Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  84 Copy quote

• The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to it's limited in voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Effort, Mind, Body

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Interesting, Focus

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1997). “Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life”, p.128, Basic Books

  76 Copy quote

• 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, Happy, Discovery

  69 Copy quote

• 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

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

  51 Copy quote

• If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Joy, Needs, Increase

  38 Copy quote

• A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Freedom, Joy, Recipes

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

  66 Copy quote

• 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, What You Love

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention”, Harpercollins

  41 Copy quote

• The happiest people spend much time in a state 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

  Inspirational, People, Cost

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• Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Goal, Walks

  "Go With The Flow" by John Geirland, www.wired.com. September 01, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Attention, Shapes, Pay

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1997). “Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life”, p.128, Basic Books

  13 Copy quote

• To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Business, Reality, Psychics

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.143, Penguin

  41 Copy quote

• 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

  Order, Psychics, Skills

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Order, Giving, Attention

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Happiness, Business, Believe

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.34, Penguin

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Happiness, Business, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.48, Penguin

  39 Copy quote

• A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the challenge of getting ahead in the organization provides a satisfactory focus for a while. But these incentives alone are rarely strong enough to inspire workers to give their best to their work. For this a vision is needed, an overarching goal that gives meaning to the job, so that an individual can forget himself in the task and experience flow without doubts or regrets. The most important component of such a vision is an ingredient we call soul.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Strong, Jobs, Regret

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Teaching, Learning, Resilience

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

  8 Copy quote

• Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Running, Long, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

  9 Copy quote

• Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Effort, Flow, Wasting Time

  30 Copy quote

• If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Solitude, Quality, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Intellectual, Intelligence

  22 Copy quote

• 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, Details, Looks

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, p.11, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

• When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Creativity, Rest Of Life, Living More

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and”, p.2, Harper Collins

  10 Copy quote

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