Well-being

Paolo included in Happiness

2023-05-19 663 words 4 minutes

Contents

What is well-being?

Well-being is a state that a person reach when one does what is good for oneself.

Why some people behave in a way that bring them to feel pain and negative emotions instead to reach well-being?

Premises

(A) Some people misinterpret experiences they lived.
(B) Some people can make a mistake evaluating the possible consequences of their behaviour.
(C) We evaluate the possible consequences of our behaviour based on the past experiences and the interpretation we gave them. See Brain.
If (A) and (C), then (B).
(D) Some people can wrongly think that a behaviour that could bring to reach well-being, bring him to feel pain and negative emotions instead and viceversa.
If (B), then (D).
(E) Some people are not able to choose how to react to emotions.
(F) Some people don’t know the best strategies to reach well-being.
(G) Some people don’t know how to behave in a way useful to reach well-being.
If (D) or (E) or (F), then (G).
(H) Some people behave in a way that bring them to feel pain and negative emotions instead to reach well-being.
(I) The opposite of reaching well-being is feeling pain and negative emotions.
If (G) and (I), then (H).

Conclusions

Therefore, some people behave in a way that bring them to feel pain and negative emotions instead to reach well-being.

What is good for this person means?

Although it is very subjective and some people weigh some criteria over others, it generally means:

behaving in a way that allow us to feel positive emotions over negative emotions
pursuing mastery and competence in the fields of interest of the person.
finding a life purpose and living coherently.
developing good relationships with the people that are important in our life.
be involved in activities that have positive impacts on other people.
be involved in activities that interest us.
be healthy
be kind with oneself

What is the hedonic adaptation?

Hedonic adaptation means getting used to stuff that give us temporary happiness. After some time the reference point that we consider as giving us happiness is moved to an higher value and that stuff won’t give us happiness anymore.

What is a reason our well-being is low?

Our brain have some bias that contribute to decrease our well-being. Some of these bias are:

Impact bias: we overestimate the emotional impact of future events in terms of duration and intensity.
Focus: we tend to focus on few things, usually negative.

What are the best strategies to reach well-being?

It highly depends from person to person. I think each person should try different strategies and find what works better for them.

Some of the best stretegies suggested by the scientific research are:

Find and use every day in a different way one own signature strengths
Savoring experiences we live
Show gratitude
Be kind
Having positive relationship with other persons
Do physical exercise.
Sleep at least 7 hours per night
Meditate
Find way to have more time than more money.

What works better to reach well-being? Simply accepting what happens in life or acting towards your goals?

Researches suggest that both the strategies are useful depending on the context.

When you have no control on something, it is better to simply accepting what happens. However you should find what it is in your control and act towards your goals.

My current conclusions about well-being

Well-being is subjective. Everyone should discover what cause well-being in their life.
If we:
- change how we interpreted past experiences
- learn how to react to emotions
- learn the best strategies to reach well-being
  
  then we can change our behaviour to reach well-being.
We can reinterpret negative past experiences to make them useful to our research of well-being.

References

Positive Psychology | Martin E. P. Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | 2000
Subjective Well-Being | Ed. Diener | 1984
The Science of Well-Being | Yale by Coursera
The Structure of Psychological Well-Being Revisited | Carol D Ryff, Corey Lee M Keyes | 1995