Those periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times.

There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.

Try to be surprised by something every day.

Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.

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.

If I had to express in one word what makes their [creative individuals'] personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one.