These 133 quotes are taken from a live talk of Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, the theorist and creator of the increasingly recognized mental state known as Flow. Here he discusses the details and values of this neurological state. Essentially, his theory is reduced to an extremely intuitive and reasonable solution to personal dissatisfaction. If you do your best and apply yourself wholly to everything you do from work, to leisure, to the utterly ordinary behaviors of life (brushing teeth, cleaning, sitting, thinking, sex, etc) you will be fulfilled because the challenge of applying ourselves to the betterment of anything is our deepest joy. Why is it our deepest joy? Ironically, it is because we become absorbed so intensely into the game of performing this task, any task, as well as we can, beautifying it, that we are consumed by it. Poetically, by dissolving ourselves and giving birth to something in its highest form we are fulfilled. The discovery is beyond simple self-help advice or philosophical entertainment because its roots are in the physical wiring of the brain. Powerful thesis!

Before you start perusing these 133 quotes here is a breakdown of his more technical points. There are seven conditions that are necessary, in varying degrees, to experience Flow, regardless of the nature of the activity.

The 7 Conditions of Flow

1. Goals: Clear moment-to-moment goals are necessary to enter flow during an activity.

2. Feedback: Receiving feedback during the activity to learn how to perform better.

3. Challenge: An activity must be challenging enough but not too challenging for flow to occur.

4. Focus: If an activity has clear goals, provides feedback, and is appropriately challenging the ability to focus will emerge.

5. Absorption: When focus is sustained due to the first three conditions, the mind is absorbed into the activity.

6. Control: During this state of engaged absorption there is a profound sense of control over one’s life.

7. Loss of ego: As one commits “psychic-energy” to the achievement of this specific goal, the mind cannot afford to think of itself. Ego, thereby, disappears.

8. Time Distortion: As ego dissipates, time breaks down.

The 5 C’s of Autotelic Personalities

Autotelic activities are activities that are themselves rewarding and done for the sake of doing them, with very little concern for consequence. Autotelic personalities are people that prioritize developing a relationship with such activities to the point where, life itself, becomes such an activity. An autotelic life seems to be the hope of Mihaly.

1. Clarity: Similiar to the value of goals, knowing what must be done, when it should be done, and how it should be done is necessary for an autotelic experience.

2. Centering: The ability to stay focused on the clear goals of the activity, again similar to the conditions of flow.

3. Choice: This refers to the foundational feeling that the activity, goal, and, eventually, life itself is a derivative of personal choice. No one can be forced into an autotelic experience. They must choose.

4. Commitment: The ability to execute the skill, goal, or action consistently until the over-arching goal is done.

5. Challenge: The willingness to keep raising the bar and escaping plateau is both necessary to stay autotelic but also demonstrative of someone who is already autotelic.

Listeing to this 10 hour talk and having these notions in my mind revealed where I was and how I wasn’t nurturing a self-rewarding routine. That is the value of washing the mind with fruit bearing ideas. Enjoy the quotes and select a few to consider. Can you read them in an autotelic way? Can you enter flow by the time you get to the end?

1 ”Generally, the expectation that material well-being is the source of happiness is very wide-spread, but in every historical period those who thought about the issue realized that material well-being by itself does not make anybody happy.”

2 “Money or power or even health or not the source of happiness.”

3 “Unless we learn how to moderate these insatiable demands that we have built into our nervous system by the genes… We are going to be disillusioned and disappointed at the end of life.”

4 “The kind of happiness I’m talking about… Is the happiness that comes from the everyday activities we do.” (This happiness) has a very different type of emphasis, it’s the happiness from the ongoing use of our skills.”

5 “Flow is what describes this peculiar feeling of complete involvement with what you’re doing that comes when you are paying attention to a goal and when you are reading the feedback from the goal.”

6 “There are two ways in which flow enriches a person's life. First of all, it makes everyday activities that otherwise would be a chore or source of conflict or misery more enjoyable… The second reason… Is that it helps you organize, synthesize, and harmonize the elements of your life; both your time alone, time with friends, time with family, and time at work, so that all of it supports each other. This way, you don’t feel torn… Everything is aimed at the same purpose and meaning.“

7 “During my own experience in World War II, when I was a child I saw so many adults being destroyed by the tragic events of the war, and yet I saw that among those adults that were essentially destroyed by the war, there were always one or two who seem to have been able to keep their sanity and keep their courage. They were able to help others. They were able to give a sense of purpose or meaning to those around them. I became curious. How do you get to be a person like that?”

8 “At the end of the war I tried various ways to answer the of question of human happiness and inspiration. How are some people able to keep their heads up when most people are destroyed by external situations?”

9 “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.”

10 “I’ve been a teacher at the University now for 22 years and I keep trying to answer the same question, “What makes people’s lives happier and more meaningful?”

11 “Clarity of goal is one of the first things that people tell you in connection with what produces flow… more than that (long term) goals produce flows because you have endless moment-to-moment little goals buried in the work of the long term goal.”

12 “The constant knowing of what you want to do is very important in all flow activities. Think about playing a piece of music for instance, the goal is not just to perform a song but it is, moment by moment, knowing what notes you want to hit, what chords you want to play.“

13 “The clarity of what you want to accomplish is extremely important to flow and sustained happiness.”

14 “Activities that make it so clear what you want to do we could call Flow activities.”

15 “It’s up to us to know how to build moment-by-moment goals in what we’re doing.”

16 “(In regards to setting goals i.e.: around how to best brush teeth) each of these little meaningless activities (what side to brush first, e.g.), if they are built around a set of goals that you decide, that you think make it most purposeful and efficient, then even these things that are usually a drag… Become more enjoyable.“

17 “One third of our life has to go to maintenance activities, washing yourself, dressing, eating, resting, commuting. For most people this one third of life is wasted because it’s done as simply a routine, as getting over with it.”

18 “Try to do things with efficiency and elegance so that you are in control of even the time that would be wasted. When you can begin to do all things efficiently and elegantly, it’s not very different than trying to write a poem or do a drawing.“

19 “Solitude can be the most rewarding time of our day… And yet most of us feel so cut off from life when we are alone that we don’t know how to use this time, which is so potentially enjoyable.“

20 “Enjoying the separate elements of life; work, play, relationships, and solitude will go a long way in making life more full and happy but most people need to find a unifying theme that relates the various facets of experience into a whole.“

21 “Religions and value systems often perform this function (providing a unifying theme that relates the various facets of experience into a whole).”

22 “You may think of these systems of belief as rules of an all encompassing game, the game of life.“

23 “Remember, the end is just the beginning.”

24 “If you don’t know what makes you happy you must discover it slowly by trial and error.”

25 “People experience flow in very similar conditions the world over.”

26 “(The first condition of flow activities) They know very clearly what they have to do… The rules and the goals of the activity are very clear.” 

27 “(Moment-to-moment goals) are in contrast to everyday life. In everyday life we may have an overall goal we want to accomplish but, often, the steps are not clear. You sometimes have confusing and contradictory ideas of how to get there. So, this clarity of (moment-to-moment) goals, is a very important element of an activity that is enjoyable.“

28 “The second condition of flow activities is that they know in every moment if what they’re doing is getting them closer to the goal or not… Feedback is immediate. You know, moment by moment, how well you are doing… That clarity of feedback is essential in keeping you focused on what you’re doing.”

29 “If you know, as you move along, how well you were doing then you can focus and get really involved in what you’re doing.”

30 “Clear goals and immediate feedback are, in many ways, necessary for this whole (flow) experience to get started. “

31 "Another element of “activities which are enjoyable” is that the challenges of the activity are matched with the skills of the person.”

32 “What-there-is-to-do (must be)in balance with what you can do. A job too demanding makes you feel stressed, a job too below your skills makes you feel bored. But, when a job or any activity is on the right level (a balance between challenge and skills) it eventually becomes interesting. It eventually becomes enjoyable.”

33 “(These flow activities) after a while can even become addictive. You don’t want to stop because it’s so enjoyable.”

34 “The fourth characteristic of enjoyable activities is noticed after clear goals immediate feedback, and appropriate challenge are experienced. This is a feeling of profound focus and concentration on what you’re doing.”

35 “People in flow always mention that somehow these dualities of attention that we have in everyday life disappear. Usually, we are always kind of split in our attention. We’re thinking of what we’re doing and we are doing it. We are watching, monitoring what’s going on around us, and we are doing something else. We have this split attention.”

36 “In flow this split attention merges into a single beam of concentrated focused attention.”

37 “In flow you can achieve so much more because you are not splitting your attention.”

38 “When (attention) is split, it’s less efficient. When it’s focused it’s much more effective.”

39 “(When in flow) you can accomplish more and you feel good about the ability to be completely and singularly focused."

40 “The fifth element (of flow) that people mention… Is that you are so effortlessly, spontaneously, and efficiently focused you cannot be aware of the kind of problems that you are always aware of in everyday life."

41 Everyday frustrations are removed from attention (when in flow). You cannot attend to them (because all focus is being used)."

42 “(To be in flow) you can’t afford to let your mind wander to these kinds of everyday frustrations of life and that is a great feeling of relief. It’s great to be operating in the present without worrying about the past, without worrying about the future, but being completely concentrated on what you are doing.“

43 “(Speaking to flow being an escape) it’s good to remember, for instance, that Albert Einstein said, “art and science are the most effective forms of escape that people have developed.”

44 “There are different forms of escape. There is an escape forward and there are escapes backward. The escape backward is when you dull your senses of reality and repress reality. In flow, you’re escaping forward. You are creating a new reality by taking on challenges that were not there before."

47 “The sixth condition of flow that follows is you feel that you can be in control of your life, control of your actions, and control of your experiences (while in flow state).”

48 “The seventh condition that people in flow mention universally is a loss of the sense of self-consciousness, that is the ego-defenses we have in everyday life disappear."

49 “If your hair is not in place, if you have a pimple on your face, if your tie is not right, you are wondering what others are thinking of you and you feel defensive. These feelings of monitoring yourself and what others think of you is one of the worst feelings you carry with you, day in and out.“

50 “When in flow you don’t have the luxury of thinking about yourself.”

51 “In flow, there is a sense of transcendence.”

52 “Even though you forget yourself during the activity, typically, after the activity, when flow is over and you think back on how it felt, as a result of reflecting on your flow experience, people's self-esteem increases.”

53 “You forget yourself in the moment but after the activity, your Self returns stronger than it had been before.” (The paradox of flow)

54 “The eighth characteristic of flow is that the sense of time seems to be transformed. In flow, sometimes, hours get condensed into minutes. Other times, what in reality was a few seconds, gets stretched out into 15 to 20 minutes. Like when a dancer does a pirouette and every little movement of the body gets stretched out.”

55 “In Flow time adapts itself to your experience rather than trying to put your life into these boxes of 60 minutes per hour.”

56 “When you first start rock climbing you’re very aware of capability, but after a while of doing it you stop reflecting on it all the time. You fuse you’re thinking with the rock.”

57 “The enjoyable state of flow is quite different from what people think of as pleasure. Pleasure is automatic. Anyone can experience it and it needs new skills. The downside of pleasure is while it’s necessary for survival it does not help us grow.”

58 “Flow-enjoyment does not come from simply satisfying are instincts. Flow-enjoyment is the result of recognizing new challenges in developing new skills we didn’t have before. For this reason, flow-enjoyment leads to growth of complexity.”

59 “To lead a happy life, it’s not enough to have many isolated flow experiences. The real important goal to shoot for is to learn to find flow-enjoyment in any situation that may come up.”

60 “Consciousness, which reflects our attention, is what we need to accomplish anything in life and if our consciousness is in order we can use our attention more effectively. But if what we are aware of in consciousness are discrepant goals, as in goals that conflict with each other, that conflict reduces our ability to be effective.“

61 “The consciousness that is effective is the most important thing we can expect from our lives.”

62 “Flow derives from autotelic experiences which are activities we do for their own sake because to experience them is the main goal. Autotelic experiences and flow are important because that’s when we feel most alive.”

63 “The five C’s of a complex or autotelic personality: the first is clarity. That is knowing in your life what you want to do but also moment to moment, as you go through the everyday activities of your life. Clarity of goals and also clarity of feedback, the ability to read your performance, to read how well you’re doing, and adjust yourself to what is happening around you.“

64 “The second C of a complex personality is the ability to center, to focus, to know how to avoid distractions, how to become one with what you’re doing, to have all of your consciousness and all of your attention at your control.”

65 “Third, we could call it choice, is knowing that there is a variety of possibilities around you, that you are not determined by outside events, you are not forced to do the things you do but you have a choice. Whatever you’re doing is not because you have to do it but because you want to do it.“

66 “The fourth is the ability to commit yourself, to care about what you’re doing.”

67 “The fifth characteristic is challenge, that is you keep upping the challenge as you have mastered certain levels.”

68 What inhibits flow; “Psychic entropy is the concept that describes how we feel when part of our mind is trying to do one thing and our feelings go in a different direction and our bodies go into yet a third direction. That is, we are torn by different goals, different desires, different purposes, and as we satisfy these different (conflicting) things we want to do, inevitably we feel conflict in our consciousness.”

63 “Entropy means confusion or inability to do work, randomness, chaos. When you apply this concept to your consciousness, psychic entropy means chaos also because you are conflicted… Which immobilizes your consciousness. You can’t achieve anything.”

64 “Both boredom and anxiety or states of psychic-entropy.”

65 “In boredom, psychic-entropy comes from lack of focus.”

66 “Anxiety is an entropic state because, there, you feel you are overwhelmed, you have to defend yourself against incoming forces… And, again, you are not in control of your consciousness.”

67 “The essential thing is to pay attention to what’s happening around us and to be involved in the endlessly rich opportunities for action that the world provides.”

68 “Notice the things you enjoy, learn how they work, learn how to interact with them.”

67 “Each function (of the body) is capable of producing its own flow activity.”

69 “Flow in the senses; we take for granted the ability of using our eyes for seeing (for example) but most of us don’t develop this ability beyond what we need to not bump into objects… If you can see the possibility of what eyes can do, you begin to enter the realm of art.“

70 “All (of life’s) visual stimuli that are potentially so rich and enriching are lots to those who don’t pay enough attention to what they see.”

71 “From the oldest tribal societies, music has been a way of helping to order the interstates of people, helping to order consciousness through rhythm, through melody.”

72 “When you combine as many of these (skillful sensory experiences) as possible; when you combine the movement of the body and the enjoyment of sexuality, the discipline of things like yoga, the ability to sing beauty, to hear the orderly harmonious patterns in music, experience the refinement of different and subtle taste… Life becomes incredibly more rich and enjoyable.”

73 “Flow in physiology; in order to have this experience (of flow) some (physical) change must occur in your nervous system.” 

74 “The important thing is not what you do but how you do it.”

75 “If you develop a system of meditation… And you appropriate that technique, that is, you choose when and how to apply it then, the possibility of flow is much higher.”

76 “Appropriating meditation (or an skill) means to impose on your own goals, learn your own feedback to it, so you know when you’re doing it right or wrong.”

77 “One of the most generally reported flow experiences around the world is, simply, reading… Reading can become flow only if you do it actively.”

78 “It is easy to enrich life by exploring the potentialities for enjoyment the party has to offer.”

79 “What tremendous gifts are hidden under our skin. Yet, how few of them we ever discover.”

80 “Using (your body) helps you be joyfully in tune with the world.”

81 “Using the mind is one of the most powerfully enjoyable experience we can have.”

82 “After physical sensations, the mind is the most reliable source of flow.”

83 “Quality of life depends on how much flow you have day in and day out. Learning to play with the thoughts in your mind is the easiest way to add flow to it.”

84 “For most people, most of the time, the natural state of mind is chaos.”

85 “Out of daydreams grow adult plans, adult visions.”

86 “Flow and memory; The mind can provide flow through the use of memory. Memory is, perhaps, the most important feature of our nervous system. It is the basis of any higher intellectual function.”

87 “Memorizing is not for the purpose of using (the information) from something useful but it is more a source of (mental) play.”

88 “Flow in the use of language; the ability to use words as tools for both reflecting reality and changing reality, unless you do that, you’re going to be handicapped.”

89 “The mind unlocks an entire world of possibilities for flow. Most of us, however, feel we are too busy, too harassed, too tired to use our minds beyond what is necessary. We think of the mind as a problem-solving tool to be used at work and to deal with emergencies… We prefer to disconnect our minds and think as little as possible… Unfortunately, this sort of relaxation (lack of use) is not very restful and certainly does not lead to mental or physical growth.”

90 “We either do something tedious but necessary or something pleasant but pointless. (Referring to our trained relationship with work and play)”

91 “Everyone is motivated to use their potential.”

92 “Stress is not an external factor. It’s useful to think of the external causes of stress and strain… With the same amount of strain, one person might feel stressed, while another might feel none at all. He or she may feel challenged or involved in the job.”

93 “Stress is, merely, a response to an external strain.” (And that response if personal, objective, and trained)

94 “One of the most puzzling findings in my research about optimal experience, about flow, has been, for most people, work is much closer to a flow experience than is their free time at home.”

95 “We are developing a strangely passive leisure time. We have developed a consumer orientation towards free time, which reduces the enjoyment (and potential for flow) that we have in our free time. So, we created the space of freedom in which we don’t know what to do.“

96 “Enjoyment in solitude; Every day follow your schedule.”

97 “Enjoyment and solitude; Keep yourself busy.”

98 “When Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was asked what a person should do to be happy he answered, “work and love.”

99 “Friends are generally experienced as more enjoyable (than family) as we can get a higher quality of life with friends than we can with anyone else.”

100 “Studies done with senior citizens who are in retirement homes found that even at age 80 you enjoy the company of friends more than you enjoy the company of your family.”

101 “In the United States we tend to have fewer friends as adults.”

102 “The price we pay for this great mobility (the frequency and commonality of moving to different cities, getting different jobs, commuting in modern times) is that we cut our ties to people, cut our ties to communities much more abruptly than anyone else before and the price we pay is that in adulthood we have few friends and this makes life poorer to a great extent.”

103 “Our friends will not continue to exist unless we devote energy to them.”

104 “The problem we have so often with other people is we treat them simply as tools. We only pay attention to them because we want something out of them for our own sake. We treat them as dispensable commodities not as individuals who are interesting and important for their own sake.“

105 “You can have flow with others when you have a common goal.”

106 “As children we are able to find flow and almost anything we do, spontaneously. A child, at first, learns to enjoy moving their fingers.”

107 “Each season of a persons life has its own particular strength.”

108 “Expose oneself to failure.”

109 “Exclusive focus on material success becomes an obstacle in life.“

110 “To learn to control their lives, adults who develop autotelic personalities, seem to come from the two extremes of childhood experience. They come from families that are either supportive, encouraging, or stimulating, or they come from families where the hardships are such that a person as a child has to fight to develop a future for herself or himself. So, it’s just a big middle ground that is in some ways more dangerous.“

111 “( To deal with stress) be somewhat self-assured. That is, it’s people who are fairly secure in their skills and abilities who can afford to forget themselves (meaning take the situation less personally) and just operate on the problem instead of worrying about themselves constantly.” (Example; if you’re in traffic and see the car zooming by, the more concerned you are with getting into an accident with these cars as you try to switch lanes the more likely an accident will be. Instead, just focus on switching lanes without thinking of yourself.)

112 “Self-assurance (which Mihaly associates with not worrying about oneself during stress) is partly a result of past experience and partly a state of mind based on realistic skills.”

113 “The second procedure for making stress less likely to affect you is having to focus attention outside. (Your consciousness) has to take in what’s going on around you instead of the feeling of stress. 

114 The autotelic-self is one that is, at the same time, differentiated (in the sense that they are removed or objective to challenge) and integrated (in the sense that they are committed and absorbed in the challenge).

115 "The first habit of an autotelic personality is the ability to set goals. (Always know what you want to do and give yourself something to accomplish).”

116 “The second step of an autotelic personality is they know how to pay attention. Their attention is under their own control. They are processing information in a fresh way. They don’t assume they know what’s going on around them. They’re really paying attention because they are interested in what’s going on around them.”

117 “The third characteristic of an autotelic person is they become immersed in the activity because they really do know what’s happening. They can react appropriately to what happens. The outcome of this is that they learn.”

118 “Become a knowledgeable participant in everything you do.”

119 “Creativity and enjoyment both result in a more complex consciousness. Although, only creativity leads to more complex cultural forms.”

120 “It seems evolution has built into our system a preference for complexity.”

121 “Creativity stems from discovering problems… (Distinct from solving already known problems, creativity is about formulating brand new problems and, therefore, unprecedented solutions.)”

121 “Every human being has this creative urge as a birthright. It can be squelched but it cannot be completely extinguished.” 

122 “The justification of climbing is climbing, just like the justification of poetry is poetry. You don’t conquer anything other than yourself.”

123 “Perhaps the ultimate challenge is living a meaningful life.”

124 “There are two types of “life-themes" or concepts of life meaning or purpose. One of them is a “presented life theme” which is the scripted scenario in our life that we essentially inherit from the culture in which we live. The presented life-theme does not fulfill a person's unique personality. They are a generic script. On the other hand, there are “discovered life-themes”. These themes evolve as a person learns to find a goal that makes sense to their unique temperament and unique situation. (Life themes, again, are life goals that extend through the entirety of one’s life to help create a single direction over the course of one’s life, thereby increasing a sense of organization and meaning.)

125 “Very often it is hardship and tragedy that create the reason for us to get out of the normal routine.”

126 “The problem with already packaged meaning-systems is it’s easy to fall into a “presented life theme” mode of accepting them. They can become inauthentic if we don’t put a lot of work into discovering the truths that are already in these meaning-systems personally.”

127 “Become a conscious, leading part in the process of your evolution.”

128 On burnout; “We find for instance, when interviewing professionals, businessman, and executives in their 50s who have had a burnout, whose life suddenly lost meaning; if you ask them, “What do you think led to your present despair or depression? What caused your burnout?“ They will tell you almost unanimously that the most important reason is they never developed priorities in their lives. They never asked themselves what counted most or, if they asked themselves that, they didn’t take themselves seriously."

129 “Having a life theme means having a personal-fate. Whether you succeed or not, you’ll be a part of an evolving complexity.”

130 “It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You look back and awe of the self. What you’ve done, it just blows your mind. If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world."

131 “The paradox is, trying to relax too much makes you more tense. Whereas an involvement with something that is purposeful, that uses your skills, ends up relaxing you more.”

132 “If people have no skills, they will find flow wherever they can find it. They will find it in destruction and violence.”

133 “Find pleasure in the right things.”

Bonus exploration: Here’s Mihaly’s 2004 Ted Talk on his life’s work; Flow.