In my previous article documenting my experience and learnings from a year of quantifying and measuring my well-being, understanding is the first step on a path of change and transformation from surviving and languishing to thriving and flourishing. For this to work involves thinking about well-being as a system where the bodily aspects such as sleep, activity, and nutrition are in harmony with the mental aspects of stress, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem. Indeed physical health and emotional well-being are intimately intertwined in what’s become known as the mind-body connection. Our chemistry and biology impact our mood and emotions, as well as thoughts and beliefs. With all of these factors combined, they play a major role in influencing our stress and physical health.

This is how talk therapies, specifically Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT can significantly alter the way the brain works. CBT focuses on teaching individuals how to identify and change thought patterns. The goal is to consciously activate positive thoughts and behaviours until these responses become more automatic. Researchers have discovered that in the process, people’s brains and nervous systems actually change.

Research on yoga and meditation has further explored the connection between mind, body, and spirit. Studies show that the mindful movement and breathing done in yoga activates the relaxation response (rest-and-digest system), via the vagus nerve. Consequently, yoga moves the nervous system out of the “fight, flight, or freeze” response associated with stress, and into the “rest and digest” response, thus increasing emotional well-being.

What goes into our body also impacts our mental well-being. What we eat has the power to prevent or help reverse mental health challenges. Research has demonstrated the impact of food on mood, and specific nutrients have been linked to measurable positive outcomes in mental and emotional well-being. In addition, the mind-body connection manifests in the communication between the brain and the gut. About 95% of serotonin, one of the primary hormones involved in mood and emotion regulation, is produced in the gastrointestinal tract. Sometimes called “the second brain” this enteric (intestinal-related) nervous system consists of some 100 million neurons in the walls of the gut. Information travels mostly from the gut to the brain, rather than vice versa. As a result, researchers have found that people with healthy, diverse gut microbes are less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression.

Any one who read my previous article (and if you haven’t I suggest you do, as with most sequels it is best to watch the original first) will know that working on mind and body leads to a routine where positive actions are integrated into your “personal health ecology” (PHE): an individual’s ecosystem of resources and practices to manage your well-being. PHEs include a wide variety of activities, practices, and resources used to pursue health, make decisions, and interact with health care providers.

Knowing your PHE allows you to become aware of the patterns and triggers that could impact well-being and draw on the resources to either combat or better cope with the causalities. It also aligns well-being with the process of living and growing, being part of your social interactions, work / life experiences, environmental influences, and worldly dynamics. However to really thrive and flourish there is a third musketeer to mind and body; that of purpose and meaning, this is what I am exploring with this sequel.

Happiness affects our health more than our health affects our happiness. A very famous study showed that 80 percent of people felt their life to be average or above average after becoming paraplegics. Being mentally well is very positively affected by being physically well; in fact, exercise is now considered to be the best cure for most cases of depression. Severe clinical depression can also be regulated better with exercise as well as medication. Several recent studies have shown that there is a positive relationship between exercise and subjective well-being, and it is also the case that the more active you are, the less likely you are to suffer anxiety and stress. It would seem from this, as many people believe, the goal of thriving and flourishing is happiness. Whilst this is an important aspect of life it should not be seen as the ultimate goal. Sometimes feelings of unhappiness or dissatisfaction just seem to find us, and it’s up to us to take the time to explore why this might be.

"Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best." - Theodore Isaac Rubin

Satisfaction with life

One idea put forward is The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) first created by researchers Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985) and published in an article in the Journal of Personality Assessment. The scale was developed as a way to assess an individual’s cognitive judgment of their satisfaction with their life as a whole. The SWLS is a very simple questionnaire made up of five statements which are rating using a seven-point scoring system, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 7 being “strongly agree.”

- In most ways, my life is close to my ideal.

- The conditions of my life are excellent.

- I am satisfied with my life.

- So far, I have gotten the important things I want in life.

- If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

The first thing to notice is there is not a direct question about how happy someone feels, as it is focused on the cognitive component of well-being and not the emotional,  as the cognitive component has been more closely conceptualised with life satisfaction. I would go further and say that life satisfaction is closer to understanding thriving and flourishing, such that SWLS scores of 26 - 35 ie. Satisfied or extremely satisfied can be equated with flourishing, and scores of 9 - 14 ie, dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied can be equated with languishing. My score at the start of this quest is 23, close but sitting in the neutral zone. According to research this is where the majority of people score themselves. This score means you are generally satisfied, on an average day-to-day basis; however, there are areas you’d really like to improve. The suggestion is rather than there being one or two things that you feel would give you greater satisfaction, you might feel that small improvements across all domains of your life would lead to a higher sense of life satisfaction.

Governments around the world are recognising the importance of measuring subjective well-being as an indicator of progress. But how should well-being be measured? A conceptual framework was devised in 2011 by the Well-Being Institute & Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge in the UK, which equates high well-being with positive mental health. They identified ten features of positive well-being by combining feeling and functioning, i.e. hedonic and eudaemonic aspects of well-being: competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self esteem, and vitality. An operational definition of flourishing was developed, based on psychometric analysis of indicators of these ten features, using data from a representative sample of 43,000 Europeans. 23 countries participated in the survey across three regions: Northern Europe (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), Southern/Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom), and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Russian Federation, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine). The results reveal a very large variation across Europe, with high consistency across regions. All the Nordic countries are in the top third of the distribution, while all the Eastern European countries are in the bottom half. With respect to individual countries, there was more than a four-fold difference between the highest and lowest countries. Denmark has by far the highest rate of flourishing (40.6%), followed some way behind by Switzerland (30.2%) and Austria (27.6%). At the other end of the scale, three countries have rates of less than 10%: Slovakia (9.9%), Russian Federation (9.4%), and Portugal (9.3%). There are also striking differences in country profiles across the 10 features. These profiles offer fresh insight into cultural differences, and indicate which features may provide the most promising targets for policies to improve well-being. Comparison with a life satisfaction measure shows that valuable information would be lost if well-being was measured just by life satisfaction. Taken together, the findings reinforce the need to measure subjective well-being as a multi-dimensional construct.

Harvard program

Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science aims to study and promote human flourishing, and to develop systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines. Their Flourishing Program, (Tyler J. VanderWeele) includes a measure to gauge a person’s overall physical, mental and emotional well-being. The measure consists of two questions in each of six domains; Happiness and Life Satisfaction, Mental and Physical Health, Meaning and Purpose, Character and Virtue, Close Social Relationships, and Financial and Material Stability. While there is no specific score to determine if someone is definitely flourishing, the higher the score, the better (try it out here https://flourishing.app/about/measures/flourishing/new?q=0). The national average based on several 000’s of responses was about 70 before the pandemic and 65 in June 2020. You respond to the 12 questions in the range of 0 (not satisfied at all) to 10 (completely satisfied). My score at the start of this exploration was 65, so pretty much in line with the average, aligning with the previous SWLS score indicating that to be flourishing you perhaps need to be scoring above average.

What is interesting about this measure is how the scores breakdown across each of the six domains. The two in particular I found worthy of more attention were Meaning & Purpose, and Character & Virtue, as they sit outside the mind & body concept of well-being. Whilst it is clear that meaning and purpose have a key role in the pursuit of flourishing, improving character & virtue may be a part of the effort or work required to realise this, in the same way that physical health is key to well-being there is a need for effort in the form of exercise to achieve good physical health.

“Positive psychology takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfilment, meaning and purpose.” - Seligman, 2002

PERMA model

Many people may have heard of Abraham Maslow (1962) description of thriving and flourishing with his characteristics of a self-actualised state of mind. This description of self-actualisation has been used by others to go deeper into this topic, one of those is Dr. Martin Seligman with the introduction of the PERMA model in 2012. This is meant to  outline the characteristics of a flourishing individual and establish a Wellbeing Theory (WBT). The theory has five components that people pursue because they are intrinsically motivating and they contribute to wellbeing. These five elements or components are: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments. Research has shown significant positive associations between each of the PERMA components and physical health, vitality, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and commitment within organisations.

The first element; Positive emotion include hope, interest, joy, love, compassion, pride, amusement, and gratitude. Positive emotions can be cultivated or learned to improve wellbeing and can undo the harmful effects of negative emotions to promote resilience.

The second element; Engagement is similar to Csikszentmihalyi’s (1989) concept of “flow.” Flow includes the loss of self-consciousness and complete absorption in an activity. It is about living in the present moment and focusing entirely on the task at hand. People are more likely to experience flow when they use their top character strengths in new ways.

The third element; Relationships encompass all the various interactions individuals have with partners, friends, family members, colleagues, bosses/mentors/supervisors, and their community at large. Relationships refer to feeling supported, loved, and valued by others.

The fourth element; Meaning, Seligman discussed meaning as belonging and/or serving something greater than ourselves. Having a purpose in life helps individuals focus on what is really important in the face of significant challenge or adversity. This is different for everyone and may be pursued through a profession, a social or political cause, a creative endeavour, or a religious/spiritual belief. It may be found in a career or through extracurricular, volunteer, or community activities. A sense of meaning is guided by personal values, and people who report having purpose in life live longer and have greater life satisfaction and fewer health problems.

The fifth element; Leeloo (sorry could not resist the movie reference!) Accomplishment  also known as achievement, mastery, or competence. A sense of accomplishment is a result of working toward and reaching goals, mastering an endeavour, and having self-motivation to finish what you set out to do. This contributes to wellbeing because individuals can look at their lives with a sense of pride. Accomplishment includes the concepts of perseverance and having a passion to attain goals. Flourishing and wellbeing come when accomplishment is tied to striving toward things with an internal motivation or working toward something just for the sake of the pursuit and improvement.

Flow

The PERMA model element of engagement refers to flow; When we’re in flow, we feel absorbed in a meaningful challenge. Time slips away and we feel utterly present. This concept, outlined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, is described as being a possible antidote too languishing. So, how can we find our flow? When you find the right balance between skill and challenge, you’re likely to feel happy, powerful and full of energy – in fact, you’ll be flowing.

Support your focus; The reason some of us have perhaps struggled to find flow during the pandemic is because flow requires focus, something that’s felt elusive. Finding ways to support your focus will help you feel more motivated and will help you settle into flow more easily.

Researcher at the Northeastern University, Boston have devised; A computational theory of the subjective experience of flow. Which aims to outline a basic equation underlying the computational theory of flow: it computes that the mutual information (I) between desired end states (E) and means of attaining them (M), can be expressed as I(M;E). Exercise is one example used to illustrate the concept. When people exercise, they have a desired end state, say, losing 10kg. People also have a means of attaining their end state, perhaps walking or jogging. Whether they walk or jog and how often and far is the means and is informative of whether they will achieve their end state.

“Our theory says that the more informative a means is, the more flow someone will experience while performing it. The formula is a way of mathematically quantifying exactly how informative a particular means happens to be.” - Melnikoff

The researchers say that our flow is maximised when the mutual information we have about how the means will affect the ends is highest – in other words, when we know more about how our actions will impact our goals. This supports the notion that understanding more about the nature (actions) of you need to do is important to achieve flourishing.

The PERMA model like the Harvard program high-lights the need for meaning and purpose in order to flourish. In addition it adds the idea of accomplishment and achieving goals. From the research it feels that a way to start in the pursuit of thriving and flourishing is to both consider my goals alongside understanding the meaning and purpose and what is really important in the face of significant challenge or adversity. With this knowledge it would be possible to consider the character strengths and virtues (actions) necessary to accomplish my goals, and attain the personal values to support purpose and meaning in life.