up:: Tags:: #🌱 # Games foster flow because they promote a autotelic self The seventh and last element of flow in ACTIONS is S for Self-goal, coming at activities with more intrinsic motivation by fostering an autotelic personality. Autotelic comes from the combination of two Greek words, "Auto" meaning self, and "telic" meaning goal. A self-goal. In his book, [[Flow The Psychology of Optimal Experience]], [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] explains that developing an autotelic personality means coming at most of lives activities with the inherent joy of doing them in itself. Those who fully succeed in this develop a non-self-conscious individualism. They have a strongly directed purpose but are not self-seeking. They try to do their best in all circumstances simply for the sake of doing their best, not to deeply introspect on themselves and turn every situation into a learning experience. Developing an [[Autotelic personality]] makes it easier to enter flow for four main reasons: 1. You are more likely to feel personally responsible for your goals and, therefore, in control of your actions. 2. You aren't as concerned with your self and therefore have more space in consciousness to attend to an activity. 3. You do activities more for the inherent joy of doing them in themselves and therefore develop a nonattachment to time. Games facilitate an autotelic personality because we usually play games for ourselves. Unless your playing Huniepop. You better have some extrinsic reason to play Huniepop, or I will severely judge you. Alongside an autotelic personality, games also promote a [[Gameful mindset]], a mindset that promotes pursuing your goals with a willingness to fail. Gamers intuitively understand that it often takes many, many failures to lead to success. Think Super Mario Bros, for example. To progress in Mario, you have to fail over and over and over again. But each death teaches you how to possibly make it past that section next time. And it builds your xenophobic hatred of Goombahs. Because of this, you don't run from failure but rather seek optional challenges with the knowledge they will lead to more improvement. This mindset helps build an autotelic personality because you don't shudder from difficult challenges. You see them as an opportunity for progressing in the game. Now you know the nine elements of entering flow and how games promote them. Before we move on to how you can integrate this knowledge by gamifying your real life to enter flow, we should discuss the secret eighth element to entering the flow state. Watching Avatar The Last Airbender eight separate times. Get it, elements. Ehh... Nobody finds me funny. The secret eighth element is understanding your unique [[KSAOs 1]]. Related: