Blog Post #5 - Flow and Autotelic Personality

 Macrame Update

Since I finished my first project last week, my goal for this week was to decide on a new project and to gather materials so I could start. I initially planned on starting Christmas ornaments, but when I was at my local Hobby Lobby store, I wasn't able to find the correct size of wooden dowels. I think I will be able to order this on Amazon, but in the mean time I decided to work on another wall hanging project (instructions found at https://youtu.be/BhyEFHddhvM ). On this Hobby Lobby trip, I purchased pink macrame cord and a package of 12 inch wooden dowels. I also ordered a macrame board and pins from Amazon, so that way I don't have to try to hold the wooden dowel while at the same time tying various knots in my project. It has been a huge help! So far, I have used the same knot techniques I used in my last project, with the addition of a new knot called the square knot. I have included a picture below of my progress on my new project so far.

Flow and Personal Application

After considering the concept of flow in our class lecture this past week as well as in our Learning Through Discussion (LTD) groups, I do think I have experienced "flow" at different points in my life. According to Wright, Sadlo, and Stew (2007), the concept of flow is characterized by "a psychological state that appears to arise during optimal human experience" (p. 136). This flow state occurs when there is a balance between the challenge that an occupation presents and the skills of the individual to be able to meet this challenge. One example that readily comes to mind is experiencing flow while I ran cross country in high school. We were given various distance and running pace-based workouts as well as strength training regimens to follow which prepared us to run the 3.1 miles on race day. I experienced a sense of flow during the race as it was extremely challenging to try to run at your best pace, but I was also prepared to meet the challenge as I had followed the training schedule given by my coaches. On race day, I was able to "lose" myself in the running experience, as this is another key component of flow which was discussed in our lecture (i.e., the characteristics of flow which were loss of self-consciousness and distorted sense of time).

Another activity which has allowed me to experience flow was when I took ballet, jazz, and lyrical dance classes throughout high school at my local dance studio. Similarly to my example of running cross country, in dance we had classes multiple times throughout the week to learn technique, strength training, flexibility exercises, and routines which would be used in our upcoming show. We did two shows every year, and it was performing during shows where I experienced flow the most. I relied on the training we had done in classes, and was able to lose myself in the choreography and interacting with my dance classmates.

Flow and Macrame

Since I am still a beginner at macrame, I don't know that I can say I have experienced flow while participating in this new occupation. I'm able to get into the rhythm of creating macrame when I am doing knot techniques which I'm familiar with, but I think this is different from flow since my skills do not yet match the challenge presented by the occupation. For example, during this new project, I had to pause the YouTube video multiple times to make sure I was doing the correct techniques. I also was watching a show on Netflix in the background, which might distract from the opportunity I have to experience flow while macrame-ing (I think I will coin this as a new term). As I gain skills and become increasingly more comfortable with the knot techniques used for macrame, I think my new occupation of macrame has the potential to create a flow experience for myself. Some elements that I could change in order for this to occur include more practice to become comfortable with macrame knot techniques, limiting outside distractions while I macrame, and trying not having a show playing in the background to see if that helps me to be more present and mindful while macrame-ing.

Autotelic Personalities

Upon reflecting on my own personal characteristics and preferences in relation to autotelic personalities, I would not generally see myself as fitting this personality type. While I do believe I am intrinsically motivated, I would not say that I have particularly high self-esteem, and I tend to be a high-anxiety individual. I think this analysis would be consistent with my feeling that I haven't really experienced a state of flow since participating in cross country and dance in high school, which has been over six years ago. During my LTD group, we discussed how perhaps an element of experiencing flow might be that there has to be a performance aspect of the occupation where we can show our skills to others. In a solitary, creative occupation like making macrame, the performance aspect might still apply as I take pictures of my projects and share them with my classmates on this blog. My personality might affect the attractiveness of the flow experience as a motivator to choose particular occupations in my life by typically shying away from these opportunities. Due to my current lack of self-esteem (something I am working on but has been ongoing for many years), I think this makes it difficult for me to really feel like my skills and abilities are able to meet the challenge of flow-providing occupations. This lack of self-esteem also tends to lead to high anxiety, which seems to not be conducive to the experience of flow.

Beginning of my second macrame project

References

Wright, J. J., Sadlo, G., & Stew, G. (2007). Further explorations into the conundrum of flow process. Journal of Occupational Science, 14(3), 136-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2007.9686594