Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Try to be surprised by something every day.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Develop what you lack.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Shift often from openness to closure.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“THE AUTOTELIC SELF: A SUMMARY”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If we are so rich, why aren't we happy?

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Find a way to express what moves you.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Altius, citius, fortius—is”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Purpose provides activation energy for living.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To gain control over the quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If I had to express in one word what makes their [creative individuals'] personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“For Mark Strand, the poet’s responsibility to be a witness, a recorder of experience, is part of the broader responsibility we all…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline,…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“a constant alternation between a highly concentrated critical assessment and a relaxed, receptive, nonjudgmental openness to experience. His attention coils and uncoils,…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Although watching TV is far from being a positive experience—generally people report feeling passive, weak, rather irritable, and sad when doing it—at…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“After college she worked in the theater and started publishing her stories. She still plays the piano, and in a way that…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Stern responds to the question about what was the main obstacle he encountered in his life: I think it’s that rubbishy part…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Neither parents nor schools are very effective at teaching the young to find pleasure in the right things. Adults, themselves often deluded…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like. Is what you do for a living making you ill?…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“In the past few thousand years—a mere split second in evolutionary time—humanity has achieved incredible advances in the differentiation of consciousness. We…

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi