By Jules Evans — 2017
You don’t need drugs or a church for an ecstatic experience that helps transcend the self and connect to something bigger
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Last spring an 18-year-old college freshman who got straight A’s in high school—but was now failing several courses—came to my office on the campus where I work as a psychologist.
If you have ever felt completely absorbed in something, you might have been experiencing a mental state that psychologists refer to as flow. Achieving this state can help people feel greater enjoyment, energy, and involvement.
Flow state is losing yourself in the moment; when you find your abilities are well matched to an activity, the world around you quietens and you may find yourself achieving things you only dreamt to be possible.
FLOW is a state of total absorption in an activity where the individual is so focused that nothing else seems to matter. Time flies by and the activity becomes a joyful, even ecstatic, experience.
Think about the last time where you were engaged in an activity and you simply lost track of time. You were focused like a ninja, you felt amazing and it seemed as if there was nothing else on this planet besides you and your activity.
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Here, the man who literally wrote the book on flow presents his most lucid account yet of how to experience this blissful state.