Quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Yet such blows do not necessarily diminish happiness. It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

Socializing of this kind mimics friendship relations, but it provides few of the benefits of the real thing. Everyone takes pleasure in occasionally passing the time of day chatting, but many people become extremely dependent on a daily "fix" of superficial contacts. This is especially true for individuals who cannot tolerate solitude, and who have little emotional support at home.

si Cristo hubiese regresado para predicar su mensaje de liberación en la Edad Media, habría sido crucificado de nuevo por los dirigentes de la misma iglesia cuyo poder mundano se había levantado en su nombre.

There are no strict formulas, however, for how much time people actually have to work. It seems, for instance, that the early hunter-gatherers, like their present-day descendants living in the inhospitable deserts of Africa and Australia, spent only three to five hours each day on what we would call working—providing for food, shelter, clothing, and tools. They spent the rest of the day in conversation, resting, or dancing.

the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.

you don't conquer anything except things in yourself…. The act of writing justifies poetry.

a new faith is to capture our imagination, it must be one that will account rationally for the things we know, the things we feel, the things we hope for, and the ones we dread. It must be a system of beliefs that will marshal our psychic energy toward meaningful goals, a system that provides rules for a way of life that can provide flow.

El universo no es hostil, pero tampoco es amigable– en palabras de J.H. Holmes–; sencillamente es indiferente.»

when attention is not focused on a goal, the mind typically begins to be filled with disjointed and depressing thoughts.

When a person's psychic energy coalesces into a life theme, consciousness achieves harmony.

aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man's Search for Meaning: "Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

We tried to answer these questions with the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), the procedure I developed at the University of Chicago to study the quality of experience.

One of the most basic delusions of our time is that home life takes care of itself naturally, and that the best strategy for dealing with it is to relax and let it take its course.

The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment.

of the Zen masters might have been excellent in their own time—and might still be the best, if

Ask yourself whether you are happy," said J. S. Mill, "and you cease to be so." It

But a person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. His thinking will be directed by the opinions of his neighbors, by the editorials in the papers, and by the appeals of television. He will be at the mercy of "experts.

Whenever information disrupts consciousness by threatening its goals we have a condition of inner disorder, or psychic entropy, a disorganization of the self that impairs its effectiveness. Prolonged experiences of this kind can weaken the self to the point that it is no longer able to invest attention and pursue its goals.

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

Nosotros siempre estamos luchando por vivir –solía decir Ralph Waldo Emerson–, pero nunca vivimos.» O como la pobre Frances aprendió en el cuento para niños: siempre habrá pan y jamón mañana, pero nunca habrá pan y jamón hoy.

Without challenge, life had no meaning.

They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like.

La fe más prometedora para el futuro podría basarse en la comprensión de que el universo entero es un sistema relacionado por leyes comunes y que no tiene sentido imponer nuestros sueños y deseos sobre la naturaleza sin tenerla en cuenta.