他們中的許多人并不期望名利雙收，但這些事情讓他們的生活變得有意義，值得去做。

This was one of the leading composers of American music back in the '70s. And the interview was 40 pages long. But this little excerpt is a very good summary of what he was saying during the interview. And it describes how he feels when composing is going well. And he says by describing it as an ecstatic state.

這是上世紀(jì) 70 年代美國音樂界的領(lǐng)軍作曲家之一。采訪長達(dá) 40 頁。但這一小段摘錄很好地概括了他在采訪中所說的話。其中描述了他在作曲進(jìn)展順利時的感受。他將其描述為一種欣喜若狂的狀態(tài)。

Now, 'ecstasy' in Greek meant simply to stand to the side of something. And then it became essentially an analogy for a mental state where you feel that you are not doing your ordinary everyday routines. So ecstasy is essentially a stepping into an alternative reality. And it's interesting, if you think about it, how, when we think about the civilizations that we look up to as having been pinnacles of human achievement -- whether it's China, Greece, the Hindu civilization, or the Mayas, or Egyptians -- what we know about them is really about their ecstasies, not about their everyday life. We know the temples they built, where people could come to experience a different reality. We know about the circuses, the arenas, the theaters. These are the remains of civilizations and they are the places that people went to experience life in a more concentrated, more ordered form.

現(xiàn)在，“狂喜 ”在希臘語中的意思只是站在某物的一邊。后來，它基本上成了一種精神狀態(tài)的比喻，在這種精神狀態(tài)中，你會覺得自己不是在做日常的普通工作。因此，“狂喜 ”本質(zhì)上是進(jìn)入另一種現(xiàn)實(shí)。有趣的是，如果你仔細(xì)想想，當(dāng)我們回想那些被我們視為人類成就巔峰的文明時--無論是中國、希臘、印度文明，還是瑪雅人或埃及人--我們對他們的了解其實(shí)是關(guān)于他們的狂喜，而不是他們的日常生活。我們知道他們建造的神廟，人們可以在那里體驗(yàn)不同的現(xiàn)實(shí)。我們知道馬戲團(tuán)、競技場和劇院。這些都是文明的遺跡，是人們以更集中、更有序的形式體驗(yàn)生活的地方。

Now, this man doesn't need to go to a place like this, which is also -- this place, this arena, which is built like a Greek amphitheatre, is a place for ecstasy also. We are participating in a reality that is different from that of the everyday life that we're used to. But this man doesn't need to go there. He needs just a piece of paper where he can put down little marks, and as he does that, he can imagine sounds that had not existed before in that particular combination. So once he gets to that point of beginning to create, like Jennifer did in her improvisation, a new reality -- that is, a moment of ecstasy -- he enters that different reality. Now he says also that this is so intense an experience that it feels almost as if he didn't exist. And that sounds like a kind of a romantic exaggeration. But actually, our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. And in order to hear me and understand what I'm saying, you need to process about 60 bits per second. That's why you can't hear more than two people. You can't understand more than two people talking to you.

現(xiàn)在，這個人不需要去這樣的地方，這里也是--這個地方，這個像希臘圓形劇場一樣的競技場，也是一個讓人陶醉的地方。我們正在參與一個不同于我們習(xí)慣的日常生活的現(xiàn)實(shí)。但這個人并不需要去那里。他只需要一張紙，在上面寫下一些小記號，這樣他就能想象出在這種特定組合中從未出現(xiàn)過的聲音。因此，一旦他達(dá)到了開始創(chuàng)造的那一刻，就像詹妮弗在她的即興演奏中所做的那樣，一個新的現(xiàn)實(shí)--也就是狂喜的那一刻--他就進(jìn)入了那個不同的現(xiàn)實(shí)。他還說，這種體驗(yàn)是如此強(qiáng)烈，以至于感覺自己幾乎不存在了。這聽起來像是一種浪漫的夸張。但實(shí)際上，我們的神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)無法處理每秒超過110比特的信息。為了聽懂我說的話 你需要每秒處理大約60比特的信息 這就是為什么你不能聽到兩個人以上的聲音。你無法理解兩個以上的人對你說話。

Well, when you are really involved in this completely engaging process of creating something new, as this man is, he doesn't have enough attention left over to monitor how his body feels, or his problems at home. He can't feel even that he's hungry or tired. His body disappears, his identity disappears from his consciousness, because he doesn't have enough attention, like none of us do, to really do well something that requires a lot of concentration, and at the same time to feel that he exists. So existence is temporarily suspended. And he says that his hand seems to be moving by itself. Now, I could look at my hand for two weeks, and I wouldn't feel any awe or wonder, because I can't compose.

好吧，當(dāng)你真的像這個人一樣，完全投入到創(chuàng)造新事物的過程中時，他就沒有足夠的注意力去關(guān)注自己身體的感覺，或者家里的問題。他甚至感覺不到自己餓了或累了。他的身體消失了，他的身份也從他的意識中消失了，因?yàn)樗麤]有足夠的注意力，就像我們一樣，無法真正做好一件需要高度集中注意力的事情，同時也無法感受到自己的存在。因此，存在被暫時擱置了。他說他的手好像自己在動?，F(xiàn)在，我可以看著自己的手兩個星期，但我不會感到任何敬畏或驚奇，因?yàn)槲也粫髑?/span>

So what it's telling you here is that obviously this automatic, spontaneous process that he's describing can only happen to someone who is very well trained and who has developed technique. And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical-knowledge immersion in a particular field. Whether it's mathematics or music, it takes that long to be able to begin to change something in a way that it's better than what was there before. Now, when that happens, he says the music just flows out. And because all of these people I started interviewing -- this was an interview which is over 30 years old -- so many of the people described this as a spontaneous flow that I called this type of experience the 'flow experience.' And it happens in different realms.

因此，它告訴你的是，很明顯，他所描述的這種自動、自發(fā)的過程，只能發(fā)生在受過良好訓(xùn)練并掌握了技巧的人身上。在對創(chuàng)造力的研究中，有一種不言而喻的觀點(diǎn)認(rèn)為，在某一特定領(lǐng)域，如果你的技術(shù)知識浸淫時間少于10年，你就不可能創(chuàng)造出任何東西。無論是數(shù)學(xué)還是音樂，都需要這么長的時間才能開始改變一些東西，使其比以前更好。他說，當(dāng)這種情況發(fā)生時，音樂就會流淌出來。因?yàn)槲议_始采訪的所有這些人 -- 這是一個超過 30 年歷史的采訪 -- 很多人都把這描述為一種自發(fā)的心流，所以我把這種體驗(yàn)稱為 “心流體驗(yàn)”。它發(fā)生在不同的領(lǐng)域。

For instance, a poet describes it in this form. This is by a student of mine who interviewed some of the leading writers and poets in the United States. And it describes the same effortless, spontaneous feeling that you get when you enter into this ecstatic state. This poet describes it as opening a door that floats in the sky -- a very similar description to what Albert Einstein gave as to how he imagined the forces of relativity, when he was struggling with trying to understand how it worked. But it happens in other activities. For instance, this is another student of mine, Susan Jackson from Australia, who did work with some of the leading athletes in the world. And you see here in this description of an Olympic skater, the same essential description of the phenomenology of the inner state of the person. You don't think; it goes automatically, if you merge yourself with the music, and so forth.

例如，一位詩人是這樣描述的。這是我的一個學(xué)生寫的，他采訪了美國的一些著名作家和詩人。它描述了當(dāng)你進(jìn)入這種狂喜狀態(tài)時所產(chǎn)生的毫不費(fèi)力、自發(fā)的感覺。這位詩人將其描述為打開了一扇漂浮在天空中的門--這與愛因斯坦在試圖理解相對論如何運(yùn)作時對相對論力量的想象非常相似。但這種情況也發(fā)生在其他活動中。例如，這是我的另一位學(xué)生，來自澳大利亞的蘇珊-杰克遜，她曾與世界上一些頂尖運(yùn)動員合作。在對奧林匹克滑冰運(yùn)動員的描述中，你可以看到對人的內(nèi)心狀態(tài)的現(xiàn)象學(xué)的本質(zhì)描述。你不需要思考，只要將自己與音樂融為一體，它就會自動產(chǎn)生。

It happens also, actually, in the most recent book I wrote, called 'Good Business,' where I interviewed some of the CEOs who had been nominated by their peers as being both very successful and very ethical, very socially responsible. You see that these people define success as something that helps others and at the same time makes you feel happy as you are working at it. And like all of these successful and responsible CEOs say, you can't have just one of these things be successful if you want a meaningful and successful job. Anita Roddick is another one of these CEOs we interviewed. She is the founder of Body Shop, the natural cosmetics king. It's kind of a passion that comes from doing the best and having flow while you're working.

實(shí)際上，在我最近寫的一本名為《好生意》的書中也有這種情況，我采訪了一些被同行提名為既非常成功又非常有道德、非常有社會責(zé)任感的首席執(zhí)行官。你會發(fā)現(xiàn)，這些人把成功定義為既能幫助他人，又能讓你在工作中感到快樂的事情。就像所有這些成功且有責(zé)任感的首席執(zhí)行官所說的那樣，如果你想要一份有意義且成功的工作，就不能只做其中一件事。安妮塔-羅迪克（Anita Roddick）是我們采訪的另一位首席執(zhí)行官。她是天然化妝品大王 Body Shop 的創(chuàng)始人。這是一種激情，來自于做得最好，以及工作時的暢快淋漓。

This is an interesting little quote from Masaru Ibuka, who was at that time starting out Sony without any money, without a product -- they didn't have a product, they didn't have anything, but they had an idea. And the idea he had was to establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content. I couldn't improve on this as a good example of how flow enters the workplace.

這是伊布卡勝（Masaru Ibuka）說過的一段有趣的話，他當(dāng)時在索尼起步，沒有任何資金，沒有任何產(chǎn)品 -- 他們沒有產(chǎn)品，什么都沒有，但他們有一個想法。他的想法是建立一個工作場所，讓工程師們能夠感受到技術(shù)創(chuàng)新的樂趣，意識到自己對社會的使命，并盡情地工作。這是個很好的例子，說明了 “心流 ”是如何進(jìn)入工作場所的。

Now, when we do studies -- we have, with other colleagues around the world, done over 8,000 interviews of people -- from Dominican monks, to blind nuns, to Himalayan climbers, to Navajo shepherds -- who enjoy their work. And regardless of the culture, regardless of education or whatever, there are these seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in flow. There's this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.

現(xiàn)在，當(dāng)我們做研究時--我們與世界各地的其他同事一起，做了超過8000次訪談--從多米尼加僧侶、盲人尼姑、喜馬拉雅登山者，到納瓦霍牧羊人--他們都很享受自己的工作。無論文化背景如何，無論受教育程度如何，當(dāng)一個人處于 “心流 ”狀態(tài)時，都會具備以下七個條件。這種專注一旦變得強(qiáng)烈，就會帶來一種陶醉感和清晰感：你清楚地知道從這一刻到另一刻你要做什么；你會得到即時的反饋。你知道你需要做的事情是可能做到的，即使困難重重，時間感消失了，你忘記了自己，你覺得自己是更大的東西的一部分。一旦條件具備，你所做的事情就會變得值得去做。

In our studies, we represent the everyday life of people in this simple scheme. And we can measure this very precisely, actually, because we give people electronic pagers that go off 10 times a day, and whenever they go off you say what you're doing, how you feel, where you are, what you're thinking about. And two things that we measure is the amount of challenge people experience at that moment and the amount of skill that they feel they have at that moment. So for each person we can establish an average, which is the center of the diagram. That would be your mean level of challenge and skill, which will be different from that of anybody else. But you have a kind of a set point there, which would be in the middle.

在我們的研究中，我們用這個簡單的方案來表現(xiàn)人們的日常生活。實(shí)際上，我們可以非常精確地測量這一點(diǎn)，因?yàn)槲覀兘o人們配備了每天響 10 次的電子呼叫器，每當(dāng)呼叫器響起，你就會說出你在做什么、你的感覺如何、你在哪里、你在想什么。我們測量的兩件事是：人們在那一刻所經(jīng)歷的挑戰(zhàn)程度，以及他們在那一刻所感覺到的技能程度。因此，我們可以為每個人確定一個平均值，也就是圖表的中心點(diǎn)。這將是你的挑戰(zhàn)和技能的平均水平，它將不同于其他人。但你有一個設(shè)定點(diǎn)，也就是在中間。

If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average. And you may be doing things very differently from other people, but for everyone that flow channel, that area there, will be when you are doing what you really like to do -- play the piano, be with your best friend, perhaps work, if work is what provides flow for you. And then the other areas become less and less positive.

如果我們知道設(shè)定點(diǎn)是什么，我們就可以相當(dāng)準(zhǔn)確地預(yù)測你何時會處于心流狀態(tài)，而這將是你的挑戰(zhàn)高于平均水平、技能高于平均水平的時候。你做事情的方式可能與其他人大相徑庭，但對每個人來說，當(dāng)你在做自己真正喜歡做的事情時，那個心流的通道、那個區(qū)域就會出現(xiàn)--彈鋼琴、與最好的朋友在一起，也許還有工作，如果工作能讓你心流的話。然后其他領(lǐng)域就會變得越來越不積極。

Arousal is still good because you are over-challenged there. Your skills are not quite as high as they should be, but you can move into flow fairly easily by just developing a little more skill. So, arousal is the area where most people learn from, because that's where they're pushed beyond their comfort zone and to enter that -- going back to flow -- then they develop higher skills. Control is also a good place to be, because there you feel comfortable, but not very excited. It's not very challenging any more. And if you want to enter flow from control, you have to increase the challenges. So those two are ideal and complementary areas from which flow is easy to go into.

喚醒仍然很好，因?yàn)槟阍谀抢锸艿搅诉^度的挑戰(zhàn)。你的技能還沒有達(dá)到應(yīng)有的高度，但只要多掌握一點(diǎn)技能，你就能很容易地進(jìn)入心流狀態(tài)。因此，喚醒是大多數(shù)人學(xué)習(xí)的領(lǐng)域，因?yàn)樵谀抢锼麄儽煌频搅耸孢m區(qū)之外，要進(jìn)入舒適區(qū)--回到心流狀態(tài)--然后他們就會發(fā)展出更高的技能?？刂埔彩且粋€很好的位置，因?yàn)樵谀抢锬銜械绞孢m，但不是很興奮。它不再具有挑戰(zhàn)性。如果你想從控制狀態(tài)進(jìn)入心流狀態(tài)，就必須增加挑戰(zhàn)。因此，這兩個區(qū)域是理想的互補(bǔ)區(qū)域，很容易進(jìn)入 “心流 ”狀態(tài)。

The other combinations of challenge and skill become progressively less optimal. Relaxation is fine -- you still feel OK. Boredom begins to be very aversive and apathy becomes very negative: you don't feel that you're doing anything, you don't use your skills, there's no challenge. Unfortunately, a lot of people's experience is in apathy. The largest single contributor to that experience is watching television; the next one is being in the bathroom, sitting. Even though sometimes watching television about seven to eight percent of the time is in flow, but that's when you choose a program you really want to watch and you get feedback from it.

挑戰(zhàn)和技巧的其他組合逐漸變得不那么理想。放松很好--你仍然感覺良好。無聊開始變得非常厭惡，冷漠變得非常消極：你不覺得你在做什么，你不使用你的技能，沒有挑戰(zhàn)。不幸的是，很多人的經(jīng)歷都是在冷漠中度過的。造成這種體驗(yàn)的最大因素是看電視；其次是在浴室里坐著。盡管有時看電視大約有百分之七到八的時間是在心流中，但那是當(dāng)你選擇一個你真正想看的節(jié)目，并從中得到反饋的時候。

So the question we are trying to address -- and I'm way over time -- is how to put more and more of everyday life in that flow channel. And that is the kind of challenge that we're trying to understand. And some of you obviously know how to do that spontaneously without any advice, but unfortunately a lot of people don't. And that's what our mandate is, in a way, to do.

因此，我們正在努力解決的問題是，如何將越來越多的日常生活納入這一心流渠道。這就是我們試圖理解的挑戰(zhàn)。你們中的一些人顯然知道如何在沒有任何建議的情況下自發(fā)地做到這一點(diǎn)，但不幸的是，很多人都不知道。在某種程度上，這就是我們的任務(wù)。

Thank you.

謝謝大家。