Quotes About Fulfillment

But consuming culture is never as rewarding as producing it.

enjoyment, as we have seen, does not depend on what you do, but rather on how you do it.

The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present.

It is true that life has no meaning, if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience, a goal that is valid for every individual. But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning.

Yet even if their advice were to work, what would be the result afterward in the unlikely event that one did turn into a slim, well-loved, powerful millionaire? Usually what happens is that the person finds himself back at square one, with a new list of wishes, just as dissatisfied as before. What would really satisfy people is not getting slim or rich, but feeling good about their lives. In the quest for happiness, partial solutions don't work.

The future," wrote C. K. Brightbill, "will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.

Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset, but later it is the effort that justifies the goal.

By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual.

The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."--(psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls "flow")

While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal - health, beauty, money or power - is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.

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.

A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life.

The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself.

It's exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You make your body go and everything hurts; then you look back in awe at the self, at what you've done, it just blows your mind. It leads to ecstasy, to self-fulfillment. If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

True, most married men are convinced that their lives are dedicated to the family, and from a material standpoint this might be true. But it takes more than food in the fridge and two cars in the garage to keep a family going.

Flow" is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake. In reviewing some of the activities that consistently produce flow—such as sports, games, art, and hobbies—it becomes easier to understand what makes people happy.

but make the self grow? To fill free time with activities that require concentration, that increase skills, that lead to a development of the self, is not the same as killing time by watching

sexuality, like any other aspect of life, can be made enjoyable if we are willing to take control of it, and cultivate it in the direction of greater complexity.

Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue—yet these could have been the best moments of his life.

Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.

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. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed, and still kept within the bounds of reason. If a person learns to control his instinctual desires, not because he has to, but because he wants to, he can enjoy himself without becoming addicted. A

At certain times in history cultures have taken it for granted that a person wasn't fully human unless he or she learned to master thoughts and feelings.