Elements of well-being
Well-being can be broken into five elements:
- Positive emotion
- Engagement
- Relationships
- Meaning
- Accomplishment
If you improve these, you will be closer to happiness.
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Pessimism comes naturally to people because thinking about the bad stuff that could happen helps us to prepare for survival.
The problem is that pessimists think bad events are permanent and unchangeable. "I think my interview is going to be a disaster." We need to learn to recognize what we're saying to ourselves and then argue against it. "I've done many interviews in my life, and they generally turn out well."
Meditation - mindfulness, focusing on the moment - is an excellent anti-anxiety, anti-anger tool..But accepting suffering and finding contentment in that means you can't move into doing something good in the future.
One important idea is hope. Positive human future doesn't come about by accident - it needs hopeful people who plan for it and make it happen.
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While we may have many good reasons to be pessimistic, we don't have to resign ourselves to it forever.
Optimism can be learned. Research reveals that optimists earn more money, have better relationships and live longer.
We all have either an internal or an external locus of control. This cognitive mechanism provides us with confidence that we can change the elements of our lives.
Having the locus of control on the outside makes it subject to every twist and turn of our lives, making us feel helpless.
Whenever you feel like not being able to escape a state of unhappiness, try practicing the so-called retrospective judgment, which will enable you to reinterpret the events lived in order to find what was good in them.
Practicing story-telling when it comes to your life can prove very useful and healthy.