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When each of these three elements of vision-concern for excellence, for people and for the wider environment-are present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits into a creative, humane experiment for improving life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone's reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The love of fate corresponds to a willingness to accept ownership of one's actions, whether these are spontaneous or imposed from the outside. It is this acceptance that leads to personal growth, and provides the feeling of serene enjoyment which removes the burden of entropy from everyday life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Painters must want to paint above all else. If the artist in front of the canvas begins to wonder how much he will sell it for, or what the critics will think of it, he won't be able to pursue original avenues. Creative achievements depend on single-minded immersion. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed, and still kept within the bounds of reason. If a person learns to control his instinctual desires, not because he has to, but because he wants to, he can enjoy himself without becoming addicted. A -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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True, most married men are convinced that their lives are dedicated to the family, and from a material standpoint this might be true. But it takes more than food in the fridge and two cars in the garage to keep a family going. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Will you ever be anything more than a vessel transmitting the genes and memes of previous generations on to the next? -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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And, in fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If the functions of the body are left to atrophy, the quality of life becomes merely adequate, and for some even dismal. But if one takes control of what the body can do, and learns to impose order on physical sensations, entropy yields to a sense of enjoyable harmony in consciousness. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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As this example suggests, we can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE do not come only through the senses. Some of the most exhilarating experiences we undergo are generated inside the mind, triggered by information that challenges our ability to think, rather than from the use of sensory skills. As -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The flow experience, like everything else, is not "good" in an absolute sense. It is good only in that it has the potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strength and complexity of the self. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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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
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Hobbies that demand skill, habits that set goals and limits, personal interests, and especially inner discipline help to make leisure what it is supposed to be - a chance for re-creation. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is essential to learn to enjoy life. It really does not make sense to go through the motions of existence if one does not appreciate as much of it as possible. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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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
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Compared to people living only a few generations ago, we have enormously greater opportunities to have a good time, yet there is no indication that we actually enjoy life more than our ancestors did. Opportunities alone, however, are not enough. We also need the skills to make use of them. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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For several years the researchers did not let anyone else in on their work, not because they were afraid it would be stolen, but because they were afraid that their colleagues would laugh at their seemingly crazy ideas. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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In reality, to achieve such an ordered mental condition is not as easy as it sounds. Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos. Without -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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? -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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?'" -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The roots of the word "compete" are the Latin con petire, which meant "to seek together. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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We are always getting to live, as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but never living. Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never brad and jam today. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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They make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes ... If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."
(psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls "flow") -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Control over consciousness cannot be institutionaliz ed. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It's a wise parent who allows her children to give up the things of childhood in their own time. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one's actions into a unified flow experience. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Since the purpose of business is to satisfy existing desires, or stimulate new ones, if everyone were genuinely happy, there would be no need for business any longer. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is impossible for partners not to grow bored unless they work to discover new challenges in each other's company, and learn appropriate skills for enriching the relationship. Initially -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The self expands through acts of self forgetfulness. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To transform the biological necessity of feeding into a flow experience, one must begin by paying attention to what one eats. It is astonishing - as well as discouraging - when guests swallow lovingly prepared food without any sign of having noticed its virtues. What -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one's self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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You could say that I worked every minute of my life, or you could say with equal justice that I never worked a day. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Much has been written about what makes families work. The consensus is that families that support the emotional well-being and growth of their members combine two almost opposite traits. They combine discipline with spontaneity, rules with freedom, high expectations with unstinting love. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food: "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." If -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Work as we know it now is a very recent historical development. It didn't exist before the great agricultural revolutions that made intensive farming possible about twelve thousand years ago. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly," in the words of J. H. Holmes. "It is simply indifferent. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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As J. S. Mill wrote, No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Many business leaders today view their jobs as entailing responsibility for the welfare of the wider community. These individuals do not define themselves as profit-making machines whose only reason for existing is to satisfy escalating expectation for immediate gain. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Competition is an easy way to get into flow. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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We can either help to make this world a more incredible place than it has ever been, or we can hasten its return to inorganic dust. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of psychic energy becomes a primary concern. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Freeman Dyson said: "It is characteristic of scientific life that it is easy when you have a problem to work on. The hard part is finding your problem. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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How to avoid the danger of polarizing life into work that is meaningless because it is unfree, and leisure that is meaningless because it has no purpose? -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If one reads the biographies of physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, Chandrashekhar, and Bethe, one gets the impression that without hikes in the mountains and the vision of night skies their science would not have amounted to much. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To be successful you have to enjoy doing your best while at the same time contributing to something beyond yourself. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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However, a good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth that results in the development of increasing emotional, cognitive, and social complexity. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that will determines what we accomplish and how well. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Discipline is not always internalized and actually can breed resentment among children. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Assimilating the style of predecessors is necessary before one can develop one's own. Only by immersing oneself in the domain can one find out whether there is room left for contributing creatively to it, and whether one is capable of doing so. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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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
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If music modulates our feelings, so does food; and all the fine cuisines of the world are based on that knowledge. The -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Optimal experience is that rare occasion when we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity ... one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To realize the body's potential for flow is relatively easy. It does not require special talents or great expenditures of money. Everyone can greatly improve the quality of life by exploring one or more previously ignored dimensions of physical abilities. Of -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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For better or worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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An ideal organization is one in which each worker's potentialities find room for expression. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Control of consciousness determines the quality of life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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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
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Take charge of your schedule. Make time for reflection and relaxation. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To pursue mental operations to any depth, a person has to learn to concentrate attention. Without focus, consciousness is in a state of chaos. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Each biblical parable, for instance, tries to encode the hard-won experience of many individuals over unknown eons of time. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It might be true that it is "quality time" that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Buddhists advise us to "act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference." This serious playfulness makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If we are so rich, why aren't we happy? -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The other danger in becoming involved with culinary delights - and here again the parallels with sex are obvious - is that they can become addictive. It -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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In the words of Max DePree: "Management has a lot to do with answers. But leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?'" -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up ... so the next stage is hard work -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Changing external conditions might seem to work at first, but if a person is not in control of his consciousness, the old fears or desires will soon return, reviving previous anxieties. One -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have performed a task well or not. The ability to give objective feedback to oneself is in fact the mark of the expert. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue ... as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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When attention is focused, minor aches and pains have no chance to register in consciousness. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset, but later it is the effort that justifies the goal. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Someone who is motivated solely by the desire to become rich and famous might struggle hard to get ahead but will rarely have enough inducement to work beyond what is necessary, to venture beyond what is already known. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The traits that mark an autotelic personality are most clearly revealed by people who seem to enjoy situations that ordinary persons would find unbearable. Lost -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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What the social environment told them to want ... -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Find a way to express what moves you. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Often we don't have a good notion of what our talents are, because we have never had a chance to try them out. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It's exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Develop what you lack. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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People generally report higher levels of stress, depression, and tension after watching TV. It seems that TV's main virtue is that it occupies the mind undemandingly. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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But religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Flow is the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. The optimal state of inner experience is order in consciousness. This happens when we focus our attention (psychic energy) on realistic goals and when our skills match the challenges we face. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The only path to finding out what life is about is a patient, slow attempt to make sense of the realities of the past and the possibilities of the future as they can be understood in the present. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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If a leader demonstrates that his purpose is noble, that the work will enable people to connect with something large - more permanent than their material existence - people will give the best of themselves to the enterprise -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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In large organizations the dilution of information as it passes up and down the hierarchy, and horizontally across departments, can undermine the effort to focus on common goals. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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The essence of socialization is to make people dependent on social controls, to have them respond predictably to rewards and punishments. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow - the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Thus we might think of consciousness as intentionally ordered information. This -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Purpose provides activation energy for living. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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We have learned how to develop five-minute and even one-minute managers. But we would do better to ask ourselves what it takes to be an executive who helps build a better future. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Whatever the dictates of fashion, it seems that those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do lead a happier life. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The apologists for the medium claim that all sorts of interesting information is provided by television. This is true, but as it is much easier to produce programs that titillate rather than elevate the viewer, what most people watch is unlikely to help in developing the self. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The future," wrote C. K. Brightbill, "will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Shift often from openness to closure. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Because optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in consciousness moment by moment, each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Consuming culture is never as rewarding as producing it. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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There will be no good business unless the majority comes to agree that we should demand more from business than large quarterly returns. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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no worthwhile effort in one's life is either a success or a failure. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To gain control over the quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Luckily, the world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way. Otherwise each of us could be a poet or musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time ... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated , and defended privately by each person. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Figure out the implications of the problem. Implement the solution. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi