Happiness
Unlike fear, which is a momentary emotion, happiness an enduring mood state. It is quite difficult to measure because simply asking people to report on how happy they are will not give a fair overall average of SWB (subjective well-being). This is because people tend to take certain types of emotion into account more than others; this is usually the peak and the end of a situation or event. Another flaw with measuring happiness is that it depends heavily on what mood the person may be in when questioned.
What makes us Happy?
Research has shown that happiness tends to rely on the frequency of positive experiences rather than the intensity of a few. Very intense moments of happiness are quite rare and those who experience such strong emotion are also susceptible to
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During the flow state, the prefrontal cortex is said to be temporarily deactivated (transient hypofrontality) so we lose the ability to be self-aware for a little while, allowing all of our focus to be on the activity we are completing.
When describing the state of flow, Steven Kotler said:
‘So our sense of self, our sense of self-consciousness, they vanish. Time dilates which means sometimes it slows down. You get that freeze frame effect familiar to any of you who have seen The Matrix or been in a car crash. Sometimes it speeds up and five hours will pass by in like five minutes. And throughout all aspects of performance, mental and physical, go through the roof.’
To some people flow can mean becoming almost merged with a task. A poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats describes flow effectively in his poem ‘Among School Children’ in the line: ‘O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we tell the dancer from the