Experience depends on psychic energy - on the structure of attention.

When an important goal is pursued with resolution, and all one’s varied activities fit together into a unified flow experience, the result is that harmony is brought to consciousness. Someone who knows his desires and works with purpose to achieve them is a person whose feelings, thoughts, and ac...

The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

Optimal experience occurs when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is orde...

1. Flow occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.
2. Ability to concentrate on what we are doing.
3. The concentration is possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.
4. One acts with a deep but effortless involvement t...

 Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self.

 It will be to describe how people manage to join all experience into a meaningful pattern. When that is accomplished, and a person feels in control of life and feels that it makes sense, there is nothing left to desire. The fact that one is not slim, rich, or powerful no longer matters. The tide...