Assignment 2: Presenting the Good Life

Positive psychology focuses on three important concepts of the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life.

Seligman (2005) purports that experiencing these three pillars of positive psychology creates “the full-life.” This assignment focuses on the second pillar: the good life.

According to the positive psychology model, the good life involves identifying and amplifying unique strengths and skills. The goal of identifying your signature strengths is to be able to amplify these strengths in flow experiences.

This assignment is divided into two tasks. You will first identify your personal signature strengths and then apply these strengths to transform a tedious activity into an enlivened one.

Task I

What are your top three strengths when you experience flow? Using the Internet, research various instruments available that can help you identify your strengths. When conducting your Internet search, use the following phrases:

• Measuring flow experiences
• Dimensions of flow
• Measuring signature strengths
• OCEAN personality psychometric test
• The big five test
• Trait theory personality test
• Five factor model (FFM)

Select one of the instruments from your research and complete the test to determine your strengths. Then do the following:

• Evaluate your results and create a list of your personal signature strengths.

If you are unable to use these instruments, then list what you understand or believe to be your top three strengths when you experience flow.

Task II

This task requires you to engage in an activity that you find tedious. While engaging in the activity, tap into an identified personal strength and enliven the experience. For example, a student who dislikes the task of commuting to work resolves to tap into her creativity and sing to her favorite music while driving, thus transforming the experience from tedious to an enlivened one.

Engage in an activity you consider tedious and then tap into an identified personal strength to enliven it.

Upon completion of this activity, create a  PowerPoint presentation with the following information:

• Slide 1: Title slide
• Slide 2: Discuss a scholarly reference on the validity of using signature strengths to create flow.
• Slide 3: Describe the strengths you identified after doing an evaluation of yourself.
• Slides 4–5: Discuss the application of strengths to the activity. Include your ideas on how and why the activity was transformed from tedious to an enlivened activity.
• Slides 6–7: Demonstrate how to apply this and other signature strengths to transform other tasks identified as tedious.
• Slide 8: Discuss your general state of emotion after completing the enlivened activity. Examine the reasons for this state of emotion. Include one scholarly reference from established research on positive psychology that supports the use of signature strengths to facilitate a state of well-being.
• Slide 9: Discuss how recognizing and using signature strengths can help improve relationships.
• Slide 10: Provide a list of references in APA format

Develop a 10-slide scripted presentation in PowerPoint format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M2_A2.ppt.

By Wednesday, October 8, 2014, deliver your assignment to the M2: Assignment 2 Dropbox.

Duckworth, A. L., Steen, T. A., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Positive psychology in clinical practice. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 629–651. (ProQuest Document ID: 213100604)
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/
docview/213100604?accountid=34899