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.

To play the trumpet well, a musician can not let more than a few days pass without practicing.

A self that is only differentiated - not integrated - may attain great individual accomplishments, but risks being mired in self-centered egotism. By the same token, a person who self is based exclusively on integration will be well connected and secure, but lack autonomous individuality. Only when a person invests equal amounts of psychic energy in these two processes and avoids both selfishness and conformity is the self likely to reflect complexity.

The rules themselves are clear enough, and within everyone’s reach. But many forces, both within ourselves and in the environment, stand in the way. It is a little like trying to lose weight: everyone knows what it takes, everyone wants to do it, yet it is next to impossible for so many.

It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.

Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated , and defended privately by each person.

Optimal experience is that rare occasion when 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.