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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi QUOTES

161 " Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

162 " While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal - health, beauty, money or power - is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

163 " When the lifestyle of a social group becomes obsolete, when work turns into a boring routine and community responsibilities lose their meaning, it is likely that leisure will become increasingly more important. And if a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life

164 " Whenever the outside world offers no mercy, an internal symbolic system can become a salvation. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

165 " The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. 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. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

166 " A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

167 " The old woman who farms in the Alps, the welder in South Chicago, and the mythical cook from ancient China have this in common: their work is hard and unglamorous, and most people would find it boring, repetitive, and meaningless. Yet these individuals transformed the jobs they had to do into complex activities. They did this by recognizing opportunities for action where others did not, by developing skills, by focusing on the activity at hand, and allowing themselves to be lost in the interaction so that their selves could emerge stronger afterward. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

168 " People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. They are easily manipulated by demagogues, pacified by entertainers, and exploited by anyone who has something to sell. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

169 " 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 , Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life

170 " When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi QUOTES

171 " To what extent have I accepted other people’s definition of who I am and what I could be? How ignorant am I of the values held by people of different cultures? Or more prosaically: Do I actually like the highly advertised values of my car? Is the company I work for deserving of my loyalty? Is working seventy hours a week really the best investment of my life energy? Is a slim figure, a youthful look the highest peak of human accomplishment? It was for asking similar questions that Socrates had to drink hemlock, and Savonarola was burned at the stake. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium

172 " 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 , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

173 " The complexity and freedom that have been thrust upon us, and that our ancestors had fought so hard to achieve, are a challenge we must find ways to master. If we do, the lives of our descendants will be infinitely more enriched than anything previously experienced on this planet. If we do not, we run the risk of frittering away our energies on contradictory, meaningless goals. But in the meantime how do we know where to invest psychic energy? There is no one out there to tell us, “Here is a goal worth spending your life on.” Because there is no absolute certainty to which to turn, each person must discover ultimate purpose on his or her own. Through trial and error, through intense cultivation, we can straighten out the tangled skein of conflicting goals, and choose the one that will give purpose to action. Self-knowledge—an ancient remedy so old that its value is easily forgotten—is the process through which one may organize conflicting options. “Know thyself” was carved over the entrance to the Delphic oracle, and ever since untold pious epigrams have extolled its virtue. The reason the advice is so often repeated is that it works. We need, however, to rediscover afresh every generation what these words mean, what the advice actually implies for each individual. And to do that it is useful to express it in terms of current knowledge, and envision a contemporary method for its application. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

174 " The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

175 " The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

176 " The swimmer’s muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue—yet these could have been the best moments of his life. Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful. But in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery—or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life—that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

177 " The insight presumably occurs when a subconscious connection between ideas fits so well that it is forced to pop out into awareness, like a cork held underwater breaking out into the air after it is released. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

178 " All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life

179 " The more a job inherently resembles a game—with variety, appropriate and flexible challenges, clear goals, and immediate feedback—the more enjoyable it will be regardless of the worker’s level of development. Hunting, "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

180 " There are natives of New Guinea who spend more time looking in the jungle for the colorful feathers they use for decoration in their ritual dances than they spend looking for food. And this is by no means a rare example: art, play, and ritual probably occupy more time and energy in most cultures than work. "

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi , Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience