Flow – Finding happiness
How to achieve a state of happiness in sports? There is a way and a path available to every athlete. Learn more.
Happiness is not in what we do but in the way we do something.
In search of happiness
Just over two thousand three hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle concluded that men and women most of all want to be happy.
From Aristotle to the present day, we have progressed a lot, as a civilization. We became masters in architecture, science, medicine. Everything has changed since then. What has not changed is our understanding of happiness, which is as important to us as it was to our ancestors.
We will not find happiness if we look for it. We will find it by accepting all the good and bad moments in life.
The Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, summed up this realization in his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don’t aim for success – the more you aim and look for suitable goals, the more you will miss. Success, like happiness, cannot be caught. It just happens… as an unintentional side effect of a personal commitment to a goal greater than yourself. ”
Flow = happiness in sports
We have all sometimes found ourselves in a situation where we control our behavior and when we are masters of our own destiny. In those rare moments, we felt a delight and a deep sense of pleasure that we remember for a long time. It is a state of flow.
We most often experience the best moments when we bring our body and mind to the extreme, trying to achieve something difficult but valuable. So flow is something we create ourselves. For an athlete, one such moment would be breaking his own record.
Such experiences are not always pleasant in the moments in which they occur. Although, the athlete feels pain and is tired – those moments are the best part of his life.
Gaining control over sports performance is never easy and requires a lot of sacrifice. When, after systematic discipline and exercise, he achieves mastery, the athlete finally enjoys the game. He will indulge in such an extremely pleasant experience, regardless of the price he has to pay.
It is precisely this sense of flow, closest to what we label as happiness.
