Flow
The aspect of positive psychology that applies to my daily life is flow. Alan Carr defines flow as “a subjective state that people report when they become engaged in controllable but challenging tasks or activities that require considerable skill and that are intrinsically motivating, such as competitive sailing, creative writing, or having a stimulating conversation” (Carr, 2011). Flow is something that comes from within whether it has to do with motivation or just simply the focus on a task. There are nine factors that go into flow: intrinsic enjoyment, challenge-skill balance, automaticity of actions, goal clarity, feedback, concentration, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, and time transformation (Carr, 2011). …show more content…
For the wedding, four friends and I had to learn a choreographed dance. I volunteered to be involved in the dance because I enjoy dancing. At first we all had time to practice together and learn all the moves but as time went along the availability of everyone involved had changed. With this being the case everyone was responsible to learn the dance on their own. While I was practicing I made it a goal to learn the dance for each song in halves. Breaking it down in this manner helped out and as I completed one goal it was on to the next one. This ultimately made it really easy to learn the entire dance. When it came to the wedding day and performing the dance everyone was nervous because we had not practiced together. As we began the dance everyone was a little nervous at first but as it continued we all were in sync and the nerves seemed to be gone. When we finished our dance we received positive feedback from the amount of applause we got from the crowd. When I look back on it, I think about how focused I was on staying in sync with the beat along with everyone else doing the dance. Overall, it was successful and we experienced flow as a …show more content…
Playing basketball, listening to music, working out, and playing video games could all be considered solitary or social depending on whether I am alone or with others. Performing at my actual job and participating in class would be considered more social because of the fact that when these are being performed, there will be other around. My job and participating in class are considered work related while the rest of the activities are more for leisure time. A way that I could change my daily or weekly schedule so that I can engage in more intrinsically motivated activities is by changing my sleeping schedule. If I could change my sleeping habits to going to sleep before 12 AM and waking up around 10 AM, I would have much more time to be more involved in intrinsically motivated activities. Another way to change my daily or weekly schedule is to take another day off of work a week. This way I can spend an entire day doing some of the things that I enjoy and help me experience flow. Some of the costs that would be involved in changing my sleeping habits is I would not get to relax before or after work because I would be engaging in those activities. The benefit of changing my sleeping habits is getting more sleep along with being up early enough to enjoy some time before I have to go into work so that I am in a