Psychological Well-being

• Meta-Motivation
  • The individual must meet most basic level of needs (D-needs) before individual strongly desires or focus motivation on B needs.
  • Individuals who go beyond the scope of basic need and strive for constant betterment. Driven by B needs rather than D needs.

B-Values (Being-cognition, holistic and accepting) Vs D-values

• WHOLENESS (unity; integration; tendency to one-ness; interconnectedness; simplicity; organization; structure; dichotomy-transcendence; order);
• PERFECTION (necessity; just-right-ness; just-so-ness; inevitability; suitability; justice; completeness; "oughtness");
• COMPLETION (ending; finality; justice; "it's finished"; fulfillment; finis and telos; destiny; fate);
• JUSTICE (fairness; orderliness; lawfulness; "oughtness");
• ALIVENESS (process; non-deadness; spontaneity; self-regulation; full-functioning);
• RICHNESS (differentiation, complexity; intricacy);
• SIMPLICITY (honesty; nakedness; essentiality; abstract, essential, skeletal structure);
• BEAUTY (rightness; form; aliveness; simplicity; richness; wholeness; perfection; completion; uniqueness; honesty);
• GOODNESS (rightness; desirability; oughtness; justice; benevolence; honesty);
• UNIQUENESS (idiosyncrasy; individuality; non-comparability; novelty);
• EFFORTLESSNESS (ease; lack of strain, striving or difficulty; grace; perfect, beautiful functioning);
• PLAYFULNESS (fun; joy; amusement; gaiety; humor; exuberance; effortlessness);
• TRUTH (honesty; reality; nakedness; simplicity; richness; oughtness; beauty; pure, clean and unadulterated; completeness; essentiality).
• SELF-SUFFICIENCY (autonomy; independence; not-needing-other-than-itself-in-order-to-be-itself; self-determining; environment-transcendence; separateness; living by its own laws).

D-Values

• Esteem
• Friendship and love
• Security
• Physical Needs

Applications in Business

• Marketing: Understanding consumers' motives for action in transpersonal business studies.
• International Business: Evaluating different needs, values, drives and priorities of people from different countries (individualistic or collectivist) in cross-cultural communications.
• Work atmosphere and work ethic between cultures in an organisation.

Human Scale Development: Manfred's Fundamental Human Needs

by Manfred Max-Neef, Antonio Elizlde and Martin Hopenhayn. (wiki)

• Definition: Ontological (from condition of being human) are few, finite and classifiable. Constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. Only change is how needs are satisfied. Humans to be understood as a system (Interrelated and interactive)
• Human Scale Development: "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy, and of civil society with the state."
• Fundamental Human Needs (See Spreadsheet)
  • subsistence,
  • protection,
  • affection,
  • understanding,
  • participation,
  • leisure,
  • creation,
  • identity and
  • freedom.

Trait Theory: Murray's Psychogenic Needs

http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/murray.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray%27s_system_of_needs

Unconscious basic needs in personality.

• Abasement To surrender and accept punishment
• Achievement To overcome obstacles and succeed
• Acquisition (Conservance) To obtain possessions
• Affiliation To make associations and friendships
• Aggression To injure others
• Autonomy To resist others and stand strong
• Blameavoidance To avoid blame and obey the rules
• Construction To build or create
• Contrariance To be unique
• Counteraction To defend honor
• Defendance To justify actions
• Deference To follow a superior, to serve
• Dominance (Power) To control and lead others
• Exhibition To attract attention
• Exposition To provide information, educate
• Harmavoidance To avoid pain
• Infavoidance To avoid failure, shame, or to conceal a weakness
• Nurturance To protect the helpless
• Order To arrange, organize, and be precise
• Play To relieve tension, have fun, or relax
• Recognition To gain approval and social status
• Rejection To exclude another
• Sentience To enjoy sensuous impressions
• Sex (Erotic) To form and enjoy an erotic relationship
• Similance To empathize
• Succorance To seek protection or sympathy
• Understanding (Cognizance)To analyze and experience, to seek knowledge

Power, Affliction and Achievement

• The need for Power: Desire or need to impact other people, to control or be in a position of influence.
  • Careers that involve these aspects are better suited for high nPow people, such as teachers, psychologists, journalists, and supervisors.
  • Don't necessarily make the best leaders though.
  • high nPow would do well if they also had traits of self-control and objectivity.
• The need for affiliation
  • Those with a high nAff often have a larger social circle. They spend more time interacting with other such as talking on the phone and writing letters, and they are more likely to be members of social groups or clubs.
  • Those with high nAff are also more likely to get lonely than those low in nAff, so their need for affiliation may be related to their sense of self and their desire for external stimulation.
• The need for achievement
  • Those with high (nAch) demonstrate a consistent concern about meeting obligations and accomplishing tasks.
  • More focused on internal motivation rather than external rewards. (i.e. intelligence and personal achievement > recognition and praise.)

State of Mind during Activity

Peak Experiences

• Definition:
  • Describes transpersonal and ecstatic states
  • that are tinged with themes of euphoria, harmonization andinterconnectedness.
  • experiences, and the revelations possess mystical and spiritual (or overtly religious) quality or essence.
• Described by Maslow as
  • "especially joyous and exciting moments in life, involving sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth (as though perceiving the world from an altered, and often vastly profound and awe-inspiring perspective). They usually come on suddenly and are often inspired by deep meditation, intense feelings of love, exposure to great art or music, or the overwhelming beauty of nature."
  • "tends to be uplifting and ego-transcending; it releases creative energies; it affirms the meaning and value of existence; it gives a sense of purpose to the individual; it gives a feeling of integration; it leaves a permanent mark on the individual, evidently changing them for the better. Peak experiences can be therapeutic in that they tend to increase the individual's free will, self-determination, creativity, and empathy. "
  • The highest peaks include "feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, and the loss of placing in time and space" (1970, p. 164). When peak experiences are especially powerful, the sense of self dissolves into an awareness of a greater unity.

Flow

(Wiki) (as proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi)

• Descriptions
  • mental state of operation, where person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.
  • Completely focused motivation. A single-minded immersion representing the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning.
  • Emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. (To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow)
  • A feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or one's emotions.
  • Colloquial terms: to be on the ball, in the moment, present, in the zone, wired in, in the groove, or keeping your head in the game.
• 10 Components of Flow
  • Clear goals (Challenge level, skills, expectations and rules are discernible and goals are high but attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
  • High degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (an opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
  • A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
  • Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
  • Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
  • Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
  • A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
  • The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
  • A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
  • Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
• Mechanisms of Flow (See Attention and Focus)
• 3 Necessary Conditions of Flow
  • One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals, adding direction and structure to the task.[9]
  • One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable to do the task at hand.[9]
  • The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state.[9]
• Group Flow
  • Creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, but no tables; thus work primarily standing and moving
  • Playground design: Charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, craziness (here also craziness has a place), safe place (here all may say what is otherwise only thought), result wall, open topics
  • Parallel, organized working
  • Target group focus
  • Advancement of existing one (prototyping)
  • Increase in efficiency through visualization
  • Using differences among participants as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle
• Applications
  • Education
  • Music
  • Sports
  • Religion and Spirituality
  • Gaming
  • Using Web
    • Searching
    • Surfing or navigating
    • Reading and writing
    • Chatting
    • Others
  • Workplace
• Benefits of Flow: (Must see article)
  • Flow is an innately positive experience; it is known to "produce intense feelings of enjoyment".[7] It is also a positive force because it allows for optimal performance and skill development.
  • Flow has a strong, documented correlation with performance enhancement. Researchers have found that achieving a flow state is positively correlated with optimal performance in the fields of artistic and scientific creativity (Perry, 1999; Sawyer, 1992), teaching (Csíkszentmihályi, 1996), learning (Csíkszentmihályi et al., 1993), and sports (Jackson, Thomas, Marsh, & Smethurst, 2002; Stein, Kimiecik, Daniels, & Jackson, 1995).[9]

Personality

Autotelic Personality

• Traits:
  • Curiosity
  • Persistence
  • Low Self-centeredness
  • High rate of performing activities for intrinsic reasons.
• Preference for
  • high action opportunity, high skill situations
  • that stimulate and encourage growth