Do you often find yourself to be bored? Or anxious? And how about being somewhere in the middle? Being fully involved, experiencing engagement and even flow? We all understand from our own experience, that engagement is one of the essential building blocks generating our well-being. But how can we experience more of presence, joy of doing and being one with the activity we do? One of the things that can be very useful is to reflect and to think about your personal engagement strengths.

 

Understanding the importance of engagement for your well-being, you will have an opportunity to assess your engagement strengths and to learn evidence-based tips on how to eliminate destructions and boost your engagement. Let’s get drawn into the reading together!

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Building your engagement

Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi emphasized the importance of being fully involved in all aspects of life for finding happiness. In 2002 in his popular book Authentic Happiness professor Seligman introduces us the concept of engagement as a crucial element generating our well-being together with pleasantness and meaningfulness.

 

The PERMA5 model of student well-being expands on these, presenting ten building blocks of well-being as we know them today (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, achievement, physical health, mindset, environment, economic security, and authenticity).

 

Are you ready to talk about significance of engagement in various aspects of your live, such as work, school, hobbies, relationships, and alone time? and I would also like to provide you with tools to assess and enhance your engagement for improved well-being.

 

Are you bored of engaged?

Knowing that a little boredom can be a very good thing, providing our brains with necessary space for regenerate, elevating creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving, university students report being bored at school in about 1/3 of the time. Engagement can be seen as the opposite of boredom and contributes significantly to your overall well-being.

 

But how exactly can we understand engagement? It is a state where we are fully absorbed in an activity, forgetting about the time, the world around us and even about ourselves. And if your skills meet the challenge we face, we can even reach a state of optimal experience called flow. Flow enhances our productivity and learning.

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Would you be interested in building your engagement?
 

Engaged-students, well-students
 

So why should you care for your engagement and how can you do that? Engaged students experience higher motivation, better focus, improved memory, joy, and satisfaction. And let’s emphasize that there is a difference between emotional and cognitive engagement. While cognitive engagement is expressed by learning multiplied by our ability to focus, positive emotional engagement is in academic settings such as being curious, motivated, and simply enjoying what is happening can only support your overall level of immersion.

But what can you do to experience energized focus more often? I would like to invite you to explore two approaches for building more engagement in everyday life: 

1. creating time and space for activities that bring flow and 

2. crafting existing activities to enhance engagement

Our engagement is closely tied to energy levels. Listen to your body and recharge if needed please. And we should do the same after sessions of deep work, strong focus or even flow. Excessive focus can be often followed by drop in energy and rise of tiredness. Eat well, drink plenty of pure water, take time off from screens, and spend some time in nature where we don’t have to focus deliberately. Even a few minutes in the park will do its work!

 

Let me share with you some tips from my newest book Well-being and Success for University Students (Kočí & Donaldson, 2024) now!

 

The easiest way to experience more engagement is to focus on activities that bring you joy and lead to a state of flow. Identify flow-inducing experiences and prioritize engagement in your daily life. Which are those and how can you make time for them?

 

You might also find beneficial to be clear about your goals. Seek or create a system providing you with an immediate feedback, balance challenges and your abilities, and protect your concentration. I would also like to encourage you to identify your personal character strengths and incorporating them into daily life for increased satisfaction. 

 

References:

Kočí, J. (2024). Building Well-being of University Students. Praha: Univerzita Karlova, Pedagogická fakulta. ISBN 978-80-7603-506-5.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York: HarperCollins.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). Good business: leadership, flow, and the making of meaning. New York, Viking.

Koci, J. & Donaldson, S. I. (2024). Well-being and Success of University Students: Applying PERMA+4. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN: 9781032457185; DOI: 10.4324/9781003378365.

Koci, J., & Donaldson, S. I. (2022). Zdraví a mentální well-being studentů distančního vzdělávání. Prague: Charles University. ISBN: 978-80-7603-357-3.