Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Wise Famous Quotes.
Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset, but later it is the effort that justifies the goal.
Second, to have a good life, it is not enough to remove what is wrong from it. We also need a positive goal, otherwise why keep going?
To be successful you have to enjoy doing your best while at the same time contributing to something beyond yourself.
Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.
Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.
But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity.
But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.
I have a naive trust in the universe - that at some level it all makes sense, and we can get glimpses of that sense if we try.
Often we don't have a good notion of what our talents are, because we have never had a chance to try them out.
If music modulates our feelings, so does food; and all the fine cuisines of the world are based on that knowledge. The
Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one's actions into a unified flow experience.
Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one's skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.
It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
To pursue mental operations to any depth, a person has to learn to concentrate attention. Without focus, consciousness is in a state of chaos.
Sir John Templeton: "My ethical principle in the first place was: 'Where could I use my talents that God gave me to help the most people?'"
It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.
A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.
If an enterprise does not aspire to be the best of its kind, it will attract second-rate employees, and it will be soon forgotten.
When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing.
The second reason creativity is so fascinating is that when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.
Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.
One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.
The concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.
A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background.
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.
The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield.
I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
For better or for worse, at this time science is still the most trustworthy mirror of reality, and we ignore it only at our peril.
For a person to become deeply involved in any activity it is essential that he knows precisely what tasks he must accomplish, moment by moment.
If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
Each biblical parable, for instance, tries to encode the hard-won experience of many individuals over unknown eons of time.
Act as if the future of the universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions make any difference.
Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated , and defended privately by each person.
The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage.
Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.
The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments.
To gain control over the quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.
Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Figure out the implications of the problem. Implement the solution.
Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.
Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.
It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.
The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.
It might be true that it is "quality time" that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.
It is precisely because the unknowns are so great and dangerous that we require some manner of faith to choose our path and to give us courage.
All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.
The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly," in the words of J. H. Holmes. "It is simply indifferent.
There will be no good business unless the majority comes to agree that we should demand more from business than large quarterly returns.
The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.
Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment.
unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them.
What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions.