Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM  

“It is what the sailor holding a tight course feels when the wind whips through her hair ... It is what the painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape ...”

These words, written by American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describe the state of flow.  It’s a condition of heightened focus, productivity, and happiness that we all intuitively understand and hunger for.

Without flow, there’s no creativity, and in today’s innovation-centric world, creativity is a requirement, not a frill.  Being able to harness the feeling of flow is the holy grail for any manager -- or even any individual -- seeking a more productive and satisfying work experience.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

The Art of Work by Ann Marsh

From -- Fast Company, Issue 97, August 2005

Highlights from the article:

• People report the greatest sense of flow while pursuing challenging activities, not while engaged in passive leisure activities.  They engage so completely in what they are doing that they lose track of time.
    

• In a flow state, people are pushing beyond their limits and developing new abilities.  The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to capacity.
    

• The flow experience or activity becomes its own reward and, as a result of it, people become more self-confident, capable, and sensitive.  According to Csikszentmihalyi, “to improve life, one must improve the quality of experience” allowing people to escape the distraction, depression, and dispiritedness that constantly threaten them.
    

• Flow has several necessary preconditions.  These include having clear goals and a reasonable expectation of completing the task at hand.  People must also have the ability to concentrate, receive regular feedback on their progress, and actually possess the skills needed for that type of work.
    

• To improve productivity and employee satisfaction -- and along with them, the experience of flow -- managers must be willing to love their people and spend an unheard-of amount of quality time with each one of them providing coach-like support.
    

• Flow is most powerful when achieved in service of a goal that will better society.

For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/97/art-of-work.html

The New Science of Happiness

What makes the human heart sing?  What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish?  What actively makes people feel fulfilled, engaged and meaningfully happy?  Within the last 10 years, psychologists have begun to ask these questions and many more like them.  The result: an explosion of research on happiness, optimism, positive emotions and healthy character traits.  Seldom has an academic field been brought so quickly and deliberately to life.

In his 2002 book, Authentic Happiness, psychologist Martin Seligman defines three components of happiness:

1. Pleasure (“the smiley-face piece”),

2. Engagement (the depth of involvement with one’s family, work, romance and hobbies) and

3. Meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). 

Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential.  This is noteworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure.  It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.

Seligman’s biggest recommendation for lasting happiness is to figure out your strengths and find new ways to deploy them in service to others.  Almost every person feels happier when they’re connected to other people.

Source: Time Magazine, January 17, 2005

Next Month

We all have the capacity to be great.  Greatness comes with recognizing that your potential is limited only by how you choose, how you use your freedom, how resolute you are, how persistent you are -- in short, by your attitude.  Do you have the will to lead?

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