Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.
What does this contradictory pattern mean? There are several possible explanations, but one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. 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. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Socializing is more positive than being alone, that's why meetings are so popular. People don't like being alone. That would be, however, an important skill to learn ...”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provieds requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“They make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes ... 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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“It might be true that it is "quality time" that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The last great attempt to free consciousness from the domination of impulses and social controls was psychoanalysis; as Freud pointed out, the two tyrants that fought for control over the mind were the id and the superago, the first a servant of a genes, the second a lackey of society - both representing the "Other".”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“To pursue mental operations to any depth, a person has to learn to concentrate attention. Without focus, consciousness is in a state of chaos.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Wealth, status, and power have become in our culture all too powerful symbols of happiness ... And we assume that if only we could acquire some of those same symbols, we would be nuch happier.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“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.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Though the evidence suggests that most people are caught up on this frustrating treadmill of rising expectations, many individuals have found ways to escape it. These are people who, regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy. 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. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“If everything was determined
by the common human condition, by social and cultural categories, and by chance, it would be useless to reflect on ways to make one's life excellent. Fortunately there is enough room for personal initiative and choice to make a real difference. And those who believe this are the ones with the best chance to break free from the grip of fate.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the Veda are the best repositories of the ideas that mattered most to our ancestors, and to ignore them is an act of childish conceit. But it is equally naive to believe that whatever was written down in the past contains an absolute truth that lasts forever.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one's actions into a unified flow experience.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Unfortunately, while free time might be a necessary condition for happiness, by itself it is not sufficient to guarantee it. Learning how to use it beneficially turns out to be more difficult than expected. Nor does it seem that more of a good thing is necessarily better; as is true of so many other things, what enriches life in small quantities might impoverish it in larger doses.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“The old woman who farms in the Alps, the welder in South Chicago, and the mythical cook from ancient China have this in common: their work is hard and unglamorous, and most people would find it boring, repetitive, and meaningless. Yet these individuals transformed the jobs they had to do into complex activities. They did this by recognizing opportunities for action where others did not, by developing skills, by focusing on the activity at hand, and allowing themselves to be lost in the interaction so that their selves could emerge stronger afterward.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Luckily, the world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way. Otherwise each of us could be a poet or musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“It is impossible for partners not to grow bored unless they work to discover new challenges in each other's company, and learn appropriate skills for enriching the relationship. Initially”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Entropy is the normal state of consciousness-a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable. To avoid this condition, people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings. This explains why such a huge proportion of time is invested in watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Thus we might think of consciousness as intentionally ordered information. This”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“If a leader demonstrates that his purpose is noble, that the work will enable people to connect with something large - more permanent than their material existence - people will give the best of themselves to the enterprise”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make senseTo create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to whose who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We have learned how to develop five-minute and even one-minute managers. But we would do better to ask ourselves what it takes to be an executive who helps build a better future.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“We can transform reality to the extent that we influence what happens in consciousness and thus free ourselves from the threats and blandishments of the outside world.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“I have a naive trust in the universe - that at some level it all makes sense, and we can get glimpses of that sense if we try.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Problems are solved only when we devote a great deal of attention to them and in a creative way ... to have a good life, it is not enough to remove what is wrong with it. We also need a positive goal, otherwise why keep going? Creativity is one answer to that question - It provides one of the most exciting models for living.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“When each of these three elements of vision-concern for excellence, for people and for the wider environment-are present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits into a creative, humane experiment for improving life.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“If we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call "soul" can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Control over consciousness cannot be institutionaliz ed. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Shift often from openness to closure.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi