Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of those rare books that not just teaches you about what was expected by the reader but leaves them a better understanding of the world.
This post is not about the Flow concept. It's about doing things for its own sake.
This book is hard-hitting for me. That I will re-read it again and again.
While re-reading this book, I find this interesting paragraph.
There is no question that to survive, and especially to survive in a complex society, it is necessary to work for external goals and to postpone immediate gratifications. But a person does not have to be turned into a puppet jerked about by social controls. The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one’s own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own. - Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Discussing on developing our own rewards, I find that writing by hands on paper gratuitous statements. (Scientifically proven).
Another paragraph from the Flow.
The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, something good will happen. Instead of forever straining for the tantalizing prize dangled just out of reach, one begins to harvest the genuine rewards of living
Take Control Back In Your Hands
In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Corvey argues that if you are affected by things that are outside of control, then you are living a life controlled by external forces.
Someone saying something unpleasant makes your whole day bad? Then it means that you are controlled by that person.
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