Quote

Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Outside
Depends
Events
Happiness
Rather
Happens
Doe
Interpret
Something
Depend

More quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Try to be surprised by something every day.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. He who desires but acts not, wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, Breeds pestilence.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Problems are solved only when we devote a great deal of attention to them and in a creative way...to have a good life, it is not enough to remove what is wrong with it. We also need a positive goal, otherwise why keep going? Creativity is one answer to that question - It provides one of the most exciting models for living.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Image
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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi