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Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Chase
Random
Transform
Goals
Walk
Walks
Goal

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.
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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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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But shortcuts are dangerous we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.
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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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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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It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
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