Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes Page 3

“Among the many intellectual pursuits available, reading is currently perhaps the most often mentioned flow activity around the world.”

“An individual can experience only so much. Therefore, the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and the quality of life.”

“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.”

“Because optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in consciousness moment by moment, each person has to achieve it on the basis of his own individual efforts and creativity.”

“Before investing great amounts of energy in a goal, it pays to raise the fundamental questions: Is this something I really want to do? Is it something I enjoy doing? Am I likely to enjoy it in the foreseeable future?

Is the price that I — and others — will have to pay worth it? Will I be able to live with myself if I accomplish it?”

“By nature, however, we are born ignorant. Therefore should we not try to learn?

Some people produce more than the usual amount of androgens and therefore become excessively aggressive. Does that mean they should freely express violence?

We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.”

“Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating.”

“Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.”

“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.

For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage.

For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”

“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.”

“Control over consciousness is not simply a cognitive skill. At least as much as intelligence, it requires the commitment of emotions and will.

It is not enough to know how to do it; one must do it, consistently, in the same way as athletes or musicians who must keep practicing what they know in theory.”

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

“Criminals often say things such as, “If you showed me something I can do that’s as much fun as breaking into a house at night, and lifting the jewelry without waking anyone up, I would do it.”

Much of what we label juvenile delinquency — car theft, vandalism, rowdy behavior in general — is motivated by the same need to have flow experiences not available in ordinary life.

As long as a significant segment of society has few opportunities to encounter meaningful challenges, and few chances to develop the skills necessary to benefit from them, we must expect that violence and crime will attract those who cannot find their way to more complex autotelic experiences.”

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

“Everything the body can do is potentially enjoyable. Yet many people ignore this capacity, and use their physical equipment as little as possible, leaving its ability to provide flow unexploited.”

“Everything we experience—joy or pain, interest or boredom—is represented in the mind as information. If we are able to control this information, we can decide what our lives will be like.”

“Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it.”

“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.”

“For the first few hundred years of American history, food preparation was generally approached in a no-nonsense manner. Even as late as twenty-five years ago, the general attitude was that 'feeding your face' was all right, but to make too much fuss about it was somehow decadent.

In the past two decades, of course, the trend has reversed itself so sharply that earlier misgivings about gastronomic excesses seem almost to have been justified. Now we have 'foodies' and wine freaks who take the pleasures of the palate as seriously as if they were rites in a brand-new religion.”

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

“If a person sets out to achieve a difficult enough goal, from which all other goals logically follow, and if he or she invests all energy in developing skills to reach that goal, then actions and feelings will be in harmony, and the separate parts of life will fit together — and each activity will 'make sense' in the present, as well as in view of the past and of the future.

In such a way, it is possible to give meaning to one’s entire life. But isn’t it incredibly naive to expect life to have a coherent overall meaning? After all, at least since Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary.

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.

Much of what we call culture and civilization consists in efforts people have made, generally against overwhelming odds, to create a sense of purpose for themselves and their descendants. It is one thing to recognize that life is, by itself, meaningless. It is another thing entirely to accept this with resignation.

The first fact does not entail the second any more than the fact that we lack wings prevents us from flying. From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is — provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy.

The challenge might involve the desire to have the best beer-bottle collection in the neighborhood, the resolution to find a cure for cancer, or simply the biological imperative to have children who will survive and prosper. As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life.

In the past few years I have come to be quite well acquainted with several Muslim professionals — electronics engineers, pilots, businessmen, and teachers, mostly from Saudi Arabia and from the other Gulf states. In talking to them, I was struck with how relaxed most of them seemed to be even under strong pressure.

“There is nothing to it,” those I asked about it told me, in different words, but with the same message: “We don’t get upset because we believe that our life is in God’s hands, and whatever He decides will be fine with us.”

Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of a traditional faith.”

“If goals are well chosen, and if we have the courage to abide by them despite opposition, we shall be so focused on the actions and events around us that we won’t have the time to be unhappy.”

“If the functions of the body are left to atrophy, the quality of life becomes merely adequate, and for some even dismal. But if one takes control of what the body can do, and learns to impose order on physical sensations, entropy yields to a sense of enjoyable harmony in consciousness.”

“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.”

“In flow a person is challenged to do her best, and must constantly improve her skills. At the time, she doesn’t have the opportunity to reflect on what this means in terms of the self — if she did allow herself to become self-conscious, the experience could not have been very deep.

But afterward, when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume, the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements.”

“In our studies, we found that every flow activity, whether it involved competition, chance, or any other dimension of experience, had this in common:

It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness.

In short, it transformed the self by making it more complex.”

“In reality, to achieve such an ordered mental condition is not as easy as it sounds. Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos.”

“Instead of accepting the unity of purpose provided by genetic instructions or by the rules of society, the challenge for us is to create harmony based on reason and choice.”

“It is difficult to ignore challenges once one is aware that they exist.”

“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.”