MOC : [[PSYCHOLOGIE]] - [[DÉVELOPPEMENT PERSONNEL]] Date : 2021-05-09 Auteur : [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] *** ## La différence entre le flow et l'entropie de l'attention Il faut diriger son attention vers les informations qui renforcent nos buts. Il faut maîtriser son attention pour que l'on arrive à diriger son attention sur les bonnes informations. De cette manière tout est congruent et on arrive souvent dans le flow, quand on ignore toutes les informations qui sont contraires à nos objectifs. One of the main forces that affects consciousness adversely is psychic disorder—that is, information that conflicts with existing intentions, or distracts us from carrying them out. some information that conflicts with an individual’s goals appears in consciousness. with the task of building a sturdy self. Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy. The opposite state from the condition of psychic entropy is optimal experience. When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals, psychic energy flows effortlessly. These examples illustrate what we mean by optimal experience. They are situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against. We have called this state the flow experience, because this is the term many of the people we interviewed had used in their descriptions of how it felt to be in top form: “It was like floating,” “I was carried on by the flow.” It is the opposite of psychic entropy—in fact, it is sometimes called negentropy—and those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue. **In flow we are in control of our psychic energy, and everything we do adds order to consciousness.** “It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You make your body go and everything hurts; then you look back in awe at the self, at what you’ve done, it just blows your mind. It leads to ecstasy, to self-fulfillment. If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world.” #citation The “battle” is not really against the self, but against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness. It is really a battle for the self; it is a struggle for establishing control over attention.