8/21課堂筆記在這裡
Today we're discussing both of Jane McGonigal's TED talks, "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life" and "Gaming can make a better world" I feel the points she is making in each talk is related. Each quote below links to the talk it originally came from.
If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio.
What is 'positive thinking'?
Have you found it to be something that works for you?
When is it effective, and when is it not effective?
How easy or hard is it for you to stay positive about what you can achieve, or feel you can achieve whatever you desire?
How easy or hard is it for you to feel like nothing will ever work for you? (Or in Fanny's immortal words, "... feel like there's no tomorrow.")
When you're in a hole, how do you negotiate yourself out of it?
Think of something very difficult that you've recently achieved, or of a very difficult project that you're currently in the middle of.
What motivates you when you're working on something that's very difficult?
External motivations? Internal motivations?
What discourages you?
How do you handle the discouragement? (Could be both useful or destructive behaviour)
How easy or hard is it for you to gain people's trust to work together on a project?
Or to trust those with whom you work on a project?
Do you feel more motivated to work with a coworker/boss/group if you feel they trust you?
Do you have any stories about how trust was given/withheld and how that affected the situation?
Think of jobs you have had, or projects (paid or not!) that you have collaborated with people on.
Which projects felt meaningful to you? Which ones felt meaningless, but had some other objective (like making money)
What attributes does the job or project have to have, to be meaningful to you?
Play-work is stuff you do that actually takes skill and is actually hard work, that you do for fun. e.g.: learning how to make a difficult and time-consuming cake.
When you play-work, what kind of things do you like to do?
What inspires/motivates you to do the kind of play-work that you do?
Does this play-work inspire you in other areas of your life?
What is harder: deciding what is the important thing to do, figuring out what needs be done, or getting a specific task done?
Do you feel the challenges you face in life are in proportion to the abilities you have to solve them?
How often have you experienced an epic win in real life? Stories?
Have you found that wins help motivate you to keep trying at something very difficult?
What motivates gamers / demotivates real life players
Epic wins. An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it. … And when you get there you are shocked to discover what you are truly capable of. That is an epic win. This is a gamer on the verge of an epic win. And this is the face that we need to see on millions of problem-solvers all over the world as we try to tackle the obstacles of the next century -- the face of someone who, against all odds is on the verge of an epic win.
Now, unfortunately this is more of the face that we see in everyday life now as we try to tackle urgent problems. This is what I call the "I'm Not Good At Life" face, … And this is a problem that a lot of gamers have. We feel that we are not as good in reality as we are in games. And I don't mean just good as in successful, although that's part of it. We do achieve more in game worlds. But I also mean good as in motivated to do something that matters, inspired to collaborate and to cooperate.
What about games makes it possible to feel that we can achieve everything?
The immediate trust of the community / Challenges are just at your level of competence. So, the first thing is whenever you show up in one of these online games, especially in World of Warcraft, there are lots and lots of different characters who are willing to trust you with a world-saving mission, right away. But not just any mission, it's a mission that is perfectly matched with your current level in the game. … They never give you a challenge that you can't achieve. But it is on the verge of what you're capable of. So, you have to try hard, but there's no unemployment in World of Warcraft. There is no sitting around wringing your hands, there's always something specific and important to be done. And there are also tons of collaborators. Everywhere you go, hundreds of thousands of people ready to work with you to achieve your epic mission. That's not something that we have in real life that easily, this sense that at our fingertips are tons of collaborators.
[The] epic story, this inspiring story of why we're there, and what we're doing. Positive feedback. … levelling up and plus-one strength, and plus-one intelligence. We don't get that kind of constant feedback in real life. When I get off this stage I'm not going to have plus-one speaking, and plus-one crazy idea, plus-20 crazy idea. I don't get that feedback in real life.
Superpowers of gamers
Urgent optimism. It is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now.
Weaving a tight social fabric. There's a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them, even if they've beaten us badly. And the reason is, it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone. We trust that they will spend their time with us, that they will play by the same rules, value the same goal, they'll stay with the game until it's over. And so, playing a game together actually builds up bonds and trust and cooperation. And we actually build stronger social relationships as a result.
Blissful productivity. … when we're playing a game, that we're actually happier working hard than we are relaxing, or hanging out. We know that we are optimized, as human beings, to do hard meaningful work. And gamers are willing to work hard all the time, if they're given the right work.
Epic meaning. Gamers love to be attached to awe-inspiring missions to human planetary-scale stories.
SuperBetter helps you achieve your health goals — or recover from an illness or injury — by increasing your personal resilience. Resilience means staying curious, optimistic and motivated even in the face of the toughest challenges.
This is how Jane McGonagal came up with the idea for the SuperBetter game. She had a brain injury, and the way to heal from a brain injury is COMPLETE rest, for a very long time. No stimulation, no activities, just lying around in bed not feeling very good with no distraction from the pain.
'My brain started telling me, Jane, you want to die. It said, you're never going to get better. It said, the pain will never end. And these voices became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to legitimately fear for my life, which is the time that I said to myself, after 34 days -- and I will never forget this moment -- I said, I am either going to kill myself or I'm going to turn this into a game.
Now, why a game? I knew from researching the psychology of games for more than a decade that when we play a game -- and this is in the scientific literature -- we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help. And I wanted to bring these gamer traits to my real-life challenge, so I created a role-playing recovery game called Jane the Concussion Slayer….
Now the game was that simple: Adopt a secret identity, recruit your allies, battle the bad guys, activate the power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle. Now it wasn't a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms. That lasted for more than a year, and it was the hardest year of my life by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering.
[Superbetter] was helping us experience what scientists call post-traumatic growth, which is not something we usually hear about. We usually hear about post-traumatic stress disorder. But scientists now know that a traumatic event doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives. Here are the top five things that people with post-traumatic growth say: My priorities have changed. I'm not afraid to do what makes me happy. I feel closer to my friends and family. I understand myself better. I know who I really am now. I have a new sense of meaning and purpose in my life. I'm better able to focus on my goals and dreams.
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
Basic Principles of SuperBetter
[She makes everyone in the audience stretch their arms] The research that the number one thing you can do to boost your physical resilience is to not sit still. That's all it takes. Every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brains.
[She makes everyone in the audience snap their fingers 50 times or count backwards from 100 by seven.] Now that's worth plus-one mental resilience, which means you have more mental focus, more discipline, determination and willpower. We know from the scientific research that willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. So tackling a tiny challenge without giving up, even one as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly 50 times or counting backwards from 100 by seven is actually a scientifically validated way to boost your willpower.
[She has the audience look at cute pictures of baby animals] All right, now what we're just feeling there is plus-one emotional resilience, which means you have the ability to provoke powerful, positive emotions like curiosity or love, which we feel when we look at baby animals, when you need them most.
If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio.
Plus-one social resilience, which means you actually get more strength from your friends, your neighbours, your family, your community. Now, a great way to boost social resilience is gratitude. Touch is even better. ... Shaking someone's hand for six seconds dramatically raises the level of oxytocin in your bloodstream, now that's the trust hormone. That means that all of you who just shook hands are biochemically primed to like and want to help each other.
The top five regrets of the dying.
Number one: I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
Number two: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Number three: I wish I had let myself be happier.
Number four: I wish I'd had the courage to express my true self.
And number five: I wish I'd lived a life true to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.
