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It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Determine
Profit
Whether
Misfortune
People
Determines
Misfortunes
Respond
Miserable
Stress

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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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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.
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The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to it's limited in voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
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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.
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Goals transform a random walk into a chase.
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To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.
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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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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
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Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
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Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch.
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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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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
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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.
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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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And, in fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness.
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Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
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Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
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If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
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It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.
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