If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
...perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Jane Fonda, who divided her life into three acts, decided after her sixtieth birthday that she was now facing the final act,… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share Image
A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is… — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Copy Share
“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
