By Deirdre Mansel
The second part of the positive psychology PERMA model is engagement. This is about figuring out what activities totally absorb your attention and doing more of them.
Dr Seligman describes engagement as ‘being at one with the music’. By this he means that when you are completely involved in what you’re doing, you reach a state of utter, blissful immersion in the present moment. This is also known as a state of ‘flow’. Kids are often in flow while they are engrossed in imagination play.
Why is engagement important?
When we spend time on activities we enjoy and are naturally good at, we are more engaged with our education, work and life generally. Working more often in a state of flow helps us build our confidence, be more focused and gain momentum in the areas that are important to us.
How can we build engagement?
Identifying our personal strengths is the first step. Once we know what we’re naturally good at and enjoy, we can focus on cultivating these strengths, and consciously engage in activities that make us feel productive and confident. This in turn helps us increase our overall sense of well-being.
The beauty of this approach is that everyone’s strengths are different, and all of them are valued equally. This means we can follow our passions in music, maths, reading, dancing, science or cooking. As long as we’re doing what we love, we can all be inspired and thriving!
Ready to get started?
If you’re interested in learning more about how positive psychology can engage your kids and improve your life, there are some simple steps you can take:
- Think about the last time you were so focused on an activity that you lost track of time. What were you doing? What was it about the activity that you enjoyed so much? Now do the same with your kids. What activities totally absorb their attention? How can they spend more time on them?
- Sign up for our freebies and emails, which include more free activities you can do with your kids.
- Help your kids find their strengths by downloading our 'It Starts with Strengths' book.
Stay tuned for the next blog post, where we’ll take a look at the third building block of well-being, relationships!