Do What Makes You Feel Alive

We all want the magical feeling of being energized and in tune with the world, feeling powerful and inspired. Listen to this episode to learn ways to do more of what makes you feel alive!

Show Notes:

Episode summary: 

When you are doing something you love, that challenges you a bit and that you find profoundly worthwhile, you are taking charge of your life and creating intrinsic happiness. If you want to improve your life, improve the quality of your experiences. Take control of the things you can so that what you do, when, and with whom will enable you to do your best work.

In this episode: 

Have you ever experienced one of those magical moments where everything seems to come together and life feels rich and exciting and brilliant? Those are the times we feel most alive. When do you feel most alive? And better yet- how can you experience those magic moments more often? Stay tuned because in this episode we are going to talk about how to do more of what makes you feel alive.

Describing the Optimal Experience

• These are magical moments.
• It is a feeling and a sense of awareness, a form of excitement and curiousity and energy all coming together.
• It is newness, possibility, interest, engagement, and yes, magic.
• It makes you feel more alive.
• Children see magic everywhere because they look for it and because they believe in it.
• What would happen in your life if you looked for magic and believed in it?

Examples of feeling fully alive:

• Michele shares being at a conference with others and being excited and charged up, ready to return home with new ideas and energy. She was excited about possibilities and the idea doing something good in the world using your best talents and gifts.
• Ruth Reichel discussed her workplace at the New York Times in her book Save Me The Plums: “The energy in that office was so potent it was like we pulled the cork on a bottle of champagne and released a vibrant explosion.”
• Paula shares an example of being a waitress in high school. It was a  mundane job, but the team made it fun and full of energy. They were smiling, laughing and serving food like no one’s business.

What makes us feel most awake and alive? How can we create this experience?

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly is based on decades of his reserch on the positive aspects of the human experience. He coined the term Flow as  joy, creativity, total involvement in life.

When you are in flow…

• You are absorbed, you can lose track of time, and hours can go by without you knowing.
• You feel exhilaration and a deep sense of enjoyment that becomes a memory for what every moment should be.
• You are able to focus and concentrate on the task at hand, which requires some sort of intrinsic motivation.
• You lose self-consciousness- it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.
• When using physical skills we can go higher, faster and stronger.
• It is the antidote to the feeling “is this all there is?”.

Here are some general principles for how you can get into a state of flow:

• Choose challenging experiences- not too challenging, but that require you to use your skills. It takes effort and stretches you.practice- we usually don’t go into flow the first time we do something
• Have clear goals and get immediate feedback- think of a chess player or a golfer- mastery involves levels.
• Pay attention to experiences and learn to enjoy them.
• Avoid noisy environments and interruptions.
• Understand your values and what has meaning for you- then choose accordingly.
• Order your life so that what you do, when, and with whom will enable you to do your best work.

You have more control over this than you may think.

We share Eric ‘s story as an example. He felt that the way his curriculum was being delivered was boring- boring for students and for him. He had the urge to shake things up. He designed a new way to deliver the curriculum, incorporating a passion project. It was a change and there was a possibility it wouldn’t work. The students or parents might complain. It might turn out to be too much work- but it wasn’t. He loved designing the project and he loved teaching the unit and it was a smashing success. A boring, lifeless, mundane unit became electric.

That is how you order your life so that you can feel more alive!

Paula gives another example of getting into the flow late at night.

Flow can look like workaholism, but it is different. When you love your work, and create structures that allow you to do your best work, your work becomes highly fulfilling to you. It becomes a part of your best life, not a challenge to it.

Workaholism is what you have when you have to give up things you value and love and constantly do work that has no meaning and no challenge and gives you no fulfillment.

What would it look like if everyone lived from a place where they felt alive and energized, where they looked forward to every day and could see the possibilities in everything?

This is like capturing lightening in a bottle.

Burnout and complacency would be diminished. It is hard to be burned out when you are working with love and energy, when you are excited and happy and fulfilled.

Students in school would show fewer behavior challenges, more enjoyment, better discussions, and ultimately, better learning.

Your home life can also benefit.  We give the example of painting a room while listening to a podcast or audio book. Time flies, we are absorbed in the task and what we’re istening to, and actually looking for something else to paint so we can finish listening.

Paula shares an example from the 2017 movie, Jumanji. The movie is about young adults finding their internal value despite what they see as external limitations of their lives. They did this by getting into their flow.

Jumanji is actually a Zulu word for “many effects”.  These “effects” refer to “the exciting consequences of the game”,  in the movie, the ultimate effect is flow.

Michele shares an example of feeling the effects of someone else’s flow experience with Heather Headley, the Tony winning star of  the Broadway musical Aida. When Headley reaches an amazing note and belts it out it at length, the conductor, the orchestra, and everyone in the audience is moved to tears and awe.

The message is that you can take control of circumstances to create flow, and flow will affect your experience and possibly the life experience of others.

Quote:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

Book: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihalyi Csiksentimihaly

Book: Save me the Plums by Ruth Reichl.

Blog: Become a Magic Teacher

Connect With the Inspired Together Teachers Community: 

Download our FREE resource, The Inspired Teachers Guide to Taking Back Your Life.

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Book: The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self

 

More About Inspired Together Teachers:

Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?

If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.

Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.

Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.

Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live an inspired life.