Flow is being completely ...

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

More phrases

It really is all about believing in yourself: 80 per cent mental, 20 per cent physical.
 Victoria Pendleton
Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
 William Tecumseh Sherman
Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.
 Diane Arbus
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Quotes from the same author

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
What does this contradictory pattern mean?one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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 such 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.
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi