Quote

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.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Making
Goals
Make
Experience
Main
Life
Two
Strategy
Change
Fit
Better
Conditions
Strategies
Firsts
Second
Match
Quality
External
First
Goal
Improve
Trying

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Since the purpose of business is to satisfy existing desires, or stimulate new ones, if everyone were genuinely happy, there would be no need for business any longer.
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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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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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It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
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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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To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.
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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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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
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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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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.
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...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call soul can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.
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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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Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.
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Goals transform a random walk into a chase.
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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 essential to learn to enjoy life. It really does not make sense to go through the motions of existence if one does not appreciate as much of it as possible.
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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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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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It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.
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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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