Wellbeing

Mental health experts advocate wellbeing as a way of improving our lives. Wellbeing helps us stay resilient, build social support and self-efficacy, and cope with adversity.

But what exactly is wellbeing and if it’s so good for us, how do we get more of it?

In positive psychology, wellbeing is a heightened state that’s beyond just feeling happy or having good health. It’s a condition of flourishing, where we thrive in many aspects of our lives.

Wellbeing isn’t as straightforward as just being happy. Wellbeing looks at lots of different elements that make us complex humans tick. It considers how we:

• cultivate meaning and good relationships
• use our strengths
• contribute to a ‘greater’ cause
• find pleasure in losing ourselves in things we find challenging and enjoyable.

Following on from last weeks article, we are looking at finding and using our strengths.

Finding your strengths and using them

Positive psychologists have found that some of the happiest people on the planet are those who have discovered their unique strengths and used their strengths for a purpose that’s greater than their own personal goals or benefit. In wellbeing theory, there are 24 strengths that underpin PERMA. These fall under the following six categories:

• Wisdom (creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective)
• Courage (bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest or enthusiasm)
• Humanity (love, kindness, social intelligence)
• Justice (teamwork, citizenship, fairness, leadership)
• Temperance (forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-control)
• Transcendence (appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humour, spirituality)

Interestingly, these six categories are valued in almost every culture.

How can I find out what my strengths are?

Psychologist Martin Seligman tells us we all have our own signature strengths.

• A signature strength has the following features:
• A sense of authenticity (feeling like ‘this is the real me’)
• A feeling of excitement when using it
• Learning very quickly when first learning or practicing the strength
• Wanting to find new ways of using it
• Feeling invigorated rather than exhausted when using your strength
• Pursuing projects that revolve around the strength
• Feeling joy, enthusiasm or flow whilst using it.

Using your strengths in new ways

Once you know what your strengths are, find a new way to use one or two of them.You can achieve more happiness and meaning in life by applying your strengths to everything you do, and using them to help you overcome challenges.

It’s also great to realise and celebrate the character strengths in other people. Make time to cultivate and use your strengths in everyday life.

For example, if your signature strength is:

• kindness – find a way to help others in need like volunteering at a soup kitchen or animal shelter, helping kids learn to read at a local school. Scientists have found that practicing kindness produces the most ‘reliable momentary increase in wellbeing of any exercise … tested’ (Seligman 2011)
• love of learning – enrol in a new course or start reading a new book about something that challenges you
• humour – start a blog with your best work; ring a friend and try out some new jokes
• creativity – jot down some ideas for a script or book, and start writing it; take pictures or make drawings and make them into something to give as presents
• hope – visit people in hospital, help with respite care, write to the local paper about something positive you’re hopeful about
• appreciation of beauty and excellence – walk somewhere new to appreciate nature, visit a gallery you haven’t been to in ages, start a new book group or film group
• leadership – coach your kids’ soccer team, rally your neighbours to achieve something for your community.

Think about how applying your strengths in new ways makes you feel afterwards, ask yourself:

• Did it challenge and engage you?
• Did you meet new people?
• Did you feel like you lost sense of time and self-awareness (flow)?
• Did you feel satisfaction or pleasure or enthusiasm?
• Do you want to do it again?

Benefits of finding and using your unique strengths

Help improve your 'pillars' of wellbeing

Finding and using your strengths can contribute to all our ‘pillars’ of wellbeing (PERMA), helping us in:

• feeling more positive emotion
• feeling completely engaged
• finding more meaning
• achieving more in life
• fostering healthier relationships.

Overcome greater challenges and show resilience

Research has found that people who use their character strengths experience greater self-esteem and ‘self-efficacy’. In other words, they feel good about themselves and have the confidence to tackle bigger issues and problems as they arise in life.

Feel truly content

We can also use our signature strengths to achieve pleasure and gratification through the activities we enjoy.

Make a real difference

We can use our strengths to serve something greater than ourselves, creating a more meaningful life and helping others.

Finding flow

Have you ever been so immersed in doing something that you looked up and had no idea of what time it was? Did you find you weren’t jaded or tired, even though you’d been doing it for a long time?

Flow is a state of complete immersion in an activity

Flow happens when you’re so absorbed by an activity that you’re no longer aware of time or worries, and even lose your sense of self.

One of the pioneers of the concept of flow is Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He’s also one of the founders of positive psychology. Csikszentmihalyi first developed the concept of flow when he was trying to understand when people enjoyed themselves most.

What does being in flow feel like?

Csikszentmihalyi describes being in flow as ‘being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.’

Csikszentmihalyi’s factors to identify flow include:

• intense and focused concentration on the present moment and the activity itself
• merging of action and awareness
• a loss of reflective self-consciousness
• a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
• a distortion of temporal experience
• experience of the activity is intrinsically rewarding
• losing all sense of time passing
• non-awareness of any physical needs.

Flow is a state of joy, creativity and total involvement. Our problems disappear, and there’s a feeling of transcendence.

You’re usually applying all your attention to something challenging, and concentrating so much that you enter a ‘flow’ state. Flow happens when you’re quite challenged or doing something you love. It happens in different ways for all of us.

Some sportspeople achieve a state of flow and describe it as being ‘in the zone’. Others experience flow whilst painting or playing a musical instrument.

What are the benefits of flow?

Csikszentmihalyi found that people find genuine satisfaction during a state of flow.

‘The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.’ – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When we are in a flow state of consciousness, we are so completely absorbed in an activity that we feel:

• strong
• alert
• effortlessly in control
• a loss of self-consciousness (forget yourself and all your worries)
• an expression of creative and higher order abilities
• a heightened sense of awareness of the present (also known as ‘being in the zone’)
• we are so focused
• there is no negative thinking or discomfort.

Flow can also improve our performance and helps us master new skills. For example, in a sporting performance, musical concert, teaching others, learning, pursuing a creative task, a work task, or exam situation.

Things you can do to find your flow

Flow can happen in whatever it is that you’re completely absorbed in. Flow can happen while you’re studying a new topic or learning a new skill – something that requires you to extend/challenge yourself, such as:

• surfing, skiing, rock climbing
• building, painting
• gardening
• inventing
• solving puzzles
• playing backgammon, chess or cards
• playing sport
• doing yoga
• playing music
• playing an instrument
• dancing
• on a challenging bushwalk
• writing, reading
• drawing, designing
• at work – when you’re totally engaged in the task.

This article has been taken from the below website

Wellbeing resources and information - Black Dog Institute

Click below button to find some useful links on our website

Links that might be helpful

Supporting children's mental health during a pandemic toolkit - Emerging Minds