Quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If we are learning to be more assertive, we might inadvertently alienate our friends.

Leisure that uses up external resources, however, often requires less attention, and as a consequence it generally provides less memorable rewards.

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

Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. 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. Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it.

The optimists claim that through the course of evolution the nervous system has become adept at "chunking" bits of information so that processing capacity is constantly expanded. Simple functions like adding a column of numbers or driving a car grow to be automated, leaving the mind free to deal with more data. We

A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being.

Almost any kind of feedback can be enjoyable, provided it is logically related to a goal in which one has invested psychic energy. If

One of the major functions of every culture has been to shield its members from chaos, to reassure them of their importance and ultimate success.

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.

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.

Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.

Inner conflict is the result of competing claims on attention.

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

But increasingly the emphasis has been to value behavior over subjective states; what is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience. Consequently it has become embarrassing to be called a dilettante, even though to be a dilettante is to achieve what counts most—the enjoyment one's actions provide. It

People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives

Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of our century, described how he achieved personal happiness: "Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection." There could be no better short description of how to build for oneself an autotelic personality.

One does not get to be a man by getting married, by having sex: to be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent.

In the roughly one-third of the day that is free of obligations, in their precious "leisure" time, most people in fact seem to use their minds as little as possible. The largest part of free time—almost half of it for American adults—is spent in front of the television set. The

And, finally, the last step will be to describe how people manage to join all experience into a meaningful pattern (chapter 10). When that is accomplished, and a person feels in control of life and feels that it makes sense, there is nothing left to desire.

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.

They are situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person's goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against. We have called this state the flow experience, [...] and those who attain it develop a stronger, more confident self, because more of their psychic energy has been invested successfully in goals they themselves had chosen to pursue.

Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one's skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun. But

one's neighbors, and think about God—if these are the things one has decided are worth pursuing. But it is difficult to accomplish any of them unless one has earlier acquired the habit of using solitude

One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment. Compared