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The Evolving Self

A Psychology for the Third Millennium

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The Evolving Self

By: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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About this listen

In this wise, humane inquiry, Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) argues that genetically programmed behaviors that once helped humans adapt and multiply now threaten our survival. These traits include obsessions with food and sex, addiction to pleasure, excessive rationality, and a tendency to focus on the negative. A University of Chicago psychology professor, the author also believes we must free our minds of cultural illusions, such as ethnocentric superiority or identification with one's possessions. He urges listeners to find ways to reduce the oppression, exploitation, and inequality that are woven into the fabric of society. Further, he wants us to control the direction of human evolution by pursuing challenging activities that lead to greater complexity while opposing chaos and conformity.

Each chapter concludes with self-help questions and mental exercises designed to help listeners apply the insights of this literate manifesto to their daily lives.

©1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC
Psychology Psychology & Mental Health

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Highly thought provoking is about the best description one could give. The book poses a large number of self questioning and realisations Foy the reader to explore ... the ultimate path is and benefit is based on optional effort.

Highly thought provoking

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The book is perhaps one of the most interesting and thought provoking book I have come to read/listen to. I hightly recommend this book, accually I think it should be a school requitement. However, in chapter 7, 28:25-28:32 min into it, his sentence is suddenly cut off and moved on to the next paragraph(?), basically he is suddenly cut off and it moves on to the next topic. Perhaps this is a flaw in the production of the audiobook, I thought it might be worth pointing out.

Great book otherwise !

Great Thought provoking book, but there is a flaw

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This book is the fix for the millennia of dichotomy between hard sciences and spirituality. All ideologies in human history teaches us how we can’t have or live both. We can have and live both. We as a collective society need to find a way to raise our societal levels of consciousness.

Best integrative book

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narrator was good. deep insight on eastern philiosphy explained well by the author. recommend it.

good read i loved it thank u.

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"The Evolving Self" is a fascinating and inspiring read about self-improvement. The book was written in the early '90s and feels - unsurprisingly - a little outdated at times, but its overall message could not be more current and inspiring.
I love Csikszentmihalyi's writing and thought process - I enjoyed "The Evolving Self" after rereading "Flow" and discovering "Finding Flow" and found all three books fascinating, inspiring and beautifully written.

Fascinating and inspiring.

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