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!
☆ # 06: Effortless practices for Happiness and Stress Management ☆
FLOURISH, DO NOT LANGUISH
“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.
Happy people are good at their friendships, families, and intimate relationships.
EXERCISE
What went well?
Each night before going to sleep, write down three things that went well during the day, that made you happy or things for which you are grateful.
These may be small things or important ones.
Doing this exercise regularly can help you appreciate the positive in your life rather than take it for granted.
You can do this exercise on our own or with a loved one – a partner, child, parent, sibling, or close friend.
Expressing gratitude together can contribute in a meaningful way to the relationship.
You will be less depressed and feel happier.
VIRTUES AND STRENGTHS
Almost all traditions and cultures across the globe endorse six virtues – wisdom and knowledge, courage, love and humanity, justice, temperance, and spirituality and transcendence. There are several distinct routes – the strengths of character – to each of these virtues.
Curiosity or interest in the world, love of learning, judgement, critical thinking, open-mindedness, ingenuity, originality, practical intelligence, street smarts, social intelligence, personal intelligence, emotional intelligence, and perspective are routes to the virtue cluster of wisdom and intelligence.
Valour, bravery, perseverance, industry, diligence, integrity, genuineness, and honesty are routes to the virtue of courage. The virtue of humanity and love may be reached through kindness, generosity, loving, and allowing oneself to be loved.
The strengths of justice show up in civic activities and may be exhibited by citizenship, duty, teamwork, loyalty, fairness, equity, and leadership. Temperance refers to the appropriate and moderate expression of your appetites and wants. It may be achieved by self-control, prudence, discretion, caution, humility, and modesty.
Appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, optimism, future-mindedness, spirituality, sense of purpose, faith, religiousness, forgiveness, mercy, playfulness, humour, zest, passion, and enthusiasm are the routes to the virtue of transcendence.
We possess these strengths of character to a lesser or more degree but some of these strengths are well pronounced and in abundance. We enjoy exhibiting these strengths and they come naturally to us. They are our signature strengthens and we must use them more and more, again and again in the mansions of life – work, love, and parenting.
AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS
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.
THE 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.”
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.”
WHAT IS FLOURISHING?
Happiness is a thing and well-being is a construct. For example, weather is made up of elements like temperature, humidity, windspeed, barometric pressure, and the like.
Martin Seligman, known as the father of Positive Psychology, developed the PERMA model, which identifies the five things necessary for wellbeing. PERMA stands for positive emotion (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M) and achievement (A).
If you are looking to increase the amount of happiness in your own life and on the planet, then your goal, perhaps, is authentic happiness. but, if you are looking to increase the amount of flourishing in your life and on the planet, your goal is well-being.
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.
“It is all too commonplace not to be mentally ill but to be stuck and languishing in life.
“Positive mental health is a presence: the presence of positive emotion, the presence of engagement, the presence of meaning, the presence of good relationships, and the presence of accomplishment.
“Being in a state of mental health is not merely being disorder free; rather it is the presence of flourishing.”
Flourish / Martin Seligman
“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
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
© Jagat Singh Bisht
Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker
Founder
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
