Quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But if one assumes that people have a choice in how they respond to external events, in what meaning they attribute to suffering, then one can interpret the constructive response as normal and the neurotic one as a failure to rise to the challenge, as a breakdown in the ability to flow.

Enjoyment is characterized by this forward movement: by a sense of novelty, of accomplishment

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

This cultural hubris, or overweening presumption about what we are entitled to from a universe that is basically insensitive to human needs, generally leads to trouble. The unwarranted sense of security sooner or later results in a rude awakening. When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of the first signs of adversity. As they realize that what they had believed in is not entirely

To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.

true, they abandon faith in everything else they have learned. Deprived of the customary supports that cultural values had given them, they flounder in a morass of anxiety and apathy.

competition as their main feature, such as most sports and athletic events; alea is the class that includes all games of chance, from dice to bingo; ilinx, or vertigo, is the name he gives to activities that alter consciousness by scrambling ordinary perception, such as riding a merry-go-round or skydiving; and mimicry is the group of activities in which alternative realities are created, such as dance, theater, and the arts in general.

without concentration, a complex activity breaks down into chaos.

Athletes know well that to improve performance beyond a certain point they must learn to discipline their minds.

Even the approach of death itself can serve to create harmony in consciousness, rather than despair.

It is a circuitous path that begins with achieving control over the contents of our consciousness.

Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them," said Epictetus a long time ago. And the great emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.

Any activity contains a bundle of opportunities for action, or "challenges," that require appropriate skills to realize. For those who don't have the right skills, the activity is not challenging; it is simply meaningless.

When the job presents clear goals, unambiguous feedback, a sense of control, challenges that match the worker's skills, and few distractions, the feelings it provides are not that different from what one experiences in a sport or an artistic performance.

When idleness is forced on someone without a handsome income, it just produces a severe drop in self-esteem, and general listlessness. As John Hay-worth, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, has shown, young men out of work, even when paid relatively generous unemployment compensation, have a very hard time finding satisfaction in their lives.

Si realmente queremos vivir, sería mejor que empezáramos de una vez a intentarlo; Si no queremos, no importa, pero sería mejor que empezáramos a morir.

So the first step in improving the quality of life consists in engineering daily activities so that one gets the most rewarding experiences from them.

In the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery--or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the contents of life--that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.

What this life will amount to is in part determined by the chemical processes in our body, by the biological interaction among organs, by the tiny electrical currents jumping between the synapses of the brain, and by the organization of information that the culture imposes on our mind. But the actual quality of life—what we do, and how we feel about it—will be determined by our thoughts and emotions; by the interpretations we give to chemical, biological, and social processes.

Breaking out of the fatalistic acceptance of genetic or historical programming requires, at the very least, a belief in freedom and self-determination.

Chance and necessity are sole rulers of beings who are incapable of reflection.

By learning to concentrate, a person acquires control over psychic energy, the basic fuel upon which all thinking depends.

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures.

In order to survive, cultures must eliminate most of the new ideas their members produce. Cultures are conservative, and for good reason. No culture could assimilate all the novelty people produce without dissolving into chaos.