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IF YOU WANT to be a fulfilled, happy, successful person, consider the below graph.
The white diagonal line represents what positive psychology pioneer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi referred to as “flow.”
The metaphor of flow is one that many people have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as “being in the zone,” religious mystics as being in “ecstasy,” artists and musicians as “aesthetic rapture.”
It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life.
Flow, the psychologist continues, is different from the “passive pleasures” of deep sleep, warm sunshine, or a contented relationship, since those all depend on external circumstances.
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In contrast, flow is something you can create.
“This complete immersion in an experience could occur while you are singing in a choir, dancing, playing bridge, or reading a good book,” Csikszentmihalyi writes. “If you love your job, it could happen during a complicated surgical operation or a close business deal.”
Looking at the graph, you can see that in order to achieve flow an activity has to have the right level of engagement with your skills. If the challenge is too great, you’ll feel overwhelmed; if the challenge is too easy, you’ll get bored. The key is to go just beyond your comfort level.
If you do so, you’re in the flow channel: engaged in your work and growing along with it.
But there’s also the matter of how you grow. Writer and philosophy Ph.D. Jim Stone wrote in a Quora post that you can advance from A1 to A4 in the flow channel in one of two ways:
First, you can move from A1 to A2, and then to A4. On this path, you develop new skills without much challenge. And once you start to feel competent with those new skills, and you start to get bored with the way you are using those skills, you can take on a challenge that will use those skills and get your mind back in the game.This might be the approach of a maths student who keeps working on easy problem sets until he gets so good at them that he’s bored, and then decides to tackle a harder problem set.
Second, you can move from A1 to A3, and then to A4. On this path you take on a challenge before you have the skills to meet the challenge. This creates anxiety, and the anxiety drives you to develop the skills you need to meet the challenge.
This might be the approach of a maths student who jumps right to the most difficult problem set and fills in her skills as she works on those problems.
Which is better, career-wise? The second, more anxiety-filled one, since it forces you to tackle big projects and get comfortable with the discomfort inherent to the process.
Doing this exposes us to an important mental skill, too. Finns call it “sisu,” the psychological strength that allows you to push through difficult circumstances. The good news is it can be trained.
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Why should they stay? Government imposing Austerity measures to get to work from Buying Diesel to USC to Housing and Health.
Meanwhile a crowd of unknown people excluding the Ukrainian community have came in,
They are provided Transport to their work/ shopping (if they work) , their housed and provided with free accommodation and healthcare.
@Luka Roche: Pretty much as many Irish came back as left
@Luka Roche: Whatever the government in charge they have done the same. Never look after your own people
@Mick Duvanny: Youve gotta go away to realise you dreams.
How many emigrated due to impossibility of getting a mortgage to buy a home?
@Garreth Byrne: 47 apparently
@Temp Stuff: As Christy Moore sang “we go there, they come here”.
@Garreth Byrne: How many of the returning 29800 would come back if they thought that way? Net migration outwards is 700
There goes our brightest & our best. Very sad for Ireland!
@Colette Kearns: Educated young people normally have no experience, neither in life nor at work. I would NOT call them our brightest nor our best!
@Lynda: how very shortsighted of you.
@lWOk0fWf: As a manager, dealing and training young enducated Irish and none Irish. It takes a lot of efforts to train a new recruit, regardless of their race. Yes, young people might look bright on the outside, but most of them require a LOT of work to be able to handle the jobs that are currently filled by foreign experienced workers!
@Lynda: as a manager.. you sound great fun, where do I apply ?
@Bara: irishjobs.ie
@Lynda: ‘managers’ that’s what we are here, visionless managers.
Be warned Irish staff are being replaced with cheaper people from outside the EU who will do anything.
@John Doyle: oh dear
@John Doyle: I think you are wrong, but we are hiring around 60 young indians grads because they are hard working and diligent, not like the locals, many of them have chip on their shoulders. But some irish younge guys also diligent.
@John Doyle: yet CSO data shows wages continue to increase. Suggest you look at facts and not Nazi lies.
After most of my formal education, I left the country as I wanted to experience other cultures etc. It’s a good thing. Not all emigration is forced. I came back when I wanted to come back.
I wonder, of the 33500 non Irish citizens that left, how many were returning home, and is that really emigration?
@Joe x: lots, I mean LOTS of Polish / Romanian are returning as economies there are booming and everything is at least 50-70% cheaper. At the moment.
@Chris: and wages are 50% lower.
@uUleRhCu: Fine for them to take money out of the economy but I cant buy a car in the UK. lol
Beside Polish / Romanians / Baltic people, also lots of Spanish and Italians are returning in their countries, due to bad weather, very expensive life and thuggery. I worked with some Spanish people who were shocked by the thuggery in Dublin and the first choice for violence that many Irish locals have.
@Chris: I’ve seen as much thuggery outside chippers in rural towns as I’ve ever seen in Dublin.
I have a cousin who is a consultant paediatrician in Australia and she did the same. Her standard of living is 50x that of any worker here. No Red tape or bureaucracy. She has enough money to send her kids to a lovely private school and live in a influent middle class area, she works hard for it and she decides what she does with her money not the EU or Irish gov. Financial constraints leave me here for the time being
@IPAS Conman: she is a paediatrician. She went to university of Aberdeen in Scotland. She graduated just before the great recession hit. She would never move back here. So stop being so narrow minded and for coming me a liar, you don’t know me from adam so keep your narrow mindset to yourself. Thousands of healthcare professionals have went to Australia because of the cut backs during the recession.
@Alan Scott: Australian house prices make Ireland house prices look like bargains. If you are not taking the weather, beaches and open spaces into account, then there is no way the standard of living in Australia is 50x Ireland. I wouldn’t say economically it’s any better at all
This is just the start. more hope elsewhere
So hang on…. 64k emigrate…. 141k immigrate… So yes, wow 64k emigrated but we’ve net immigration no?
@TheGood Feign: ya we do but they can’t put that in the headline, could be interpreted they are going against the socially required opinion…
@TheGood Feign: They are just stirring the usual journal commenters who’d have you believe that all our young are moving to Australia as they can’t afford a home
Don’t go Leo and his cronies will have it fixed by the next election
@John Kenny: well do you think SF will do any better under a socialist Republic? Up the RA will become our national anthem. Following the election Ireland will become the Democratic Peoples Republic of Ireland under the leadership of the general secretary of the communist party of Ireland, Mary Lou, Macdonald.
Loads of family’s living in my estate, all with social houses, nice tv, and cars prob a holiday to match, they are far from struggling.
@Shane O Mac: If they’re underpaid they’re entitled to rent a social welfare house. Maybe they should be paid more
All going according to plan, look back 20 years and think of the demographic changes that have taken place in that period. Now look forward 20 years and try to imagine the changes that are going to take place. Frightening stuff for Paddy and all because we let a WEF plant run our country. Wake up, turn off your stupid TV and radios and start thinking for yourself or it will be too late.
Have to go to come back, fair wind to them.
Property prices have come back to celtic tiger levels only this time its in every developed country on the planet .
unless you know the true reason why they left this statistic is meaningless
The grass is always greener elsewhere and for some it is.
It’s worth mentioning that for people coming here from hot
What’s new,
Don’t blame them nothing here for them the Irish are being driven out !!! No jobs for them
After my funeral I really enjoyed the ham sandwiches.. who cares who goes where , it’s a big world and we should all be free to go where we want to .
In consolation it’s a great place to come back to, very hard to reintegrate but after that, if you’ve made enough while away, there are millions less in people (despite this so-called emergency influx of immigrants), and everything moves a little slower, but yea too few people in the economy for those on the up.
have your say