What Does It Mean To Thrive?
Activities that engage us increase wellbeing
The most important thing that influences whether we thrive or not is how we spend our time. People who are thriving, spend much of their time on activities that really engage them.
When they are performing these activities, they have a sense of flow: the activity completely absorbs them, requiring concentration and strengths that they enjoy using.
If you can build how you make a living around these activities, you are well on your way to thriving, compared to those who dislike their jobs and only perform them for the money.
Equally important is whether these activities give you a sense of meaning: a sense that you are serving a purpose that is greater than you. This is more likely to happen if the activities have a positive impact on others, which multiplies your own wellbeing.
It is also influenced by how you frame your work. The bricklayer who thinks of his job as helping to make a building which benefits others, has a greater sense of wellbeing than one who thinks of his job as just laying bricks. So too the medical orderly who sees him- or herself as playing an important role in patient care, rather than defining the job to be doing menial, dirty tasks.
In turn this highlights the importance of relationships to a life that is thriving: a deep sense of connection to others, be they the people you are working with, family, friends and the community.
Meaning - activities that benefit others and multiply your wellbeing
If you have built a meaningful life, having a positive impact on others by doing what you love and you enjoy good personal relationships, this gives you two things that are very important to thriving: a sense of control in a world that feels out of control and above all, a sense of resilience. Resilience is critical because thriving is not a state of permanent happiness and nor is it about having a cheerful personality.
While a cheerful disposition is undoubtedly a blessing, of itself it lacks the depth to create an overall sense of enduring wellbeing. It is not sufficient to provide the resilience needed to get through the various twists and turns in life that can undermine our plans and create great sadness.
Some time ago my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The 18 months from diagnosis to her dying in my home as I sat holding her and feeling utterly helpless, were tortuous. Only someone who has nursed a loved one who is dying, even worse a child, would fully understand the feelings that this journey involves. I don’t recall a single day when I felt happy. Foods that I love, the company of good friends, great entertainment, nothing really took the edge off my sense of sadness that persisted for some time after my mother’s death. I realised that my mother would never meet her grandchildren and they would miss the warmth of the unconditional love that she would have bathed them in – the only thing that has created for me an enduring sense of regret in my life.
But despite the sadness that sometimes felt overwhelming and while my personality is more inclined to seriousness than light-heartedness, I never doubted that in due course my zest for life would be restored. Critical to this has been my good fortune in building my life around what I love doing, the sense of purpose and hope it gives me for the future and the support that I receive from a web of close relationships.
Viktor Frankl in his wonderful book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning‘, describes how, even in the extreme circumstances of a concentration camp, helping his fellow prisoners discover their own sense of meaning was critical to his sense of purpose and emotional survival through the horrors of Auschwitz.
These ideas on thriving draw on the path breaking research of psychologist Martin Seligman, outlined in his latest book Flourish. Two other factors add to a sense of thriving. One is if you feel a sense of achievement in the process of pursuing a meaningful life. And second is if you take time to enjoy some of life’s pleasures. The pleasures are what give you a sense of immediate happiness. While not long lasting, they provide balance and help give a sense of a life well lived. The main mistake is the notion that a life of pleasure alone, will create longer term wellbeing, without the meat and bones created by having a sense of engagement, purpose, close relationships and accomplishment.
And many activities can engage us
Finally, financial security is a critical ingredient to a sense of wellbeing. Professor Robert Cummins and his research team at Deakin University have found that financial insecurity produces feelings similar to that of physical torture. The good news is that it does not require great financial resources to achieve an adequate degree of security and that beyond this level, increased wealth has little effect on the level of wellbeing.
Further, those who have achieved the main ingredients for thriving, are better placed to achieve financial security. The reasons for this are reasonably simple. Sound financial outcomes require good decisions in terms of how to earn, spend, save and invest money.
The pressure of the herd often undermines good decision making, leading for example to overspending to keep up with the Joneses, or pursuing exciting but dangerous investment strategies in favour of more mundane ones that are more likely to deliver a reasonable longer term result.
It requires great mental fortitude to overcome this pressure. But the ingredients that lead people to thrive emotionally, also strengthen mental fortitude and resilience as we have discussed.
This lies at the heart of our observation that people who are happy and also enjoy sustainable wealth, discovered what it was that made them happy first, before they became rich.
The challenge in thriving, is ensuring that you are continuously maintaining the garden, pruning, weeding, watering, feeding, and bathing in the sunlight. How do we do all at once? Maybe sometimes there has to be a little shade?
I think that leisure and rest are integral to thriving