Monica McCosh

“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.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“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, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Roger Martin of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management conducted a lengthy study of exceptional leaders stretching from Procter & Gamble’s then-CEO A. G. Lafley to choreographer Martha Graham and discovered that their ability to find solutions required holding conflicting perspectives and using that friction to synthesize a new idea. “The ability to face constructively the tension37 of opposing ideas,” Martin writes in his book The Opposable Mind, “. . . is the only way to address this kind of complexity.”
― Steven Kotler, Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

“It’s your reaction to the external that causes internal conflict. The more you develop space between your thoughts and reaction, the less you succumb to this chain reaction. Subsequently, the less you are a slave to your thoughts, the less you will be a slave to your emotions. Instead, you are choosing your thoughts, actions and emotions from a conscious and intentional place. These are the fruits of letting go.”
― Kate Richardson, What Confident Women Do: Daily Challenges to Set Boundaries, Establish Self-Worth and Crush Self-Doubt