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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Make
Optimal
Thus
Happen
Experience
Happens
Something

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I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
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Purpose provides activation energy for living.
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People generally report higher levels of stress, depression, and tension after watching TV. It seems that TV's main virtue is that it occupies the mind undemandingly.
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Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
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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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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 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.
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Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you.
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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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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
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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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We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world.
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When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.
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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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Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one's self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be.
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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.
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For a person to become deeply involved in any activity it is essential that he knows precisely what tasks he must accomplish, moment by moment.
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful.
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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.
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Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
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