On this journey to examine ways to equip and engage Gen Z, specifically in the college classroom, much of my interest has zeroed in on processes such as active or experiential learning activities such as gamification, virtual simulations, and student-created content. As I’ve pondered what strategies might be successful in my classes, research on tinkering and controlled floundering guided me to what is called design thinking. Design thinking as an educational tool described in Designed to Learn “puts the big ideas first by asking students to seek out and identify problems. It then works backward to identify information students must master as they design solutions that address problems or opportunities.”

Being introduced to this backward design concept in 2014 during Union’s Course Redesign Workshop, I have continued to explore these concepts more in depth in efforts to apply their strategies to all the courses in my schedule. However, the more research that is reviewed, the greater a connection I seem to have with the terminology of design thinking. One of the steps in design thinking is to define the big why, the purpose: why is this valuable to learn? why is this relevant? or what do I expect from a student who has completed one of my sport management courses? In 2014, here was my answer, “My dream for you is to be a comfortable, confident, and exciting sport professional who can engage with peers and lead others with integrity.” Now, the content covered in these courses is filtered through this lens.

Moving away from considering what is taught in a specific course in sport management, I contemplated how elements of design thinking related to developing the Habits of a Flourishing Life and glimpsed parallels between design thinking and flourishing thinking. If my dream is to consider the qualities of a flourishing life by creating relational equity for personal and professional success, it needs to work backwards. Therefore, flourishing thinking examines those people who are thriving and reverses their course to observe how they accomplished that goal. In addition to the how, one might also return to the why question: why do I desire to create habits that lead to a flourishing life? If I personally answer this question, I return to a statement adapted from one I heard at FaithWalk: I desire a flourishing life so that I can serve a living Savior by pouring my life into others.

Flourishing Thinking communicates that one should have some knowledge about who God created them to be and as one increases their learning that results from developing the Habits of a Flourishing Life, they are fulfilling their divine purpose both personally and professionally. So, just as design thinking has specific elements that serve as guiding questions, Flourishing Thinking develops the Five Habits, not along a linear path, but as a fluid process where growing occurs in various ways during different seasons of life and in the varied roles we fulfill in our communities. Flourishing Thinking provides us with a lens to evaluate how we invest our time and energy into what we value.

In summary, Flourishing Thinking, like design thinking, asks us to define a problem such as what is preventing me from developing a flourishing life? Once a problem is defined, we move to research solutions in order to solve the problem such as self-reflection, how do I develop the habits? Next, we experiment with solutions such as what routines can I implement that move me towards developing the habits? Some of the experiments we try may fail and that is acceptable because we learn more when we flounder on our way to flourishing. Lastly, we spend time in reflection using feedback from our experiments, wisdom from our mentors, and any other information gathered to make the necessary adaptions to move further along the continuum to flourishing.

Please feel free to share below how you might use Flourishing Thinking to move towards personal and professional success.