Tuesday, July 8, 2014

THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

 THE DIGITAL COPY IS TITLED: HOW TO PLAN FOR YOUR FUTURE SELF
“Getting to know yourself and your future self can put you on a path towards contentment”
By: John D. Mayer
Published: Scientific American Mind; March / April 2014
Level of Difficulty: ****
BEFORE YOU READ
·         Many people view success in life as ‘a job, marriage, a house, kids, a summer house, a car and private education for the kids’. Do you agree? Why or why not?
·         Following your dreams is often described as childish, unrealistic and immature. Do you agree? Why or why not?
·         What does success in life mean to you? How do you plan to achieve your goals?
·         How realistic do you think your goals are?
QUESTIONS
1.       Carpe diem, or seize the moment, is a saying that upholds the value of living in the moment.  What down side of such anattitude did Zimbardo and boyd discover? Such people……………
2.       What enables us to wish to plan for the future? The fact that ………………………………………………
3.       The advantage of personal intelligence is best summarized as follows: personal intelligence…
4.       The lower the personal intelligence, the ………………. The chance of future contentment because such people can’t……………………………………………………………………………………………………
5.    Complete the following sentence based on what you have read in the section titled "Life's Dream":  The greater the correlation between… ………………and……………………the more likely we are to have a happy and statisfying future life. This proves that dreaming alone does not lead to future success.
7.       According to the experiment carried out by E. Tory Higgins, greater misery and disillusionment results from a greater gap between both  …………………and.........................
8.       The advantage of the above state is that it is ……………………………………………………………………….
9.       According to Levinson’s study, the function of a dream is to……………………………………………….
10.   Significant changes in life direction later in life only take place provided there is…………………
11.   The compass designed by Schwartz and the international team of researchers can help people determine…………………………………and then bring our personal intelligence to bear so as to…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
12.   From Helson and Strivastova’s study, we can deduce that……………………………had a high level of personal intelligence and are likely better at recognizing their personal potential.
13.   What double function does the last sentence of the paragraph beginning “Of course” serve?
14.   Study the two examples below carefully:
·         On graduation from university, a young man gets a job, marries at 28, has two kids,  buys a car and a summer house, works hard to put his kids through private school because this is expected of him.
·         On graduation, his classmate his talents lie in writing for a profession and not in the private sector. He works, collects money, goes abroad to do graduate work, settles and works abroad.
Who will reap more material reward? Who will be happier? Why?
15.   Look back at the second example in question 14. The happiness of the second example depends on his ability to ………………………………………………………………………………………………
16.   Look back at the examples in question 14. The reason why the first person experiences less happiness than he otherwise could is that the path he took in life was ……………………………
17.   Chrirtensen describes a reunion. What is the reason for what Christensen  observes?
WRITING TASK
Write an essay in which you describe how best to achieve both happiness and fulfillment in life. Use the information in the text and your own experience.
THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES
This superb text out of Scientific American Mind sheds new light on the issues of what success in life really means, who reaps the most material rewards, who experiences greater fulfillment and happiness. The truisms it comes up with are all suported by scientific experiments and are deep down, stuff we know to be true. The whole activity should lead to a good essay task.
1.      Are  more likely to engage in risky behavior
2.       Many of us really identify with our future selves; OR, we care for the individual we will become.
3.       Serves as an inner guidance system that helps us navigate the people and situations we encounter to attain our goals. Note to the student: the rest is not necessaary.
4.       Lower; imagine a future self that is realistic
5.       The current self and the future self 
      Connected to their later selves; OR, feel connected to who they would become
6.      Both their ought to selves and their actual selves and their actual selves and their ideal selves
7.       Their actual selves and their ideal selves
8.       Those negative selves are a heads up signal alerting us…
8.     Crystalize motives moving forward
19.    A sense of betrayal or compromise of the dream
10    Their inner compass points; make sure we are proceeding in tune with what we most care about.
11.    Achievers
12.   It is the concluding statement and it best summarizes the paragraph
13.   The first; the second; because happiness derives from the goodness of fit between the life structure and the self.
14.   Choose aims which are consistent with one another and to avoid contradicting pursuits as much as possible
15.   Not autonomous; OR, was being imposed from outside

16.   These people lost sight of their life purpose and failed to prioritize their relationships.

1 comment:

  1. Your content shows the power, I’m about to add this to my bookmarks. essay online

    ReplyDelete