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If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Need
Increase
Needs
Joy
Something
Becomes
Enjoy
Keep
Anything
Enjoyable
Wells
Enjoying
Well
Complexity

More quotes by 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.
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If we are so rich, why aren't we happy?
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
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Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you.
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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.
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It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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However, a good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth that results in the development of increasing emotional, cognitive, and social complexity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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...perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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If a leader demonstrates that his purpose is noble, that the work will enable people to connect with something large - more permanent than their material existence - people will give the best of themselves to the enterprise
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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.
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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Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
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