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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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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Freely
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Sake
Rather
Learn
Action
Become
Ulterior
Motives
More quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.
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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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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
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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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It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.
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If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination.
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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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Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
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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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Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have performed a task well or not. The ability to give objective feedback to oneself is in fact the mark of the expert.
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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.
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Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.
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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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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
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If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.
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One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting.
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Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you.
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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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Shift often from openness to closure.
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