Top 100 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes
#1. 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
#3. 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
#5. All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#13. It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#15. 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
#16. 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
#19. 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
#21. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#30. 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
#32. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Will you ever be anything more than a vessel transmitting the genes and memes of previous generations on to the next?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#43. 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
#44. But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#45. Discipline is not always internalized and actually can breed resentment among children.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#49. If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#50. 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
#51. When attention is focused, minor aches and pains have no chance to register in consciousness.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#55. 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
#56. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#66. 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
#67. I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#69. But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. The roots of the word "compete" are the Latin con petire, which meant "to seek together.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#83. Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one's actions into a unified flow experience.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#86. 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
#87. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#99. Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Figure out the implications of the problem. Implement the solution.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#100. 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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