Speak­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence, famed psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi asks what’s the source of hap­pi­ness? And his answer comes down to this: Beyond a cer­tain point (and it’s not very far), mon­ey does­n’t affect hap­pi­ness too much. Rather, as his research shows, we tend to be most hap­py when we get immersed, almost lost in, being cre­ative and per­form­ing at our best. It’s an ecsta­t­ic state that he calls “flow.” The video runs about 19 min­utes, and is well worth your time. Some book titles worth check­ing out include: Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence or Find­ing Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Engage­ment with Every­day Life.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Amy Tan: The Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty