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Often we don't have a good notion of what our talents are, because we have never had a chance to try them out.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: September 29
Professor
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Fiume
Good
Never
Talents
Notion
Talent
Chance
Often
Trying

More quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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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
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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Competition is an easy way to get into flow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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And, in fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful.
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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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
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You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist. I've experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call soul can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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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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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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
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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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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Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.
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
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Happiness is not something that happens ... It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.
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.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi