Seven wellbeing abilities

All human beings have the potential for wellbeing. The question of whether or how much any one person actually realizes wellbeing in their life will depend on the environmental and social conditions they experience over a lifetime. The conditions that matter start in utero where the environment for the developing child is first the mother’s body and second, more indirectly, the conditions of the mother’s life. After a child is born, the intimate relationships of family, care and early learning are crucial. As the child grows older, school environments and peer relationships will all come into play. For adults, work and income, housing, social and personal relationships, and their cultural environments will have their effects. All of these things affect the way the body and brain develop over time, they shape how we think, feel, and behave, how we interact with other people, and how we interpret the world.

Wellbeing is an active state

I say that wellbeing is about the development and exercise of certain basic abilities (or, if you like, skills.) By ‘abilities’ what I mean things people are able to do. If you say, ‘I am able to play the violin’, to me that means three things: First, you have acquired the personal knowledge and mental and physical skills to play the instrument; second, you also have access to an actual violin, strings, and a bow; and third, as every violinist knows, to have the ability to play the violin, you also have to practice – actual violin playing needs to occur. Wellbeing abilities are like this. They all require both personal resources and supportive external conditions. They all have to be exercised to the realized (in the sense of being made real). So, I claim wellbeing consists in the development and exercise of seven wellbeing abilities.

• Ability 1: Engage in sustained, constructive, self-regulated goal-directed activity within complex social environments, in ways that exercise skills, achieve valued or meaningful outcomes, and avoid chronic stress.

• Ability 2: Respond constructively to social challenges and rapidly adjust behavior in response to social cues and norms.

• Ability 3: Engage in self-controlled, creative exercise of skills outside constraints of social demands and expectations.

• Ability 4: Engage in and enjoy positive, reciprocal social relationships and contribute to the wellbeing of others.

• Ability 5: Engage in present-focused activities of a sensory, meditative, creative, playful, or aesthetic nature including regular contact with nature.

• Ability 6: Achieve a balance between the demands of socially engaged, goal-directed activity (Abilities 1 and 2) and other kinds of activity (Abilities 3 to 5).

• Ability 7: Understand the nature of wellbeing and the social and environmental conditions required to attain it, and work to ensure these are available to the self and others.

To get more detail on the thinking behind this definition of wellbeing, I would encourage you to read my article on A Theory of Public Wellbeing, freely available online, or my book on How to Create Societies for Human Wellbeing. As a general point, it is important to note that the brain processes which shape these abilities may often happen outside a person’s conscious awareness.

Ability 1 is about being able to engage in focused, purposeful activity to achieve valued goals, operating in environments involving complex relationships with other people. Most people in modern societies will be familiar with this the kind of activity from school and paid work. Ability 2 is essential and basic to the ‘navigating complex relationships’ part of Ability 1 and involves an ability to cope with minor stressors by flexibly adjusting behavior is response to social cues. A key fact about Abilities 1 and 2, often working in tandem, is that they will typically involve a certain amount of stress arousal. That’s why, over extended periods, this kind of focused, purposeful activity to ‘get stuff done’ within complex social environments is physically and mentally tiring.

Abilities 3, 4 and 5 are quite different to 1 and 2. They usually take place outside of complex social interactions, in the more intimate relationships of family and friends or, in the relationship with oneself. A key fact about exercising Abilities 3,4 and 5 – when they are working well – is that they help to ‘down-regulate’ (i.e. to reduce) stress arousal, and this is important for overall mental health and wellbeing. Thus, Ability 6 is about maintaining a balance between the exercise of Abilities 1 and 2, and exercise of Abilities 3,4 and 5. Finally, Ability 7 is about understanding how wellbeing works – how it can be practiced and how it can be harmed – so as to be able to practice wellbeing more consciously and deliberately, and to work to support other people to do the same.

How do wellbeing abilities develop?

The family, social, economic, cultural and natural environments that a person occupies over the course of life affect the development of wellbeing abilities in three general ways. These environments shape:

1. The development of internal, personal resources (in the brain and body) to self-regulate wellbeing abilities

2. Access to social resources in the form of basic resources needed to live in one’s society, including support from other people

3. Access to day-to-day situations that provide opportunities for the actual exercise of wellbeing abilities

Just as we saw with the analogy of violin playing, all three of these elements needed to be present to realize the ability to play the violin.  If the environments a person occupies are experienced as stressful, insecure, unpredictable, violent or neglectful, isolated, lacking in stimulation, impoverished, or highly restrictive, all of these can undermine development and exercise of wellbeing abilities in any or all of these three dimensions.