Quotes About Enjoyment

The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.

The other danger in becoming involved with culinary delights—and here again the parallels with sex are obvious—is that they can become addictive. It

We are always getting to live," as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, "but never living." Or as poor Frances learned in the children's story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never bread and jam today.

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.

If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention.

Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way.

we develop a set of our own. The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders.

optimal experience based on the concept of flow—the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing

the love of fate corresponds to a willingness to accept ownership of one's actions, whether these are spontaneous or imposed from the outside. It is this acceptance that leads to personal growth, and provides the feeling of serene enjoyment which removes the burden of entropy from everyday life.

Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

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

Without enjoyment life can be endured, and it can even be pleasant. But it can be so only precariously, depending on luck and the cooperation of the external environment. To gain personal control over the quality of experience, however, one needs to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.

if workers really enjoyed their jobs they would not only benefit personally, but sooner or later they would almost certainly produce more efficiently and reach all the other goals that now take precedence.

People who learn to enjoy their work, who do not waste their free time, end up feeling that their lives as a whole have become much more worthwhile. "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.

These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives (chapter 3).

Setting goals. Becoming immersed in the activity. Paying attention to what is happening. Learning to enjoy the immediate experience.

Those who always worry about what can go wrong might be well prepared against dangers but will never know how enjoyable life can be.

Flow – the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

Compared to people living only a few generations ago, we have enormously greater opportunities to have a good time, yet there is no indication that we actually enjoy life more than our ancestors did. Opportunities alone, however, are not enough. We also need the skills to make use of them.

As Democritus said so simply many centuries ago: "Water can be both good and bad, useful and dangerous. To the danger, however, a remedy has been found: learning to swim." To swim in this case involves learning to distinguish the useful and the harmful forms of flow, and then making the most of the former while placing limits on the latter. The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.

Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored

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

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.

the secret to a happy life is to learn to get flow from as many of the things we have to do as possible.