Quote

If I had to express in one word what makes their [creative individuals'] personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Makes
Individuals
Multitude
Others
Express
Personalities
Thought
Instead
Contradictory
Different
Creative
Multitudes
People
Word
Contain
Show
Complexity
Individual
Tendencies
Action
Extremes
Segregated

More quotes by 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.
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Competition is an easy way to get into flow.
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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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Shift often from openness to closure.
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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.
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Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.
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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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Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.
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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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It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.
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Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch.
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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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And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field.
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If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening 'outside,' just by changing the contents of consciousness.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
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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Purpose provides activation energy for living.
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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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