Patricia Mou

Finding flow has largely to do with performing tasks that match your skill level. When a task is far beyond your skill level, you will feel defeated. When a task is too easy, you'll be bored. Only when a task is challenging but achievable will you feel good about doing it.

Instead of looking for a cause to devote your life to, you might try to become someone who is useful and level-headed in a crisis, who is well connected and makes friends easily, or who regularly has good ideas.

Note that seeking happiness as an end might be counterproductive. Many people report that constantly checking to see if they are happy actually decreases their happiness - a report that fits with the research on "flow." It may be better to seek some of the above goals as ends, and happiness will be a side-effect.

The non-linear approach is different – rather than trying to discover a particular arc path and follow it to its conclusion, it recognizes that there will be many different moments and opportunities to create meaning that arise in our life.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” — E.F. Schumacher

The greatest rewards come from working on something that nobody has a name for. If you possibly can, work where there are no words for what you do.

A considerable body of research has suggested that religious service attendance powerfully affects health and also affects other aspects of flourishing such as meaning in life, character, and close social relationships (Koenig, King, and Carson, 2012; Li et al., 2016ab; VanderWeele et al., 2016, 2017; VanderWeele, 2017abc).