• While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.
  • 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.
  • The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.
  • the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. 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.
  • The form in which religions have presented their truths—myths, revelations, holy texts—no longer compels belief in an era of scientific rationality. Early Christianity helped the masses free themselves from the power of the ossified imperial regime and from an ideology that could give meaning only to the lives of the rich and the powerful.
  • flow and religion have been intimately connected from earliest times. Many of the optimal experiences of mankind have taken place in the context of religious rituals. Not only art but drama, music, and dance had their origins in what we now would call “religious” settings.
  • religion is actually the oldest and most ambitious attempt to create order in consciousness.
  • The names we use to describe personality traits—such as extrovert, high achiever, or para- noid—refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attention. any activity that requires concentration has a similarly narrow window of time.
  • Being in control of the mind means that literally anything that happens can be a source of joy. Whatever one’s background, there are still many opportunities later on in life to draw meaning from the past.
  • the first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.
  • quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, and our relations with other people. The average adult spends about one-third of his or her waking time alone, yet we know very little about this huge slice of our lives, except that we heartily dislike it.
  • First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
    • Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.
    • Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
    • Sixth, enjoy- able experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
    • Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.
  • Eating, like sex, is one of the basic pleasures built into our nervous system. wonder—which is the seed of knowledge—is the reflection of the purest form of pleasure. How can one find more value in memory? The most natural way to begin is to decide what subject one is really interested in.
  • Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of un- pleasant memories.
  • accepting limitations is liberating. For example, by making up one’s mind to invest psychic energy exclusively in a mono- gamous marriage, regardless of any problems, obstacles, or more attractive options that may come along later.