A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for - rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires.A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable..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.

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.

Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

There are managers so preoccupied with their e-mail messages that they never look up from their screens to see what's happening in the nondigital world

Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution.

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing timesthe 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.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.