The Pursuit of Flourishing: A holistic understanding of happiness and wellbeing
Sharing a few concepts from what I've been reading and learning on Positive Psychology, and how it can help make life worth living
Note: I am well aware that this is mostly a Western conception of wellbeing, and that I still have much to learn from Sikolohiyang Pilipino and about wellbeing indicators across cultures. However, I hope that by sharing this, I am better able to comprehend what I’ve learned thus far, and that what I have to share with you gives you greater awareness and resources to pursue your own wellbeing and that of the people you live and work with.
I’ve started to write about Positive Psychology on this Substack1, and I intend to do more of that, so I thought it might be good to lay out some of the basics of concepts I learn about in Positive Psychology. :)
What is Positive Psychology?
Without getting too academic about it, Positive Psychology explores what makes life worth living and builds the enabling conditions for that. It recognizes that its goal is not identical to the initial pursuit of psychology - to understand mental illness and psychology dis-ease, and undoing the disabling conditions of a life worth living.
“The goal of positive psychology in wellbeing theory, in contrast, is plural and importantly different: it is to increase the amount of flourishing in your own life and on the planet.”
- Martin Seligman, Flourish2
I appreciate how the goal of positive psychology is to increase not just the flourishing of the individual, but also of the collective. When we factor in positive relationships built on trust (which release oxytocin) and positive emotions that result from kind acts we do for others (which release dopamine), it’s not hard to see why the flourishing of the collective whole is greater than the flourishing of individual parts. And that the flourishing of the individual also rests on the flourishing of the collective.
The positive psychology movement began to enter more and more people’s consciousness in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association.
In his book Flourish, Seligman defines positive psychology as “the study of positive emotion, of engagement, of meaning, of positive accomplishment, and of good relationships”, and says that its goal is to measure and build human flourishing.
What is Flourishing?
It goes beyond just happiness or wellbeing to offer a more holistic perspective on what it means to feel happy and well. (Throwing in a funny reel below for a good giggle.)
In the state of flourishing, we have energy (a much coveted resource these days, along with time and attention), and are more resilient in the face of challenges or setbacks. Flourishing is often described on the other side of the spectrum of languishing.
Languishing is the blahs — a sense of stagnation, disconnection, disillusionment and emptiness3. On the other hand, flourishing is a sense of engagement, connectedness, optimism and joy across one’s life and work.
The other end of the flourishing spectrum isn’t depression, because as I explained earlier, positive psychology doesn’t focus on psychological states that go into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Instead, it explores how to get people from that neutral blah state to a more thriving, enlivened state.
According to Seligman’s PERMA+ model, which also aligns with the flourishing research work of Huppert and So4, there are five elements of wellbeing that can contribute to human flourishing or thriving, if cultivated. Although some resources show an additional (and important) sixth element5. In other resources on Positive Organizational Psychology, they even add four more6, but for now, we’ll focus on the elements relating to the flourishing of the individual.
Elements of Wellbeing
Positive emotions. Happiness, joy; feeling satisfied or content with life; feeling like one is living a pleasant or pleasurable life. I don’t think that requires much more explanation for now. :)
Engagement. I liken this element most to the psychological concept of “flow”, or being “in the zone”, recognized and named by the late psychologist Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi. Flow is a state of intrinsic motivation where the person is fully immersed in what they are doing, and is achieved through the optimal balance of challenge and skill. Engagement is being fully present in the moment, to have one’s attention and interest in the here and now.
Relationships. Very little that is positive is solitary.7 Although it’s possible to feel a sense of flow or engagement on one’s own, many of the other elements of wellbeing matter more because we either share them with other people or do them for other people (kindness and altruism have been found to do wonders for our wellbeing; while oxytocin, like the love and trust hormone that comes from hugs and connection, increases our feelings of safety and belonging).
Meaning. This is the feeling of connection to something greater than one’s self. It could be tied to spirituality, a cause, or even to our relationships within a family unit or community. More recently, Seligman has also begun to shift the language to mattering — the sense that one’s actions and existence matter. As someone who’s had regular mini existential crises8, I can say that reconnecting to one’s sense of meaning can help make life feel worth living.
Accomplishment. This seems to be a contentious one, as Seligman seemed rather disclaimer-y when talking about this, especially when someone asserted to him that people’s pursuit of success, accomplishment, winning, achievement, and mastery for their own sakes has yielded catastrophic results (i.e. climate change, the downside of capitalism, etc.) This is why I appreciated that the goal of positive psychology written above is to increase the “amount of flourishing in your own life and on the planet”. So contentions aside, perhaps for now, I will simply relate this to the ideas of self-esteem and self-efficacy — feeling good about one’s self, and feeling like one is capable of achieving certain things, respectively.
Vitality. A recent addition, not by Seligman himself, this element is about strong, healthy bodies. And it’s funny that it wasn’t actually included before, given the connection of the mind and body. (Ah and such is science and these frameworks! Our understanding can evolve as we learn and grow.)
When I think of these elements, and when I think of “living my best life”, these definitely sound like the necessary elements of that. And while I have a bit of all of these elements in my life right now, I also know that there are times when maybe my meaning or vitality level dips, or times when I felt disconnected from meaningful relationships. So it helps to have this as a way to check in with one’s self:
Do I try my best to have a good laugh and/or be grateful for big and small things in my day?
Do I try my best to have mindful presence in the here and now?
Do I try my best to connect with people that matter and/or be kind to others?
Do I try my best to make sense of my life by connecting with something bigger than myself?
Do I try my best to celebrate success?
Do I try my best to nourish and move my body?
In a future post, I want to dive into this a bit more from a Filipino cultural lens, but for now, I’ll use this time to take a pause to consider which element of wellbeing I’d like to nurture more this week, and start with that. :)
How about you? What are you compelled to do now?
Seligman, M. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and wellbeing. Atria Books.
My man Adam Grant wrote about languishing in a viral New York Times article, and created an audio version of it in his Work Life podcast. Listen here.
Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge defined and measured flourishing in twenty-three European Union nations. They found that to flourish, an individual must have all the “core features” (Positive emotions, Engagement or interest, Meaning or purpose) and three of the six “additional feature” (Self-esteem, Optimism, Resilience, Vitality, Self-determination or Agency, Positive relationships). You can read more of about this from Seligman’s Flourish.
Here’s one source and another on the V of PERMA+V. Though I don’t recall reading about it in Seligman’s 2011 book Flourish or his more recent 2023 book with Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, Tomorrowmind. I did find some other sources citing Seligman in relation to the V, but I chose not to go down that particular rabbit hole today.
Donaldson, S. I., van Zyl, L. E., & Donaldson, S. I. (2021) PERMA+4: A Framework for Work-Related Wellbeing, Performance and Positive Organizational Psychology 2.0. Frontiers in Psychology (12). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.817244.
Quoted from Seligman’s Flourish, where he also writes: “When asked what, in two words or fewer, positive psychology is about, Christopher Peterson, one of its founders, replied, ‘Other people.’” :)
