Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes - Page 6

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• A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Boredom, Anxiety, Typical

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• We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Trying, Facts, Deny

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

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• When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Degradation, Corruption, Spirals

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• Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Skills, Effort, Demand

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

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• A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Happiness, Business, Successful

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.25, Penguin

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• Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Magic, Needs, Our Actions

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

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• Why is it that, despite having achieved previously undreamed-of miracles of progress, we seem more helpless in facing life than our less privileged ancestors were? The answer seems clear: while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Miracle, Progress, Answers

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• 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

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• Control over consciousness cannot be institutionaliz ed. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Way, Consciousness, Social

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

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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

  Change, Business, Cutting

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.113, Penguin

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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.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Business, Dust, World

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.30, Penguin

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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.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Creative, Gender, Individual

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

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• Competition is an easy way to get into flow.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Competition, Way, Flow

  "Go with the flow". Interview with John Geirland, www.wired.com. September 1, 1996.

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• Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Happiness, Flow, Entertainment

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1997). “Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life”, Basic Books

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• To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Teaching, Learning, Play

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

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• Jane Fonda, who divided her life into three acts, decided after her sixtieth birthday that she was now facing the final act, and came to the following conclusion: "I thought to myself, well if that's the case and if what I'm scared of isn't death, but getting to the end with regrets, then I've got to figure out what would be the things that I would regret when I got to the last act if I hadn't done them or achieved them by then. And they were: having an intimate relationship and having made a difference."

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Regret, Business, Intimate Relationships

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.130, Penguin

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• I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. [...] If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual", each of them is a "multitude".

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Years, Ideas, People

  "The Creative Personality". www.psychologytoday.com. July 1, 1996.

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• There are managers so preoccupied with their e-mail messages that they never look up from their screens to see what's happening in the nondigital world

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Business, Technology, Looks

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• 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

  Creativity, Ideas, Novelty

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and”, p.28, Harper Collins

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• It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Self, Might, Becoming

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

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• We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing timesthe best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Memories, Fate, Long

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• Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Business, Learning, Self

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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.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Positivity, Boredom, Anxiety

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

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• If an enterprise does not aspire to be the best of its kind, it will attract second-rate employees, and it will be soon forgotten.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Doe, Kind, Forgotten

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.17, Penguin

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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.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Inspirational, Business, People

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.151, Penguin

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