Top 500 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Unfortunately, this natural connection between growth and enjoyment tends to disappear with time. Perhaps because “learning” becomes an external imposition when schooling starts, the excitement of mastering new skills gradually wears out. It becomes all too easy to settle down within the narrow boundaries of the self developed in adolescence.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

402. “How can it help a person learn to rid himself of anxieties and fears and thus become free of the controls of society, whose rewards he can now take or leave? As suggested before, the way is through control over consciousness, which in turn leads to control over the quality of experience.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

403. “In normal life, we keep interrupting what we do with doubts and questions. “Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing something else?” 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

404. “A self that is only differentiated – not integrated – may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person whose self is based exclusively on integration will be connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

405. “If a person is unwilling to adjust personal goals when starting a relationship, then a lot of what subsequently happens in that relationship will produce disorder in the person’s consciousness, because novel patterns of interaction will conflict with old patterns of expectation.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

406. “It is within each person’s power to decide whether its order will be restored from the outside, in ways over which we have no control, or whether the order will be the result of an internal pattern that grows organically from our skills and knowledge.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

407. “Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

408. “Yet, the elders said, at times the world became too predictable and the challenge began to go out of life. Without challenge, life had no meaning.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

409. “The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

410. “Without interest in the world, a desire to be actively related to it, a person becomes isolated into himself.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

411. “Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

412. “It is for this reason that pleasure is so evanescent, and that the self does not grow as a consequence of pleasurable experiences. Complexity requires investing psychic energy in goals that are new, that are relatively challenging.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

413. “What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

414. “The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else. These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

415. “Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy. Feeling a breeze on a hot day, seeing a cloud reflected on the glass facade of a high-rise, working on a business deal, watching a child play with a puppy, drinking a glass of water can all be felt as deeply satisfying experiences that enrich one’s life.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

416. “The perfect society would be able to strike a healthy balance between the spiritual and material worlds, but short of aiming for perfection, we can look toward Eastern religions for guidance in how to achieve control over consciousness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

417. “Pleasure is a feeling of contentment that one achieves whenever information in consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have been met. The.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

418. “Preoccupation with the self consumes psychic energy because in everyday life we often feel threatened.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

419. “Shaping one’s own reality, living in a world one has created, can be as enjoyable as writing a symphony. No.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

420. “Often we feel a sense of transcendence, as if the boundaries of the self had been expanded. The sailor feels at one with the boat, the wind, and the sea;.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

421. “Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral?”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

422. “It is probably true that humans, like the majority of mammalian species, are not monogamous by nature. It is impossible for partners not to grow bored unless they work to discover new challenges in each other’s company, and learn appropriate skills for enriching the relationship. Initially physical challenges alone are enough to sustain flow, but unless romance and genuine care also develop, the relationship will grow stale.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

423. “En nuestra vida podemos tener muy poca influencia sobre las fuerzas que interfieren en nuestro bienestar.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

424. “Much of what we label juvenile delinquency – car theft, vandalism, rowdy behavior in general – is motivated by the same need to have flow experiences not available in ordinary life. As long as a significant segment of society has few opportunities to encounter meaningful challenges, and few chances to develop the skills necessary to benefit from them, we must expect that violence and crime will attract those who cannot find their way to more complex autotelic experiences.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

425. “From our point of view, what is important to realize is that attentional disorders not only interfere with learning, but effectively rule out the possibility of experiencing flow as well. When a person cannot control psychic energy, neither learning nor true enjoyment is possible.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

426. “Progress is relatively fast in fields that apply knowledge to the material world, such as physics or genetics. But it is painfully slow when knowledge is to be applied to modify our own habits and desires.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

427. “Why are some people weakened by stress, while others gain strength from it? Basically the answer is simple: those who know how to transform a hopeless situation into a new flow activity that can be controlled will be able to enjoy themselves, and emerge stronger from the ordeal.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

428. “If I set as my goal to remain alive while sitting on the living-room sofa, I also could spend days knowing that I was achieving it, just as the rock climber does. But this realization would not make me particularly happy, whereas the climber’s knowledge brings exhilaration to his dangerous ascent.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

429. “A major catastrophe that frustrates a central goal of life will either destroy the self, forcing a person to use all his psychic energy to erect a barrier around remaining goals, defending them against further onslaughts of fate; or it will provide a new, more clear, and more urgent goal: to overcome the challenges created by the defeat.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

430. “To transform the biological necessity of feeding into a flow experience, one must begin by paying attention to what one eats. It is astonishing – as well as discouraging – when guests swallow lovingly prepared food without any sign of having noticed its virtues. What.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

431. “What counts is to set a goal, to concentrate one’s psychic energy, to pay attention to the feedback, and to make certain that the challenge is appropriate to one’s skill. Sooner or later the interaction will begin to hum, and the flow experience follows.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

432. “If being alone is seen as a chance to accomplish goals that cannot be reached in the company of others, then instead of feeling lonely, a person will enjoy solitude and might be able to learn new skills in the process. On the other hand, if solitude is seen as a condition to be avoided at all costs instead of as a challenge, the person will panic and resort to distractions that cannot lead to higher levels of complexity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

433. “The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediate.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

434. “Each biblical parable, for instance, tries to encode the hard-won experience of many individuals over unknown eons of time.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

435. “The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

436. “The ballet dancer may fall, break her leg, and never make the perfect turn, and the chess player may be defeated and never become a champion. But at least in principle, in the world of flow perfection is attainable.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

437. “As Francis Bacon remarked, quoting from a speech by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, “The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

438. “Two terms describing states of social pathology apply also to conditions that make flow difficult to experience: anomie and alienation. Anomie –.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

439. “Again, the importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough. If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain. But if the decision is to take that same route because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable. When.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

440. “Because our present social arrangements, however, do not provide adequate challenges for the skills teenagers have, they must discover opportunities for action outside those sanctioned by adults.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

441. “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

442. “In other words, with nothing to do, the mind is unable to prevent negative thoughts from elbowing their way to center stage.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

443. “Our perceptions about our lives are the outcome of many forces that shape experience, each having an impact on whether we feel good or bad.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

444. “Those who try to make life better for everyone without having learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things worse all around.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

445. “Friendships allow us to express parts of our beings that we seldom have the opportunity to act out otherwise.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

446. “A more substantive potential use of words to enhance our lives is the lost art of conversation.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

447. “The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call ontological anxiety, or existential dread. Basically, it is a fear of being, a feeling that there is no meaning to life and that existence is not worth going on with.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

448. “For the majority of people on this earth, life goals are simple: to survive, to leave children who will in turn survive, and, if possible, to do so with a certain amount of comfort and dignity.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

449. “This fact brings us to the second condition that affects whether an optimal experience will occur or not: an individual’s ability to restructure consciousness so as to make flow possible.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

450. “The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi