Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes About Goals

Quotes about: Goals

• 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

  Order, Psychics, Skills

• 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.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Life, Happiness, Business

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.38, Penguin

• ...perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Inspirational, Business, Work

• 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

  Happiness, Business, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.48, Penguin

• 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

  Organization, Goal, Focus

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.75, Penguin

• Good design is a visual statement that maximizes the life goals of the people in a given culture (or, more realistically, the goals of a certain subset of people in the culture) that draws on a shared symbolic expression for the ordering of such goals.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Expression, People, Goal

• A paycheck is a sufficient impetus to motivate some employees to do the minimum amount to get by, and for others, the challenge of getting ahead in the organization provides a satisfactory focus for a while. But these incentives alone are rarely strong enough to inspire workers to give their best to their work. For this a vision is needed, an overarching goal that gives meaning to the job, so that an individual can forget himself in the task and experience flow without doubts or regrets. The most important component of such a vision is an ingredient we call soul.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Strong, Jobs, Regret

• 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

  Art, Creativity, Hands

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention”, Harpercollins

• 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

  Change, Two, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

• Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Running, Long, Goal

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

• 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

  Good Life, Creativity, Goal

• But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make senseTo create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to whose who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Goal, Everyday, Wish

• To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Goal, Overcoming, Performances

• Goals transform a random walk into a chase.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Goal, Walks

  "Go With The Flow" by John Geirland, www.wired.com. September 01, 1996.

• Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Morning, Goal, Looks

• It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Self, Goal, Effort

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2013). “Flow: The Psychology of Happiness”, p.42, Random House

• The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Mean, Goal, Use

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