Flow

Happiness is not something that happens. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.

"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more yo 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 on a course greater than oneself."

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. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

Flow--the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to mater.

A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being.

Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.

To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.

"We are always getting to live, but never living."  Ralph Waldo Emerson