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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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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Cannot
Consciousness
Doe
Bring
Important
Create
Life
Quality
Pleasure
Component
Happiness
Components
Helping
Maintain
Order
Helps

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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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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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..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be they come to believe they have no other options.
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It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.
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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.
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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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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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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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Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
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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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For a person to become deeply involved in any activity it is essential that he knows precisely what tasks he must accomplish, moment by moment.
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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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To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing.
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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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Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day.
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We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world.
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We can either help to make this world a more incredible place than it has ever been, or we can hasten its return to inorganic dust.
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi