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Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Capacity
Boundary
Challenges
Positivity
Persons
Balanced
Person
Boredom
Appears
Enjoyment
Boundaries
Anxiety

More quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. He who desires but acts not, wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, Breeds pestilence.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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However, a good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth that results in the development of increasing emotional, cognitive, and social complexity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call soul can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Goals transform a random walk into a chase.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have performed a task well or not. The ability to give objective feedback to oneself is in fact the mark of the expert.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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
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An ideal organization is one in which each worker's potentialities find room for expression.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Flow is the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. The optimal state of inner experience is order in consciousness. This happens when we focus our attention (psychic energy) on realistic goals and when our skills match the challenges we face.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The more a person feels skilled, the more her moods will improve while the more challenges that are present, the more her attention will become focused and concentrated.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi