110+ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes On Education, Communication And Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was a Hungarian psychologist and professor of psychology who studied happiness and creativity. He is most famously known for introducing the concept of 'flow', a state of mental absorption in an activity. He is also the author of the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on life, love, education.

Top 10 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

1. For better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real.
2. Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
3. A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.
4. If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.
5. And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field.
6. Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.
7. Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.
8. Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.
9. Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
10. One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Short Quotes

• Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.
• Shift often from openness to closure.
• If you're alone with nothing to do, the quality of your experience really plummets.
• Develop what you lack.
• Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there
• Take charge of your schedule. Make time for reflection and relaxation.
• People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff.
• The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.
• Find a way to express what moves you.
• To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes About Life

There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives...most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity...when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow is the process of achieving happiness through control over one's inner life. The optimal state of inner experience is order in consciousness. This happens when we focus our attention (psychic energy) on realistic goals and when our skills match the challenges we face. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

However, a good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth that results in the development of increasing emotional, cognitive, and social complexity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Optimal experience is that rare occasion when we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

Whatever the dictates of fashion, it seems that those who take the trouble to gain mastery over what happens in consciousness do lead a happier life. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes About Flow

A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the flashes of intense living against this dull background. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Competition is an easy way to get into flow. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If we know what that set point is, we can predict fairly accurately when you will be in flow, and it will be when your challenges are higher than average and skills are higher than average. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The happiest people spend much time in a state 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 it. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes About Creativity

To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time... Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Studying creativity is not an elite distraction, but provides one of the most exciting models for living. — 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

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

For better or worse, our future is now closely tied to human creativity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes About Happiness

Half a century ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To be successful you have to enjoy doing your best while at the same time contributing to something beyond yourself. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. — 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

If we are so rich, why aren't we happy? — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated , and defended privately by each person. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Since the purpose of business is to satisfy existing desires, or stimulate new ones, if everyone were genuinely happy, there would be no need for business any longer. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening 'outside,' just by changing the contents of consciousness. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Famous Quotes And Sayings

If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them. — 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

A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity...one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Act as if the future of the universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions make any difference. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Some individuals have developed such strong internal standards that they no longer need the opinion of others to judge whether they have performed a task well or not. The ability to give objective feedback to oneself is in fact the mark of the expert. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one's self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone’s reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

For a person to become deeply involved in any activity it is essential that he knows precisely what tasks he must accomplish, moment by moment. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

People generally report higher levels of stress, depression, and tension after watching TV. It seems that TV's main virtue is that it occupies the mind undemandingly. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Sir John Templeton: "My ethical principle in the first place was: 'Where could I use my talents that God gave me to help the most people?'" — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to it's limited in voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The more a person feels skilled, the more her moods will improve; while the more challenges that are present, the more her attention will become focused and concentrated. — 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

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

The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

...perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

...in the words of Max DePree: "Management has a lot to do with answers. But leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?'" — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

There will be no good business unless the majority comes to agree that we should demand more from business than large quarterly returns. — 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

If I had to express in one word what makes their [creative individuals'] 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

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

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration. — 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

Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works. — 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

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

I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves. — 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

Why is it that, despite having achieved previously undreamed-of miracles of progress, we seem more helpless in facing life than our less privileged ancestors were? The answer seems clear: while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience. — 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

If an enterprise does not aspire to be the best of its kind, it will attract second-rate employees, and it will be soon forgotten. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. — 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

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

Good design is a visual statement that maximizes the life goals of the people in a given culture (or, more realistically, the goals of a certain subset of people in the culture) that draws on a shared symbolic expression for the ordering of such goals. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

..Such practices and beliefs, which interfere with happiness, are neither inevitable nor necessary; they evolved by chance, as a result of random responses to accidental conditions. But once they become part of the norms and habits of a culture, people assume that this is how things must be; they come to believe they have no other options. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills is never really free. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of psychic energy becomes a primary concern. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act. — 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...It seems that every time a pressing danger is avoided a new and more sophisticated threat appears on the horizon...Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like. Is what you do for a living making you ill? Does it keep you from becoming a more fully realized person? Do you feel ashamed of what you have to do at work? All too often, the answer to such questions is yes. Yet it does not have to be like that. Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we collectively take. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We can either help to make this world a more incredible place than it has ever been, or we can hasten its return to inorganic dust. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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

Perform with elan, brilliance and dash - at concert pitch. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for - rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires.A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable..The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

But shortcuts are dangerous; we cannot delude ourselves that our knowledge is further along than it actually is. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

An ideal organization is one in which each worker's potentialities find room for expression. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is amazing how little effort most people make to improve control of their attention. If reading a book seems too difficult, instead of sharpening concentration we tend to set it aside and instead turn on the television, which not only requires minimal attention, but in fact tends to diffuse what little it commands with choppy editing, commercial interruptions, and generally inane content. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Life Lessons by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

1. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi taught us that life is best lived when we are in a state of flow, or when we are fully engaged in an activity and experiencing joy and satisfaction.
2. He also taught us that we can achieve this state of flow by setting goals, breaking them down into achievable steps, and focusing on the process rather than the outcome.
3. Finally, Csikszentmihalyi taught us that life is ultimately about discovering our own unique purpose and striving to reach our full potential.