Top 280 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes (2023 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Develop what you lack.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

53. “To be successful you have to enjoy doing your best while at the same time contributing to something beyond yourself.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

54. “Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

55. “But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

56. “If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

57. “One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

58. “Since the purpose of business is to satisfy existing desires, or stimulate new ones, if everyone were genuinely happy, there would be no need for business any longer.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

59. “People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

60. “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

61. “Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Figure out the implications of the problem. Implement the solution.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

62. “Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

63. “Discipline is not always internalized and actually can breed resentment among children.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “The 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

68. “Shift often from openness to closure.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

69. “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

70. “Studying creativity is not an elite distraction, but provides one of the most exciting models for living.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

71. “As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

72. “When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

73. “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

74. “A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

75. “I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

76. “Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

77. “What is the meaning of life?” turns out to be astonishingly simple. The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life. The.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

78. “An ideal organization is one in which each worker’s potentialities find room for expression.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

79. “Try to be surprised by something every day.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

80. “Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

81. “Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times – although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The 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

82. “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

83. “Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

84. “One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

85. “Produce as many ideas as possible. Try to produce unlikely ideas.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

86. “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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

87. “To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

88. “It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

89. “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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

90. “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

91. “People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

92. “The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

93. “For better or worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

94. “The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone’s reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

95. “But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

96. “The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

97. “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

98. “Consuming culture is never as rewarding as producing it.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

99. “We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

100. “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