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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Make
Optimal
Thus
Happen
Experience
Happens
Something

More quotes by 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.
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Goals transform a random walk into a chase.
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
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Often we don't have a good notion of what our talents are, because we have never had a chance to try them out.
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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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Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.
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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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How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.
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Competition is an easy way to get into flow.
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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
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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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Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch.
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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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Happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen.
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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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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Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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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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