Harnessing Your Generativity: Creativity, Flow, and Finding Agency
Dr. Rick joins me for a deep dive into harnessing our natural generativity. How can we become more productive and creative, experience greater satisfaction, and lean into our biological drives to get more of what we want out of life?
We explore what a drive is, our natural drive states, and what we can learn from models of motivation like self-determination theory, before moving on to what we can do if generativity doesn’t come naturally to us. Rick and I then share how we can lean into enjoyable experiences, feel more competent and autonomous, and learn to brave experiences of failure. The second half of the episode focuses on psychological tools that help us activate, enjoy, and hang out in generative states more often.
You can watch this episode on YouTube.
Key Topics:
0:00: Introduction
1:10: Where does Rick derives his own generativity
3:25: Motivation, aggression, and our interdependence with others
12:10: A theoretical framework for what generative drive looks like
14:50: The process of making something as a form of repair or healing
19:30: Confidence, autonomy, and relatedness
23:55: The way we think of ourselves
28:10: Agency, and what we can and cannot influence
34:30: More on aggresiveness
40:55: Work ethic, the role of passion and enjoyment, and finding your why
47:45: Competency and flow
50:55: Having positive associations with effort
57:10: Enriching vs. absorbing our experience
1:01:30: The little things that make a big difference
1:04:30: Recap
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