"This book summarizes, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience - joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow." Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that the people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it". "p.4" This book is not one that gives formulas and inside tips on how to be happy. It contains no short cut to making oneself happy or improving one's quality of life. It is well written, carefully researched, and full of interesting antidotes. It points out that humans since the time of Aristotle and before seek happiness, more than anything else. In spite of all that has happened in this world, our understanding of the universe, the advances in medicine, and the tremendous growth in technologies that have occurred in this amount of time, we have not treated this topic with the same intensity of research and do not know what really makes us happy.

"While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal - health, beauty, money, or power - is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy." "p.1" The author takes you on a journey through chapters such as "The Anatomy of Consciousness" to find out how consciousness works and how to control it. Next, "Enjoyment and the Quality of Life" deals with ideas such as the "Autotelic Experience". "The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding." "p.67". Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 deal with "The Conditions of Flow", "The Body in Flow", "The Flow of Thought", and "Work as Flow". "Enjoying Solitude and Other People", "Cheating Chaos", and "The Making of Meaning" make up the themes of chapters 8, 9, and 10. I will end this paragraph with a quote from the last subchapter of the book: "The Unification of Meaning in Life Themes" "p.230", "The life theme, like a game that prescribes the rules and actions one must follow to experience flow, identifies what will make existence enjoyable. With a life theme, everything that happens will have meaning - not necessarily a positive one, but a meaning nevertheless".

"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" is hardly the kind of book I would pick off the shelf to browse through, let alone read. The caption on the cover that caught my eye was "Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life". I was pleased to find it an easy read, not a book full of footnotes and technical jargon. "Flow" examines the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. This book makes you aware of the things that are important. It points out that in many cases the physical, tangible things we think are important to make us happy are not the things that fulfill us. "Flow" puts happiness in a different perspective. The universe and the physical world around us were not created for us or with us in mind. Happiness is not found in material objects. The plain fact is that human beings are happy only when they are striving for something worthwhile. The basis for happiness is something to do, something to look forward to, and something to love.