Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.

A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening ‘outside,’ just by changing the contents of consciousness. We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the force of their personalities. This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well. To develop this trait, one must find ways to order consciousness so as to be in control of feelings and thoughts. It is best not to expect shortcuts will do the trick.

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.

To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

Enjoyment, on the other hand, is not always pleasant, and it can be very stressful at times. A mountain climber, for example, may be close to freezing, utterly exhausted, and in danger of falling into a bottomless crevasse, yet he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Sipping a piña colada under a palm tree at the edge of the turquoise ocean is idyllic, but it just doesn't compare to the exhilaration he feels on the windswept ridge.

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.

As used in economics the term 'capital' would be defined as follows: Capital refers to resources withheld from immediate consumption in the expectation of greater future returns. However controversial a topic this has been, capital has been the main–if not the only–way of achieving progress, even in violently anticapitalist, socialist countries. A dam, a hospital, a university, a cathedral, or a national park cannot be built without using up resources that would be easier to consume immediately, and none of them would be built at all unless they were believed to provide some greater returns in the future.

Jane Fonda, who divided her life into three acts, decided after her sixtieth birthday that she was now facing the final act, and came to the following conclusion: "I thought to myself, well if that's the case and if what I'm scared of isn't death, but getting to the end with regrets, then I've got to figure out what would be the things that I would regret when I got to the last act if I hadn't done them or achieved them by then. And they were: having an intimate relationship and having made a difference."

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.

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.

Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.

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?''

If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination.

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.

...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.

The downside, of course, is that over time religions become encrusted with precepts and ideas that are the antithesis of soul, as each faith tries to protect its doctrines and institution instead of nurturing the evolution of consciousness. If one is not careful to distinguish the genuine insights of a religion from its irrelevant accretions, one can go through life following an inappropriate moral compass.

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.

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.

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.

...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?'

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.

The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.

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.

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.

The insights of the Gospels, of Martin Luther, of the framers of the Constitution, of Marx and Freud—just to mention a very few of those attempts that have been made in the West to increase happiness by enhancing freedom—will always be valid and useful, even though some of them have been perverted in their application. But they certainly do not exhaust either the problems or the solutions.

We may call intentions the force that keeps information in consciousness ordered... They act as magnetic fields, moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.

We need to know how to control consciousness—a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate.

Subjective experience is not just one of the dimensions of life, it *is* life itself.

Health, money, and other material advantages may or may not improve life. Unless a person has learned to control psychic energy, chances are such advantages will be useless.

Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy.

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.

Like the climber who reaches the top of the mountain and, after looking around in wonder at the magnificent view, rejoices at the sight of an even taller neighboring peak, these people never run out of exciting goals.

Indeed, it could be said that the most obvious achievement of these people is that they created their own lives. And how they achieved that is something worth knowing, because it can be applied to all our lives.

To change personality means to learn new patterns of attention.

After creative energy is awakened, it is necessary to protect it. We must erect barriers against distractions, dig channels so that energy can flow more freely, find ways to escape outside temptations and interruptions.

Therefore, the novelty that survives to change a domain is usually the work of someone who can operate at both ends of these polarities—and that is the kind of person we call ‘creative.’

One thing about creative work is that it’s never done. In different words, every person we interviewed said it was equally true that they had worked every minute of their careers, and that they had never worked a day in all their lives. They experienced even the most focused immersion in extremely difficult tasks as a lark, an exhilarating and playful adventure.

Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous: They all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.

Paradoxically, the self expands through acts of self-forgetfulness.

But if you don’t learn to be creative in your personal life, the chances of contributing to the culture drop even closer to zero. And what really matters, in the last account, is not whether your name has been attached to a recognized discovery, but whether you have lived a full and creative life.

One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.