Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.

Wealth, power, and sex become the chief goals that give direction to their strivings. But the quality of life cannot be improved this way. Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.

success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the

“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

When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of the first signs of adversity.

These are people who, regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy.

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.

“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

“The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,” in the words of J. H. Holmes. “It is simply indifferent.”