Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes

When you're doing what you love, it's not exhausting at all, actually. It's completely empowering and exhilarating.

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.

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.

I'm so in control of my life, you shouldn't dislike anything I do-because I'm not only in the best place I've ever been, but it keeps getting better and better.

You put something you like on really loud, and you feel godlike.

In coaching, you don't ever really have that joyful fun, but there's no question that it's enjoyable.

When I was coming up, I just wanted to play baseball and I'm doing what I love to do most. How can I feel pressure doing what I love to do?

I don't just want to be successful I want to have fun.

Everybody is going to be excited to play in a Super Bowl. When you still enjoy the preparation and the work part of it, I think you ought to be still doing that. I think as soon as I stop enjoying it, if I can't produce, if I can't help a team, that's when I will stop playing.

We want everybody to be bossed up.

I mean, for me, the reason I ride my bike and race is because I love doing it, not because I'm seeking recognition for it.

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.

Life is a search after power.

Destiny is for losers. It's just a lame excuse for letting things happen to you instead of making them happen.

And when you feel the heat, the world is at your feet.

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

As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I'm doing, I guess I'll keep doing it.

No,' he said, 'you only have to live long enough to inspire others to do great things.

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.

Those enjoying winning streaks thus win twofold. They win not only the game but also the right to greater self-determination. They become masters of their own fate. That feeling of efficacy, of being in charge of circumstances, is the essence of confidence. Winning once or twice is encouraging, but winning continuously is empowering.

We almost have to force or drive ourselves to work hard if we are to reach our potential. If we don't enjoy what we do, we won't be able to push as hard as we need to push for as long as we need to push to achieve our best. However, if we enjoy what we do and if we're enthusiastic about it, we'll do it better and come closer to becoming the best we can be.

Your dream is a good one. [. . .] The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness.

I think about the things I control and do them well.

The most precious contribution we can make here on Earth is to create the lives we want to be living, communicating in all ways, to everyone around us, that success is really possible.