Psychology of Well-Being

People have struggled to understand the definition and meaning of terms like well-being and happiness for a long time. We seem to know intuitively that well-being is connected with things like feeling in-charge, felling connected to other people and having some sense of purpose and meaning in our work and life. One view of the psychology of well-being is that it is based on the following six key factors…

1- Self-Accepting

You are self-accepting because you have self-esteem. You understand well your strengths and weaknesses and you feel comfortable in your own skin. You are someone who feels satisfied with yourself most of the time.

2- Connected to Others

You have trusted and close friends as well and close, warm relationships with family. You find it easy to open up to new friendship sand relationships. You have genuine concern for others around you. You are willing to make some compromises in order to maintain strong relationships.

3- Independent

You have your own mind and are decisive. You do not constantly need to seek the approval of others to act. You are not someone who follows the herd; you like your autonomy and independence.

4- In Control and Adaptable

You tend to be able to handle the environment and the circumstances around you with ease. You understand that there are changes happening around you that you simply cannot control and you find ways to navigate your way through such challenges. You think about the future with anticipation rather than anxiety.

5- Purposeful

Whether it is work or personal matters, you have a tendency to set goals. You make plans almost daily or weekly and you like to believe in the formality of writing down your objectives. You have some kind of overriding passion that drives you – be it business growth or the pursuit of health and fitness. This setting of goals and planning energizes you and renews your determination to succeed.

6- Growth Oriented

You are striving to learn new things all the time and trying to develop your skills to the next level. You feel there aren’t enough hours in the day to learn, explore and experiment. You like trying out new experiences. You read about things like productivity, creativity, human potential and performance. You allocate time to read and browse the internet for new knowledge and insights.

It is interesting to note that well-being is really an amalgamation of all these six factors in a balanced way.

You can ask yourself if you are happy and how well you score in the well-being category by grading yourself on a score of 1-5 in each category (1 is low score, 5 is high score). Here is how you can generally interpret the total score:

Less than 12 points – not in a state of well-being
12-18 points – average person
18-24 points – generally happy and positive person
24-30 points – you are one of the fortunate ones