The Nine Pathways to Greater Wellbeing
While many of us want to maximize our wellbeing, doing so can feel elusive. There aren’t a lot of roadmaps.
Wellbeing is broadly defined as human flourishing and wellness of mind and body (Diener et al., 2009). Yet, how to experience this state can be unclear.
Then, how do you attain greater wellbeing?
As part of my vitality research, I uncovered that the nine pathways of wellbeing, using the PERMA+4 model from Positive Psychology (Donaldson et al., 2019; Seligman, 2011), provides a roadmap. My research shows maximizing your own wellbeing is the core of building your vitality.
The nine pathways of wellbeing are:
Experiencing positive emotions such as happiness, joy, gratitude, and more
Being fully engaged and using your strengths to meet challenges; experiencing flow
Maintaining positive relationships through connections with others that are authentic and supportive and make you feel nurtured and valued
Being connected to meaning, finding your purpose
Accomplishment through pursuing and achieving goals and striving for greatness
Maintaining good physical health: biological, functional, and psychological health assets
Having a positive mindset toward growth, perseverance, hope and optimism
Environment, all environments you live/work in; also, access to natural light, nature, and psychological safety
Economic security, your perception of financial security
In order to encourage our overall wellbeing on a daily basis, we must anchor into the different aspects and check how we are doing in each.
How to Encourage your Wellbeing:
Within each pathway, we’ll share actionable suggestions to use to promote your wellbeing. Know that there are many additional ways to support your wellbeing within each of these pathways. This is meant to provide ideas rather than a comprehensive list.
1. Positive Emotions: intentionally do small things throughout your day that bring you joy
Are you spending time with what brings you joy? Joy can be found in small, simple experiences like looking at the mountains, spending time with someone or a pet you care about, laughing, doing an activity you enjoy and so much more. Look for places to cultivate joy in small ways every day.
“Joy, collected overtime fuels resilience – ensuring we’ll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.” –Brené Brown
2. Engagement: Live into your strengths and make sure they are being fully utilized
Living into your strengths brings out the best in you. Fully utilizing your strengths is where you can have greater impact and contribution.
Learn more about your best qualities through taking the free VIA Survey of Character Strengths self-assessment, found here. Once you know your strengths, explore how you can live into your strengths more fully.
3. Positive Relationships: focus on the quality of the relationships that are most important to you
An essential way to support positive relationships is to recognize what relationships are important to you, whether it’s family, friends, and/or significant other(s). What relationships do you want to prioritize? How could you build more positive relationships with those important to you?
4. Meaning: Cultivate more meaning through acts of giving to others
Small acts of giving and kindness towards others have positive effects on overall wellbeing. Having practices to give to others is one avenue to cultivate more meaning in your life and can give you a greater sense of purpose. Make a practice of giving and kindness to others in simple ways.
5. Accomplishment: When reflecting on what you want to achieve, include your long-term self
Focus on setting and achieving your goals to align with the perspective of your long-term self. When you reflect on goals to pursue, bring in your one-year out future self. What does your long-term self want? We often think in terms of short-term gains. We seldom give ourselves the space to ponder how our goals would benefit our long-term self. Bringing in the future self helps us focus on what’s most important to us longer term.
6. Physical Health: focus on things that serve your physical body
What activities do you enjoy that serve your physical health? The following are all good places to start to promote physical health and wellness: taking walks, eating good food, exercising, getting quality sleep, taking deep breaths and drinking water.
7. Environment: How you set up your physical environment matters
How you set up your physical environment makes a difference for your overall wellbeing. With so many of us working from home the past year and a half, it’s especially important to make sure you’ve set up your workspace ergonomically. Ensure you have access to natural light throughout the day by going outside multiple times and opening blinds to let in light.
8. Mindset: Recognize that you are the master and not the victim of your own mind
The first step towards being the master of your mind is recognizing that each of us are in control of our own minds. We can choose what thoughts we give our energy to and focus on. We don’t need to be a victim to the voice of our inner-critic, also called the saboteur. That’s the voice that’s overly critical and often gets in the way of us being our best. We can choose to learn to work with that voice with compassion without acting from it. We can also learn to give our attention to the voice of our own wisdom.
9. Economic Security: Determine what financial security means for you
While money doesn’t make us happy, there is a foundation of economic security we need for our own wellbeing. Each person will have their own definition. Check-in with yourself: what does financial security look like for me?
With all the uncertainty right now, many are feeling financially insecure. Understanding that economic security can impact wellbeing can help determine your next steps if you are feeling less secure financially.
What pathway do you want to give attention to?
It’s more important than ever to give attention to our own wellbeing. The Wheel of Vitality Assessment is an exercise that will help you determine where to start. Use the assessment to rate yourself on each aspect of wellbeing, found here.
Once you’ve done so:
Celebrate where you are doing well and keep up your focus on those areas!
Notice where there are imbalances within different aspects.
Identify one lower scoring area that you feel is lacking in your life. What’s important for you to give attention to right now?
Take one small step to improve that your wellbeing for that pathway.
Don’t focus on all the pathways at once! Our brains aren’t wired to make significant changes simultaneously and trying to do so overwhelms us. Habits are formed one small step at a time. What’s one small step right in front of you? Once you’ve done that small step, then focus on the next small step. Be kind and compassionate to yourself as you make progress to greater wellbeing.