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We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that will determines what we accomplish and how well.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Pay
Deciding
Attention
Determines
Wells
Intensity
Well
Shape
Life
Determine
Direction
Accomplish
Shapes
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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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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.
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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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Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.
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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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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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Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.
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Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
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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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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.
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Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.
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Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
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It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful.
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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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..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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If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
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