An Affirmation App

This presentation is part of the course project for Coursera's Developing Data Products class. The assignment has two parts:

• First, I create a Shiny app and deploy it on Rstudio's servers.
• Second, I use Rstudio Presenter to prepare a reproducible pitch presentation about the application.

This presentation addresses the second part of the course project.

The shiny app I developed for the first part of the course project is avalilable here: https://joeflorence.shinyapps.io/shinyrepo/

Source code for the ui.R and server.R files are available on my GitHub: https://github.com/joeflorence/ShinyRepo

This app is simple.

It asks that you write down your hopes and dreams and then click a button.

Each time you press the button, you get a different prompt.

The real challenge is to take some deliberate time to visualize and meditate on the affirmations between each click of the button.

'Every thought actually generates molecules' - Deepak Chopra

• One view of causality attributes all change in the world to physical movements.

• Often, we can observe these changes and make sense of them as such - if I throw a ball and break a window, then it is reasonable to say that my physical act of throwing causes the window to break.

• But is it fair to say that we can cause changes based on unobservable actions? Research in cognitive psychology suggests the affirmative.

• By thinking different thoughts, we generate the seed of new actions.

• These cognitive shifts, although originating at the molecular level, serve as a primary causal factor useful in explaining widespread, structural changes in the world.

• Give it a shot! See if you can draw connections between the molecular changes you make by meditating on affirmations and observable changes in your life.