If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
To gain control over the quality of experience, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have.… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
“What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance.… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
What does this contradictory pattern mean?one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
“Entropy is the normal state of consciousness—a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television,… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
“Unfortunately, many people find the only challenges they can respond to are violence, gambling, random sex, or drugs. Some of these experiences can be… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
It is essential to learn to enjoy life. It really does not make sense to go through the motions of existence if one does… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
“It is usual to explain the motivation of those who enjoy dangerous activities as some sort of pathological need: they are trying to exorcise a deep-seated fear, they are compensating, they are compulsively reenacting an Oedipal fixation, they are “sensation seekers.” While such motives may be occasionally involved, what is most striking, when one actually speaks to specialists in risk,… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
“Wisdom and integrity cannot be found in any single domain. A broader viewpoint that breaks across disciplinary boundaries is needed, a way of understanding that combines knowing and sensing, feeling and judging. In facing this task one cannot expect to succeed in the public eye, as one can when a field of culture recognizes one’s contributions to art, business, or… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
For better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Many business leaders today view their jobs as entailing responsibility for the welfare of the wider community. These individuals do not define themselves as… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
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.… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
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… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
