Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famous quotes

If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Interesting #Focus #Attention

But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make senseTo create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to whose who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Goal #Everyday #Wish

Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Goal #Viktor Frankl

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Freedom #Joy #Recipes

Enjoyment, on the other hand, is not always pleasant, and it can be very stressful at times. A mountain climber, for example, may be close to freezing, utterly exhausted, and in danger of falling into a bottomless crevasse, yet he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Sipping a piña colada under a palm tree at the edge of the turquoise ocean is idyllic, but it just doesn't compare to the exhilaration he feels on the windswept ridge.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Ocean #Fall

There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Change #Two #Goal

What I "discovered" was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Happiness #People #Quality

To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Independent #Punishment #Anxiety

Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Life #Hate

We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Reality #World #Influence

Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Inspiration #Inspire #Trying

The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Depression #Average #Television

Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Morning #Goal #Looks

Good design is a visual statement that maximizes the life goals of the people in a given culture (or, more realistically, the goals of a certain subset of people in the culture) that draws on a shared symbolic expression for the ordering of such goals.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Expression #People #Goal

Today many American corporations spend a great deal of money and time trying to increase the originality of their employees, hoping thereby to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. But such programs make no difference unless management also learns to recognize the valuable ideas among the many novel ones, and then finds ways of implementing them.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Ideas #Differences #Empowerment

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. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Self #Goal #Effort

The more a person feels skilled, the more her moods will improve; while the more challenges that are present, the more her attention will become focused and concentrated.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Focus #Challenges #Attention

One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Skills #Capacity

Develop what you lack.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Growth

Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Ideas #Trying #Unlikely

Take charge of your schedule. Make time for reflection and relaxation.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Reflection #Relaxation #Schedules

The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up... so the next stage is hard work
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Teaching #Hard Work #Learning

But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Shortcuts #Dangerous

Socializing is more positive than being alone, that’s why meetings are so popular. People don’t like being alone. That would be, however, an important skill to learn...
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Skills #People #Important

If we are so rich, why aren't we happy?
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Prosperity #Rich

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Fall #Time Flies #Ego

Shift often from openness to closure.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Finishing #Closure #Openness

Find a way to express what moves you.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Moving #Expression #Way

It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Listening #Hearing

One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Feelings #Excellent #Oneself

I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Thinking #Hands #People

Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Creative #Gender #Individual

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Creativity #Ideas #Novelty

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Moving #Meals #Want

People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#People #Site #Payoff

Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Writing #Sparks #Each Day

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Stress #People #Miserable

Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Normal #Consciousness #States

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration...
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Fate #Destiny #Our Actions

A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Boredom #Anxiety #Flow

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Self #Becoming #Might

Whatever the composition of a firm, if it is to do good business it should be a place where everyone is encouraged to progress toward complexity- or at the very least a place that does not make it more difficult to achieve personal growth.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Growth #Progress #Doe

Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Mind #Information #Capacity

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.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Sake #Action #Motive

A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Self #Psychics #Two

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Long #Feel Good #Easy

Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Agreement #Mind #Church

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.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Mean #Goal #Rewards

Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Desire #Vigor #Pestilence

A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Happiness #Successful #Form

There are managers so preoccupied with their e-mail messages that they never look up from their screens to see what's happening in the nondigital world
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Mail #Messages

To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Life #Mean #Thinking

It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Safety #Evolution

...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call "soul" can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Cutting #Soul

The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Ideas #Soul

Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Business #Self #Favors

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Positivity #Boredom #Anxiety

It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Eye #Focus #Suffering

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.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Trying #Finding Happiness #Details

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Order #Important #Quality

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.
-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#Media #People #Symbolic