Shri Jagat Singh Bisht
(Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker.)
Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!
☆ Positive Education # 14: Flourish ☆
FEELING GOOD and DOING GOOD
“We can all say “yes” to more positive emotion. We can all say “yes” to more engagement. We can all say “yes” to better relationships. We can all say “yes” to more meaning in life. We can all say “yes” to more positive accomplishment. We can all say “yes” to more well-being.”
Martin Seligman
People flourish when they experience a balance of positive emotions, engagement with the world, good relationships with others, a sense of meaning and moral purpose, and the accomplishment of valued goals.
Flourishing is the experience of life going well – a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively. It is the opposite of languishing – living a life that feels hollow and empty.
If you have experienced the positive emotions of gratitude, forgiveness, contentment, mindfulness, hope, and optimism, you are closer to flourishing than a person who has just enjoyed the fleeting pleasures of life.
Flourishing is not just a simple measure of happiness or life satisfaction or positive thinking. It is a state where people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning, and positive social functioning, most of the time.
Positive relationships are at the core of a flourishing life. The richest source of happiness in life are other people. If we could build good relationships with them, we would be much happier.
You can be happier if you cultivate good relationships with your family, friends and even strangers whom you meet in your day-to-day life. A warm greeting, an authentic conversation and a goodbye full of loving care can work wonders.
A Full Life
Happy people are good at their friendships, families, and intimate relationships.
To flourish, an individual must be authentically happy – experiencing positive emotions, deep engagement, and meaning in life. This means access to the pleasant life, the engaged or good life, and the meaningful life.
‘Pleasure’ and ‘gratification’ are two different words that are sometimes used interchangeably. Eating an ice-cream or getting a massage are examples of pleasure, while playing football or doing an act of kindness are examples of gratification.
Gratitude, forgiveness, savouring, mindfulness, optimism, and hope are some of the positive emotions that we can feel. A life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the past, present, and future is the pleasant life.
If you want to be happy, you must discover your signature strengths and put them into action. Using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in the main realms of life is the good life.
A meaningful life is a life of meaning. Using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are is the meaningful life.
To live all three lives is to lead a full life.
Positive emotion is good for happiness but engagement in meaningful work helps you flourish. Happiness is the experience of positive emotions like joy and ecstasy along with a feeling that life is meaningful and worthwhile.
Gratitude helps us build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. It dissolves anger, bitterness, and jealousy. Gratitude is a meta strategy for happiness. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude to be happier in life.
According to Edward Deiner, “Happiness doesn’t just feel good. It is good for you and for society. Happy people are more successful, have better relationships, are healthier and live longer.”
Apart from experiencing positive emotions, one must be engaged in a creative pursuit, and have a purpose in life. If you have an engaged and meaningful life, you are experiencing flourishing in life.
The individual must also have a positive outlook of life, full of hope and optimism, coupled with positive relationships and strong social support system. The person must always strive for positive accomplishments in life that become foundation stones for lasting happiness.
A person who has strived for positive accomplishments experiences authentic happiness and a greater sense of well-being.
Magic Triangle
People that exhibit flourishing are engaged in social participation and people that are engaged in social participation exhibit flourishing. Along with personal achievement in their life, they also focus on civic duty and social engagement.
According to Stefan Klein, “A civic sense, social equality, and control over our own lives constitute the magic triangle of well-being in society.”
Features of Flourishing
To flourish, an individual must also have a good measure of self-esteem, vitality, resilience, and self-determination. We must learn to be resilient in handling day-to-day problems that are common and thinking more realistically and flexibly about the problems we encounter.
Flourishing is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You must get the conditions right and then wait. Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger.
Jonathan Haidt has expressed it succinctly, “It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself.
“If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge. Happiness requires changing yourself and changing your world. It requires pursuing your own goals and fitting in with others.”
Please spare a while and answer the following questions honestly:
- Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?
- Do you love learning new things?
- Do you generally feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile?
- In general, do you feel very positive about yourself?
- Are you always optimistic about your future?
- When things go wrong in your life, do you bounce back to normal soon?
- Are there people in your life who really care about you?
Your answers to these questions are indicative of the following features of your personality:
- Positive emotion
- Engagement, interest
- Meaning, purpose
- Self-esteem
- Optimism
- Resilience
- Positive relationships
Based on their research in each of the twenty-three European Union nations, Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge have defined flourishing.
According to them, to flourish an individual must have all the core features – positive emotions, engagement, and meaning – and three of the six additional features – self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality, self-determination, and positive relationships.
According to their findings, Denmark leads Europe, with 33 percent of its citizens flourishing. The United Kingdom has about half that rate, with 18 percent flourishing; Russia sits at the bottom, with only 6 percent of its citizens flourishing.
When individuals flourish, health, productivity, and peace follow. According to an estimate, 51 percent of the people of the world will be flourishing by the year 2051.
“By happiness I mean a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.”
Matthieu Ricard
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Please click on the following links to read previously published posts “Positive Education” 👉
Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker
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A Pathway to Authentic Happiness, Well-Being & A Fulfilling Life! We teach skills to lead a healthy, happy and meaningful life.
The Science of Happiness (Positive Psychology), Meditation, Yoga, Spirituality and Laughter Yoga. We conduct talks, seminars, workshops, retreats and training.
≈ Editor – Shri Hemant Bawankar/Editor (English) – Captain Pravin Raghuvanshi, NM
