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One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Stretch
Develop
Skills
Capacity
Must
Make
Capacities

More quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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I have a naive trust in the universe - that at some level it all makes sense, and we can get glimpses of that sense if we try.
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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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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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Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
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A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.
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Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands
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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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Try to be surprised by something every day.
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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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It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.
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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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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.
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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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Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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When each of these three elements of vision-concern for excellence, for people and for the wider environment-are present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits into a creative, humane experiment for improving life.
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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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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.
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Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi