-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life
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- “It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.”
- “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.”
- “If we don’t take charge of its direction, our life will be controlled by the outside to serve the purpose of some other agency.”
- “To make the best use of free time, one needs to devote as much ingenuity and attention to it as one would to one’s job. Active leisure that helps a person grow does not come easy. In the past leisure was justified because it gave people an opportunity to experiment and to develop skills. In fact, before science and the arts became professionalized, a great deal of scientific research, poetry, painting, and musical composition was carried out in a person’s free time. Gregory Mendel did his famous genetic experiments as a hobby; Benjamin Franklin was led by interest, not a job description, to grind lenses and experiment with lightening rods; Emily Dickinson wrote her superb poetry to create order in her own life. Nowadays only experts are supposed to be interested in such issues; amateurs are derided for venturing into fields reserved for the specialist. But amateurs—those who do something because they love to do it—add enjoyment and interest to their own life, and to everybody else’s.”
- “The moods that people diagnosed with chronic depression or eating disorders experience are indistinguishable from those of healthy people—as long as they are in company and doing something that requires concentration. But when they are alone with nothing to do, their minds begin to be occupied by depressing thoughts, and their consciousness becomes entropic. This is also true, to a less pronounced extent, of everyone else.”