What is Wellbeing?

This succinct definition covers the components of mental wellbeing as perceived primarily by positive psychologists. It includes subjective/hedonic/affective wellbeing (feeling good) as well as psychological wellbeing (functioning well). There are many things that influence our wellbeing, including external conditions such as income, employment, and social networks as well as personal resources such as health, resilience, and optimism. Someone with a positive sense of wellbeing has feelings of happiness, contentment, and satisfaction. Feeling good and functioning well in the world is equally important to our wellbeing.

To function well, we all need support to:

• ​Participate in activities that are meaningful and that make us feel competent and self-sufficient.
• Develop inner resources to help us cope when things are difficult and be resilient to changes that are not in our control.

It is also crucial that we feel a sense of relatedness to other people. So, in addition to feeling and functioning well, our social experiences, including supportive relationships and a sense of connection with others, form an important part of our wellbeing.

What we’d like to draw your attention to are the following points:

• There are three routes to happiness, and they are the Pleasurable Life (where we focus on maximising positive emotions), the Engaged Life (where you live a strengths-based life and get into a state of flow), and a Meaningful Life (marked by purpose and meaning).
• Seligman extended this theory to look at the five building blocks to positive wellbeing in his PERMA model – Positive Emotion, Engagement (or a state of flow), (positive) Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.
• Positive emotions are important for boosting wellbeing. The spectrum of positive emotions also includes joy, love, gratitude, awe, hope, pride, serenity, and inspiration.
• Positive relationships are imperative to buffer against loneliness and depression.
• Meaning in life has becomes all the more important, as it can help sustain us through challenging times.

HOW TO HARNESS POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IN 2022

Drawing on positive psychology does not mean ignoring the negative aspects of life and worries that we are experiencing. It is not pretending that there is not pain and suffering or painting an overly optimistic perspective. Rather, it is a way for us to flourish in this new year.

Here are some ideas that people have embraced in 2020 and 2021 that we can all try to hold on to moving forward in 2022.

• HUMILITY

The coronavirus pandemic had a humbling effect on us, both socially and emotionally. The devastating effects on our social institutions and scientific community have forced us to set our egos aside, drop our preconceptions, and see what led to this series of failures.

As it turns out, being humbled can be a good thing. There is a rich body of research to suggest that humility first makes us question our assumptions, which often leads to listening to other people’s ideas and adopting “a more other-oriented and less self-oriented outlook.” What follows is gratitude and a greater sense of connection with others. Humility is also a stepping-stone on the path to self-compassion. Modest views of ourselves and an awareness of our flaws may prevent us from judging ourselves too harshly. This can be very helpful in dealing with personal setbacks.

2020/2021 has served us all a big slice of humble pie but has presented us with the opportunity to incorporate humility into our way of being. We can start doing so by quieting our inner voices and focusing on truly listening to those around us. A humbler approach to our interactions with others will ensure better conversations with better outcomes for all involved

• COMPASSION

Across the world, COVID-19 wrought tremendous suffering, and people felt the pull of compassion. Compassion is defined as sensing suffering and moving to address it. We witnessed images of compassion on social media and in the community around us, whether this was people visiting isolated friends or cheering for health care workers.

• AWE

Awe is the feeling we get in the presence of something vast or beautiful that challenges our understanding of the world. It is something we depend on to keep life fresh. In 2020/2021, those vacations to “awesome” places could not take place. This left many people feeling flat. Awe makes us feel more alive, but, importantly, it also makes us more humble, more generous, and less self-centred. Let us remember this year, that awe can be found close to home too. So, if we are seeking awe, we can find it nearby if we take the time to look for it. People can be a great source of awe, too.

• PURPOSE

A decade of research confirms that a meaningful life or a life well-lived has plenty of joy, but more importantly it involves a sense of purpose. While we are all a little joy-deficient now, 2020/2021 certainly made up for that with opportunities to live with purpose.

Purpose is an abiding intention to achieve a long-term goal that is personally meaningful and makes a positive mark on the world.

Fast forward to a year from now when you are living purposefully. Does the stuff on your to-do list today matter? Is that how you got there?

• LOVE

As we know now, one of the few bright sides of 2020/2021 was the greater sense of shared humanity that we developed—and with that, a greater sense of concern for others and an awareness of our need for connection.