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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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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Happiness
Destination
Perfect
Reaching
Success
Bottom
Business
Agree
Sense
Line
Makes
Journey
Life
Lines
Goal
Counts

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Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
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There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.
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As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.
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One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.
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People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful.
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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.
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One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting.
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To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.
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Happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen.
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..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be they come to believe they have no other options.
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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.
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We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that will determines what we accomplish and how well.
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In large organizations the dilution of information as it passes up and down the hierarchy, and horizontally across departments, can undermine the effort to focus on common goals.
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To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
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