Article The Experiential Incompatibility of Mindfulness and Flow Absorption

Mindfulness and flow are both beneficial states of mind, but are they difficult to experience simultaneously? After all, flow involves losing self-awareness within an activity, and mindfulness involves maintaining self-awareness throughout or even despite an activity. In three studies, we examine this potential antagonism, finding negative associations between mindfulness and flow as assessed in a variety of ways and contexts. These associations emerged within Global trait data and diary data concerning daily goal behavior (Study 1), experience-sampling data concerning behavior at the time of signaling (Study 2), and experimental data concerning the experience of playing the flow-conducive computer game, Tetris, after undergoing a mindfulness induction (Study 3). However, these associations only apply to the ‘‘absorption’ ’ aspect of flow, not the ‘‘sense of control’ ’ aspect. Keywords agency, health, self-regulation, personality, motivation and performance Positive psychology is, in part, a quest to understand optimal experience (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Two forms of optimal experiencing have received the majority of attention within the literature, that is, mindfulness and flow. Mindfulness involves ‘‘non-elaborative, non-judgmental