Renowned American psychologist Martin Seligman calls out three dimensions of happiness i.e. Pleasure, passion, and purpose. On a two dimensional graph where the horizontal axis is the time particular happiness lasts, and the vertical one denotes the intensity of happiness, the three P's would find their respective places in the following way,
Pleasure is the sudden surges of happiness that ice cream or a new toy assures. High on promise but low on actual delivery stays for a very short time. Higher than that is the joy provided by one's passion, higher degree, higher intensity, definitely higher than what is promised. This is the joy that enables musicians, painters, actors to derive happiness from. In our mundane lives, some of us are fortunate enough to engage to a great extent with our work, or at least to get enough time outside to do whatever engages us.
A chance to look back may show us clear enough that most of our pursuits of happiness throughout our lives fall into the first category with some falling under the second. The first kind however makes us run the most after, we hop from one such to another (just look at how you have upgraded your phone in the last 5 years, or how you plan to ditch your current car that works perfectly fine in all aspects for a new launch). We get chances to interact with the second ones too, especially the artists or dedicated workers amongst us. However, it is not what we normally run after except for some special cases.
Here comes the idea of flow, Prof. Csikszentmihaly in his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience states that maximum happiness is achieved when people are in a state of balance between their ability and the challenges they are presented with. The chart below shows the zone of flow, exactly at the edge of one's ability to solve problems.
A reasonably bright high school student would get bored if he is presented with mathematics problems that are too easy for him to solve. He/she would get stressed if he is constantly challenged with problems that are beyond his capability. The ecstasy will come exactly when he is able to solve the problems hard enough to be solved using the best of his ability. The areas outside the state of flow are precisely the issues that eclipse the happiness generated out of passion.
Is there a higher dimension of happiness? we will explore this in the next part.
(To be continued ...)
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