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Flow
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Flow (1989) (edit title/settings)

The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author) (edit contributors)

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The bestselling introduction to "flow"--a groundbreaking psychological theory that shows readers how to improve the quality of life. "The way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism, but in mindful change ."--New York Times Book Review

Summary edit see section history

flow is about figuring your goals and working to get them ; intent and resolve. The trick is making sure the goals match your skills , values and aspirations. Flow comes from the day to day process of achieving your goals. it has been said before; happiness is a journey not a destination,... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

flow is about figuring your goals and working to get them ; intent and resolve. The trick is making sure the goals match your skills , values and aspirations. Flow comes from the day to day process of achieving your goals. it has been said before; happiness is a journey not a destination, just make sure your choose the destination well, even if you dont get tere, the process is The Flow that beings happiness as younare fully engaged in your journey.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “"What I 'discovered' was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."”
    The Author
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
    Highlighted by 639 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 615 Kindle customers
  • The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present. When that happens, they forfeit their chance of contentment.
    Highlighted by 583 Kindle customers
  • The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.
    Highlighted by 524 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 519 Kindle customers
  • Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.
    Highlighted by 495 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 482 Kindle customers
  • What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
    Highlighted by 467 Kindle customers
  • I developed a theory of 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 it.
    Highlighted by 339 Kindle customers
  • “Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them,” said Epictetus a long time ago. And the great emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “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.”
    Highlighted by 320 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

TWENTY-THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Harper and Row
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1989
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 303

Classification edit see section history

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