Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

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

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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
Enjoyment, on the other hand, is not always pleasant, and it can be very stressful at times. A mountain climber, for example, may be close to freezing, utterly exhausted, and in danger of falling into a bottomless crevasse, yet he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Sipping a piña colada under a palm tree at the edge of the turquoise ocean is idyllic, but it just doesn't compare to the exhilaration he feels on the windswept ridge.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

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

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

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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
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
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
Today many American corporations spend a great deal of money and time trying to increase the originality of their employees, hoping thereby to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. But such programs make no difference unless management also learns to recognize the valuable ideas among the many novel ones, and then finds ways of implementing them.

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

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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
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
The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass.

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

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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
You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist. I've experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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
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