12 Drivers of Wellbeing

Right, so how do we increase your know-how? We want to increase your wellbeing wisdom. Information comes from outside, so I’m going to be sharing information with you today that hopefully, as you start to absorb it, becomes knowledge. And by the way, we’re always at the heart here because whilst it’s the science of positive psychology, it’s also about how we feel. So yes, you’re going to be taking in information, but if that remains purely academic and intellectual, it’s not really going to help you shift the dial much. And I can say that because I made this mistake back in 2013. I moved to Thailand to set up a wellbeing resort. I had loads of great stuff on wellbeing. We designed a concept that people seemed to love. But what did we do? We didn’t keep our positive building blocks in place. We didn’t take any of our own advice or apply it to ourselves. I was so focused on the resort that I forgot to go within — and I pretty much burnt out. So if I can say that I’d do it, then don’t judge yourself if you have to. So: acquire some information today and some knowledge, but what we need to do is teach you how to go within to see how to match the two. I’ll explain more about that in a second. I’ll show you how to do both. How do you present the whole of positive psychology on one slide in one minute? This is how I decided to do it! (laughs) There are many theories within positive psychology, but to make it more accessible, I break them into 12 pillars, as I call them. Some of them are a little harder to get your head around. I’ll talk you through them as we do the exercise, but just glance over them. They’re not everything you would think they would be. I haven’t put practices on there because practices are a how. I haven’t put character strengths on there because when we work with strengths, it touches on a few of these. It increases pleasure, enjoyment, our relationships, our sense of meaning, etc. What we’ve found through positive psychology, the big theories — Martin Seligman, psychological wellbeing, self-determination theory — these are the ones that are showing up the most. These are the ones that shift the dial. So regardless of circumstances and time and culture, when people have high wellbeing, they score pretty highly on all of these. So remove the desire to try and get to a 10 — these are all pretty healthy. We’re going to do a little exercise in a minute to see where you’re at with each of these, and as you are thinking about that, I’ll explain them. The key thing is: in this exercise, go within. Whilst we know these 12 factors are relevant to everyone’s wellbeing, meaning might be expressed differently for each of you. For Shalina and Anna, for instance, there may be a totally different expression of meaning. It may be about causes you’re interested in, community, or close relationships. Me, for instance — I get a lot of meaning from nature. So how each of these should be applied, understood, and expressed is slightly different. That’s why we go within. Same for pleasure and enjoyment: one person may love a heavy metal concert; another may love staying at home stroking their cat. Extreme examples, but you get what I mean. So how each of us accesses those is totally different. Sorry, I’m just going to have to do this. Right — so just a reminder: go within for greater insight so you can make more self-aligned choices. So yes: absorb information from this — the 12 factors, the key barriers — but then take the time to go within, and then you’ll get the match. Then you know what you need to do, what to build on, what to shift. So what we’re going to do: I’m going to spend a few minutes while you’re all scribbling away, just talking through. Switch me off if you need to, take out your earphones if that helps. I’ll talk you through each of these. Gut feel: as you go through each one, just give it an instinctive rating for you right now. If you were giving it a zero, that means you’ve got absolutely no pleasure and enjoyment in your life whatsoever. If you were giving it a 10, that’s the most you can imagine experiencing — your optimum. We’re not comparing ourselves to an 18-year-old boy on a gap year having a very hedonistic time. This is personal to you. And after that — keep this in mind — we’re not just looking for deficits. What you want to do is identify what’s already working, because that’s your low-hanging fruit. Afterwards, you’ll circle three or more that you’re happy with, and you’ll build on those. Then you may identify some that make you think, “Ah, I didn’t think of that one. I didn’t attend to that. I didn’t work on that.” Right, so let’s begin. Pleasure and enjoyment speaks for itself. These are opportunities to enjoy the lighter side of life. It’s worth saying that you could have a whole week lined up with all the things you say bring you pleasure and enjoyment — but if they’re too back-to-back, you won’t enjoy them. Have you ever been asked, “How was your weekend?” and you can’t even remember because you planned all these great things but felt so overwhelmed that none of it really sank in? Or you could have these great things on, but if your mind is elsewhere — worrying about what you’re doing next week — you’re not going to derive pleasure or enjoyment from them. So this is a little warning: are you allowing yourself to lean into opportunities for pleasure and enjoyment? Connection to others is huge. How you interpret this is up to you: feeling a sense of belonging, having close personal relationships, feeling supported or feeling like you support others. Engagement and flow. Do you feel that you have opportunities for deep flow in your days or weeks — where you lose your sense of time and self? For some people, it comes from tennis. For others, writing. Reading can also be an opportunity to go into flow. This is an important one because it supports resilience and emotional regulation beyond the moment. A sense of achievement, no matter how small. Having even a tiny sense of achievement in your day supports wellbeing. Being able to reflect and say, “You know what? I didn’t finish my to-do list, but I did clear that table. I did pick up the phone. I tried something new.” That matters. A sense of meaning. Meaning relates to feeling connected to something bigger than the self — family, friends, causes, spirituality, nature. A sense of purpose and direction. This isn’t believing you have one singular purpose in life; it’s having things you are focused on that give you drive, that feel motivating and inspiring to move towards. A sense of competence means believing in your ability to do things well. Not believing you’re excellent at everything — but trusting your abilities and inner resources to tackle what matters. A sense of autonomy and freedom. So I would say that, as we’re all joining a Zoom call, objectively we are pretty free compared to many people in the world. But how do you feel about your sense of autonomy? Do you feel like everything’s out of your control and happening to you, or do you feel quite in control of your choices and the way things are playing out right now? It’s how you feel about that that is quite important. Optimism and hope. Hope is the pinnacle, really. If there’s an absence of hope, you may be in a place… well, you may be in a depressed place. It’s one of the indicators—where there’s lack of hope, people tend to be very low. But it is something we can cultivate and nurture. It’s different to optimism, but closely related. Do you feel at the moment like you’re optimistic? Like there’s hope—that you believe things can be brighter and better than they are now? Flexible thinking and perspective. It’s shown that the ability to be flexible in our thinking—not rigid, not black-and-white—supports our wellbeing and resilience. When we’re happier, think about it… when you’re at your happiest, you’re more open to different opinions, more willing to take on another perspective, to think laterally. When I’m not happy, I’m more closed off. So we can reverse-engineer this. If we want to feel better, we can challenge ourselves to take different perspectives. Self-acceptance and self-compassion. I picture these as a pillar that supports a wellbeing “house” for ourselves. If I had to put two at the centre, I’d put connection to others and connection to self. Self-acceptance and self-compassion—how we feel about ourselves, how we treat ourselves—is really important. You can have a meaningful job, engagement and flow, pleasure and enjoyment… but if inside, you’re your own worst enemy, it’s going to be really hard to have wellbeing. There were a couple of questions in the chat relating to this directly. One question was about how sense of competence is different from self-acceptance. Competence is more about skills, ability to learn, trust in your judgments, and feeling that what you do has an effect on the world. It doesn’t have to be about career—it can be any area of your life. Self-acceptance is liking and accepting who you are, and self-compassion is being kind to yourself as well. So yes, they’re related—but they are not the same. Competence is “I can do things.” Self-acceptance is “I am worthy as I am.” Another question: Do some pillars compete with each other? For example, could too much engagement and flow lead to less pleasure and enjoyment? Interesting. We know we actually need both. Some sit more in the hedonic space—pleasure, enjoyment, lighter happiness. Some sit more in the eudaimonic space—fulfilment, meaning, growth. Fulfilment doesn’t always have a smiley face, but it is deeply satisfying. We need both ends of the scale. With meaning, you might say, “My meaning is a seven now, I think… now that I think about it.” What’s giving me a meaning score of seven versus six? It might be: “Actually, I’ve been spending more time with the people who matter most to me. I’ve been reconnecting with my spirituality. I’ve had more time in nature.” What would an eight look like? It may be saying no to things that distract you. It may be going for walks in nature with your family. It can be very small, practical ways of working with this rating scale. Okay. So that’s the big exercise I would say you can keep coming back to over the next week or so. And yet, if nothing else, it opens our eyes to what else is at play — what levers we can work with beyond just time-based practices. I’m definitely not saying you need to do all of this. It just means we’ve got a healthy attitude to areas of our health that we can work with. Let me go to the chat… Any other questions, Pri? Evie? You had one about Anna’s question — actually having similar scores across domains points more to balance than to shooting in too many directions. And another earlier question: “Is self-enrichment and filling one’s cup part of the list, or included?” I would say they’re separate. Filling your cup is all of these pouring in. You need some or all of these at different degrees depending on where you’re at. Self-enrichment — should we call that fulfilment? It may come more from things that don’t have a smiley face: connection to others, meaning, purpose. Almost all of these except pleasure sit more in the meaningful space. Filling up is like filling the ones that might need it, but it’s a sense of enrichment. I always think of the more eudaimonic end of well-being — most of them, really. Not a smiley face, but deep roots. Those are the things that help us survive and thrive. They’re not as transient as positive emotions like pleasure. I know I’m pulling back the curtain on positive psychology and saying, “Here it all is — 12 things.” So don’t judge yourself if this doesn’t fall into place immediately. What I want to show you is that there’s more than the things you’ve been working with. If you’ve been thinking, “How else do I support my wellbeing? Go to bed earlier? Add another practice?” — really just drop your shoulders. You don’t have to get all of this right. It’s simply, “Oh, there are more levers available to me.” Some of us lean more toward one end or the other. Sometimes we overlook some of these. Maybe earlier in life we focused on pleasure and enjoyment and forgot about relationships. Or vice versa — focused on relationships and forgot about career. We’ve burnt ourselves out and become less flexible in our thinking. You cannot have high wellbeing by just focusing on one or two. We’re not all going to be a nine or ten — but they all need to look quite healthy. And “healthy” looks different for each person. Someone hedonic-oriented or younger may lean more into pleasure and fun. Someone else may need deep, meaningful connections. That was what happened in Thailand: We had purpose, focus, direction — but let everything else fall away. Even relationships. We were so focused on building the resort that I didn’t attend to my relationships the way I should have. I wasn’t having healthy practices. I wasn’t looking after my health. That pendulum swung too far. Positive psychology doesn’t take a deficits mindset. It asks: what’s already working? What can I keep in place? They’re your building blocks. If it’s friendships, your relationship with your kids, your practices — acknowledge that and keep them front of mind. So that’s the point of identifying what you’re happy with, then circling three that you’d like to see a bit higher. To finish on health: I only mean the controllable factors — the levers we can work with. Nutrition, sleep, exercise. That doesn’t mean a narrow definition of health — just that these are things we can influence.