What is Well-being, anyway?
Has anyone else noticed that ‘well-being’ seems to be everywhere these days? It’s not just me. Over recent years, psychological research has shifted from an emphasis on disorder and dysfunction to a focus on well-being and positive mental health¹. The well-being trend grew by 10.6 per cent between 2013 and 2015, according to the Global Wellness Institute, and is now worth $3.72 trillion globally. The Times even declared that 2018 is going to be the year of self-care.
But what do we really mean by well-being? It seems to be one of those words in popular parlance that we use without really being clear on what we’re talking about. And it turns out that’s for good reason; the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note that there is no consensus on a single definition of well-being². Dictionary definitions to describe this state include words like comfortable, healthy, happy, or successful. A New Economics Forum report commissioned by the UK government describes well-being as having two main elements: feeling good and functioning well.
So far, so not very clear!
And I think it’s important to be clear. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing different ideas to cultivate and support well-being in life so let’s start by agreeing on what we’re all talking about.
Well-being = Balance
I’m a huge fan of research; I just love learning! So, as I was thinking about the question of what well-being is, I did what we all do — I hit Google. And I came across an article in the International Journal of Wellbeing which proposes a new definition of well-being “as the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced”³.
I swear I had not read this before coming up with the name, The Practical Balance, but it turns out I might have been on to something!
The authors explain that “stable well-being is when individuals have the psychological, social and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social and/or physical challenge”. This resonates strongly with my belief that balance is that sweet spot between challenge and competence, between effort and ease, where we are neither complacent nor overwhelmed.
Well-being does not mean that we have to feel good all the time. Experiencing difficult emotions and discomfort is a normal part of life. Our emotions are not inherently good or bad; as Susan David describes in Emotional Agility, emotions are data, a way of understanding what’s going on around us [you can watch Susan’s popular TED Talk here]. Developing our resources so we are able to manage our emotions is essential for our long-term well-being. In fact, having challenge prevents us from stagnating.
Well-being is a dynamic state. The balance between our challenges and our resources is constantly shifting as we grow and go through our lives. We get a new job or a new baby or decide to move house — the challenges get bigger — and the see-saw moves. As we learn new skills and new coping strategies, our resources grow and we move back into equilibrium. And after a while, we start to crave new challenges and the process starts all over again.
This notion of well-being puts us firmly in the driving seat of our own lives. We are active participants in our lives; we have choices and make decisions that affect our well-being in both positive and negative ways. We have preferences and desires and ambitions that shape our experience of the world. That said, I also firmly believe that well-being is not just an individual’s responsibility. There are a range of factors that are a part of the fabric of our society that impact us and which we don’t control as individuals. Mental health is shaped to a great extent by the social,economic, and physical environments in which people live⁴. Poor mental health is both a cause and a consequence of social, economic and environmental inequalities⁵. So whilst I believe there is a lot we can do as individuals to support our own well-being, we also need to take a sledgehammer to the structural barriers that are holding so many people back.
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[1] Huppert F (2008) Psychological well-being: evidence regarding its causes and its consequences (London: Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project 2008)
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm
[3] Dodge, R., Daly, A., Huyton, J., & Sanders, L. (2012).The challenge of defining wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 2 (3), 222–235.
[4] World Health Organization and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Social determinants of mental health. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2014.
[5] Elliott, I. (June 2016) Poverty and Mental Health: A review to inform the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Anti-Poverty Strategy. London: Mental Health Foundation
