Find Your Inner "Flow"

In a documentary we will watch in class next week, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi briefly discusses his research on the concept of "flow."

Should you choose to learn more about flow for credit for your weekly blog comments, please complete the following:

• Watch this short TED Talks video of Dr. Csikszentmihalyi discussing his concept of flow.
• Read this article about the concept of flow.
• Discuss the concept of flow....what does it mean?
• What activity(ies) get you into your "flow?"
• When you are in this state of flow, what does it feel like to you?  (e.g., does time pass quickly, do you block out everything around you)
• Discuss why you think this state of flow is important for happiness.

Don't forget to take some time every now and then to find your inner flow!

Do Good, Feel Good

"...volunteering improves the health, happiness, and in some cases, the longevity of volunteers."

Reading through everyone's responses to my question about what makes you happy, I found that several people find that helping others makes them happy.

So why does volunteering make us happy, and what is our motivation to help others?

Should you choose to comment on this post for credit under blog comments, please complete the following:

• Read this article.
• Provide a summary of what you read, in your own words.
• If you volunteer (or help others through other means - for example, helping a friend with a homework assignment), which of the 5 listed reasons why people volunteer apply to you?  Do more than one apply to you?
• The article addresses the health benefits of volunteering in the late adult/elderly populations.  What are your thoughts on this?  Do you know an older person who volunteers regularly?  Why do you think they volunteer?
• The article also addresses the idea that volunteering can be a self-focused behavior, as opposed to a simple act of altruism.  What are your thoughts on this?  Do you think all volunteers have self-focused motives?

If you volunteer, give yourself a pat on the back and keep up the good work.  If you are thinking of volunteering, do it!  

TED Talk on Happiness

TED Talks is a series of conferences given by speakers who are leaders in their respective field.  

Although TED talks contains videos on a wide variety of topics, I want you to stick with the topic of happiness as we are covering it in Chapter 1.  

If you should choose to do this assignment for blog comment credit, please do the following:

• Find a TED Talks video of which the speaker is discussing happiness.  You can do this easily using the search option on the website.  There are plenty to choose from, which allows you the flexibility to choose one of which is interesting to you.  After finding a video, please: 
• Provide the link to your video.
• Discuss, in your own words, what the video was about.
• Discuss what you learned.
• If applicable, describe how the information presented ties into your textbook's discussion on happiness.
• Provide your general reaction to the video.  What did you like?  Were there things you disagreed with? Etc.....

There are some great videos on this website, so I encourage you to be a frequent visitor of the site :)

What Happy People Do Differently

"One of life's sharpest paradoxes is that the key to satisfaction is doing things that feel risky, uncomfortable, and occasionally bad."

This article posted on Psychology Today covers some research on happiness not covered in our textbook.  

If you choose to respond to this article for credit under the "blog comments" portion of your grade:

• Briefly summarize the aspect(s) of the article you found most interesting.  Be sure to use your own words in this summation - copying and pasting sentences/paragraphs from the article will not suffice.
• Explain in some detail/provide an example (or examples) of how the aforementioned aspect(s) pertain to your personal life.  
• How does this article relate to what we've discussed in class or what is written in your textbook?  
• Provide a list of terms you used from the chapters we have discussed this far.

Your responses will ideally follow paragraph form as opposed to a listing of bullets for each of the sections listed above.  In other words, rather than first summarizing the article followed by providing examples from your everyday life, you can interweave this points to form a coherent paragraph.  

Remember, you should be writing these comments as if you were going to print them out and hand them in. Thus, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. is important!  

Lastly, there is no length requirement for this particular assignment.  That being said though, I expect your responses to be well thought out and longer than a few sentences.  As the semester progresses, you'll be expected to write longer responses as you'll have more information from class/your textbook to tie into your posts.