Johnathon Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis," and Guitar Flow
Johnathon Haidt's book "The Happiness Hypothesis" is bold. Haidt takes a complex idea of cultivating happiness and derives theories of action, based upon research from diverse fields (psycology, social psycology, economics, and many more), that can lead to a sustainable happiness.
One of the theories was based off of the concept of "Flow." For anyone who has performed guitar in front of an audience and everything went completely right, that's what flow is. The following is a great excerpt from Haidt's book that explains flow better than I ever could.
"It is the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one's abilities. It is what people sometimes call 'being in the zone.' Csikszentmihalyi [a psycologist who has studied and researched the idea of flow] called it 'flow' because it often feels like effortless movement. Flow happens, and you go with it. Flow often occurs during physical movement-skiing, driving fast on a curvy country road, or playing team sports. Flow is aided by music or by the action of other people, both of which provide a temporal structure for one's own behavior (for example, singing in a choir, dancing, or just having an intense coversation with a friend). And flow can happen during solitary creative activities, such as painting, writing, or photography." [emphasis added]
When I read this, of course I immediately thought about guitar, both in education and performance. In both situations, unless you are an autodidact and learn in a bubble, the idea is that flow is very possible to occur in a group setting where music is being made. In his case, it could be in a choir or dancing. In our case, it could be with an 59 Les Paul hooked up to a Marshall stack, cranked.
The point is that Flow, as Johnathon Haidt described it, is a great thing to aspire to when playing guitar. This book was a fantastic read. To buy the book, just click on the image!
