Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

For better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.

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

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

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

Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment.

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.

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

Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.

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

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.

Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.

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

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening 'outside,' just by changing the contents of consciousness.

But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

For better or worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity.

Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.

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.

To be successful you have to enjoy doing your best while at the same time contributing to something beyond yourself.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.

It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.

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.

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.

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?'"

An ideal organization is one in which each worker's potentialities find room for expression.

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

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.

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.

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

Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.

Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.

Shift often from openness to closure.