#6 If You Saw Wellbeing Like This, What Difference Might It Make?
Investigate different ways of understanding wellbeing
When I ask people what wellbeing means, they typically link it to obtaining possessions they don't have, like a new car or a house. Or a jump in status - a promotion. Or an imaginary joyful experience such as a holiday abroad, say, or a massage or visit to the gym.
Me too for a long time.
This take on wellbeing suggests it’s a by-product of some other event, the rewards for a job well done, say, an inheritance, lottery win, good meal, a workout etc. Which it is, of course, until I discovered that needn’t be the whole story on wellbeing.
Having a new car, or being on those ski slopes for a winter break, does not guarantee you’ll feel good or joyful about it. If, as was explored in Post #5 on the influence you have over your experience in each moment, what’s being projected onto your internal screen in your mind is preoccupied with a worry or concern, you may not even notice the sound of the crisp snow or the warmth of the sun on your face.
Additionally, the notion of having to work hard to consume future goodies has a ‘jam tomorrow’ feel to it. While that can appear as motivational it can also be problematic; it takes our attention away from being present right here right now - see Post #3.
“Why can't you and those around you BE WELL today, right now?” You might ask. Why wait?
With questions like these in mind, I wondered whether an additional understanding of wellbeing could be helpful. One that speaks to the role wellbeing plays in doing a job well in the first place, less so just as a by-product of that. One, also, that might move us away from the idea that it's a nice thing to have if only we had time to focus on it. A way of thinking about wellbeing that encourages those who think it's just soft and fluffy nonsense, like I did once if I’m honest, to think again.
My inquiry led me to two different ways of understanding wellbeing. Both had little to do with the future and much more to do with what's happening right now.
How can you recognise wellbeing right now?
Let’s begin with trying to define it, which, as we’ll see, is easier said than done sometimes.
Mindful that improving wellbeing could be the goal of any one of us, and is increasingly becoming the primary objective behind policies of numerous governments and organisations, a group of researchers at Cardiff Met University surveyed all the academic literature on it. They found many descriptions of states of wellbeing but few definitions.
Their intention was to discover an easily recognisable and understood definition. They concluded wellbeing is…
“A balancing or equilibrium point in the mind that arises when the psychological, social and physical resources available to us, match the psychological, social and physical challenges confronting us.”
Let’s zoom out and see if we can see ourselves from a metaphorical distance, or someone we know quite well, being in this state of equilibrium. I suggest we might notice several things…
…hostility and ill will are absent
…the internal movies playing in our mind and make up our subjective experience, still take us from gain to loss, praise to blame, fame to disrepute, pleasure to pain and back again endlessly, but we have a degree of impartiality about these shifts. As if we’re one stage removed
…the challenges confronting us don’t overwhelm us, we acknowledge them for sure, but when in balance we access the mind’s immeasurable abundance and creativity too. If we’re short on social and physical resources, for instance, we get ideas on how to find them
…our self-talk, or that voice in the head, isn’t noisy
…we feel open to whatever happens next and curious about what that could be
…we are calm, clear and resilient; we bounce back from setbacks quite quickly
…we’re neither happy nor sad, just content in a place of in-betweenness.
Recognise such a state in yourself?
Some argue this is we humans’ default state. The one we return to and which recharges and rejuvenates. It helps us look at the world with fresh lenses.
It's worth noting this definition does not imply the following, despite some concluding otherwise…
You zone out, go a bit woohoo and disengage from the issues at hand by displaying indifference or apathy. “Spiritual bypassing” as I’ve heard it called.
You get back to wellbeing just by turning negative thoughts into positive ones: that can be over simplistic and lead to self-deception or denial.
You can stop thoughts and emotions arising in you: that’s impossible.
More simply, the definition points to how easy it is to get lost in our internal movies that inhibit wellbeing. We unknowingly fuse unhelpful meaning into the neutral thoughts that arise in us - see Post #5 again. Yet, once we observe this is the case, and I concede this isn’t easy on every occasion, this equilibrium state is theoretically available to us 24/7.
One other way of knowing you’re in this state is it offers you a new insight regarding a way forward on a tricky issue. By insight I mean options arise you hadn’t considered before and come with a positive feeling that compels you to take action. Insights typically show up when, say, we're out walking, or in the shower, or in the early hours, or any time we’re feeling relaxed.
Wellbeing, defined this way, occurs naturally far more frequently that we often give it credit for!
The second way of recognising wellbeing is…well…by its absence.
I discovered I, and many I speak to, have a knack of articulating the absence of wellbeing more easily than its presence!
At a personal level, when you’re feeling uptight or anxious, or downright sad and miserable, and are ruminating on something to the point where you can’t see the wood for the trees, wellbeing is understandably elusive. And, as we’ve seen in other posts in Helpful Questions Change Lives, its absence leaks out - in our facial expressions, tone of voice, vocabulary, and overall demeanour.
Similarly, spend 5 minutes observing a group that’s not listening to each other, going off on tangents, arguing perhaps, and getting nowhere fast, and you’re unlikely to describe their mental state as one of being well. More illbeing than wellbeing.
And on it goes, just look at folk around you and notice those for whom wellbeing is present and absent. I suggest, we can tell quite quickly when we’re looking for it, both in ourselves and those around us.
Seeing wellbeing’s absence and restoring equilibrium
What difference could it make if you put the idea that wellbeing is about acquiring something pleasurable to one side, and focus instead on its absence, and, what restores it, or returns us to our natural state of equilibrium?
I suggest there are three main ones.
1. You take ownership of your own wellbeing rather than make its absence someone else’s fault
As we saw in Post #5, what’s going on around us is usually seen as the cause of what’s happening inside us. We see experience as an outside-in phenomenon. So, if wellbeing is absent, and we’re off balance, some one or some thing out there caused it. It makes sense therefore to put energy into either changing whoever or whatever that is, or blaming them, so that we don’t have to deal with our troubling emotions and can feel better and in balance again.
Been there? Done that? Got the T-shirt? I have. Many times. And still do, until I remember the other bit of the paradox.
It asks us to consider just how true outside-in seems to us. If it isn’t, we see experience through an inside-out lens - i.e. what we project onto what’s out there is based on the sensations, thoughts and feelings playing out in the movie in our head. And, where our point of influence is. Not that we can control which sensations, thoughts and feelings enter consciousness, more how we make sense of them once they’ve appeared.
The very act of playing with, asking helpful questions and wondering about the linkages between what you sense, think and feel changes your internal movie. Defaulting to who or what’s out there to explain an absence of wellbeing in here, needn’t be our first port of call.
For me, taking ownership in this is way recognises that when I’m angry, frustrated, anxious, etc. it’s my anger, anxiety etc., that I’m experiencing.
If I don’t recognise this I can’t exert influence over these illbeing-like feelings because they will just hijack me and consume all my attention. But when I do remember the inside-out lens, I’m mindful that there’s only one place to look if I want to interrupt the path these emotions take - that’s inside, to the contents of my consciousness. This means I can relax into what these contents are, and relaxation is what’s needed if equilibrium is to be restored, before new ways forward appear.
See how this cycle works?
Inevitably, our wellbeing gets disturbed. Looking at it through the inside-out lens is our fastest route back. Looking at it through an outside-in lens could take a lot longer because we’re dependent on other things and/or other people changing first, which, sometimes, they never do.
2. You get to solve problems in more satisfactory ways
Imagine if the small groups you’re a member of understood wellbeing in these terms. Suppose your family configurations - siblings, partner and children, relationships with parents etc. - friends, and the teams you’re in at work, put their individual and collective wellbeing centre stage. I suggest this would make a big difference to how they approach the problems all groups encounter from time to time.
For instance, instead of starting from the position that wellbeing is peripheral to whatever solutions they come up with, they see its disturbance as central to why a problem arose in the first place and its restoration vital to whatever they do next.
Contrast starting a search for solutions to differences with questions like how are we making sense of this problem? vs. who’s to blame for this?
Similarly, imagine they know from personal experience that new answers are more likely to emerge once whatever’s disturbed their wellbeing settles down first. They therefore help each other uncover, explore and experiment with what’s on their internal screens before they even think about solutions and what comes next. These are often experienced as supportive, helpful conversations that help folk clear their minds of all the noise. Many describe them like this, “they feel so natural, yet are so rare.”
What if the groups you’re in know the imposition of solutions against their members’ will isn’t sustainable, so they seek ones that help “all boats rise with the tide” instead? In other words they’re actively looking for wins all round - inside and outside the group - not just wins for some at the expense of others.
That doesn’t mean they always find them I might add. There’s often a need for compromises and a bit of give and take, but when the tacit intention is to create a win for as many folk as possible, the probability that they are willing to give and take, or change their mind completely, increases significantly.
Solutions to diary clashes, resource allocation, relationship imbalances, power struggles, plans, disputes and more can all be found much more quickly when a culture of wellbeing underpins “the way we (in a particular group) do things around here.” And, ironically, the less pre-conceived these solutions are, the more chance there is they emerge from the group and are seen as anything but “same-old, same-old.”
There is one final difference which I talk about in the video below. It concerns our values and how this way of thinking about wellbeing can simplify them. It also help us do the right thing when we face difficult choices.
You’re very welcome to join me, oh and Ted, below!
Kindest,
Roger
Most of us want to do the right thing in the situations we encounter.
Living up to that means adhering to a set of values such as integrity, honesty, and humility for example.
If morality helps us distinguish right from wrong, it's based on the study of values. So too, ethics; what we actually do based on our moral conclusions.
Sometimes, life can be full of difficult choices. Being moral and ethical, therefore, can feel like a tall order. But to my mind, we can see a way through such challenges if we think in terms of all human values boiling down to wellbeing.
This video goes into that in more depth. To help you plan your time it last 20 minutes.
I encourage you to see it as time invested in you, which is best spent in a quiet space, with few distractions!
Enjoy watching and listening. And do comment on what you make of it.