What is Well-Being?

PREMISE

• Positive emotions - Both situational positive emotions (i.e., a “good mood”) and long-term positive emotions (i.e., temperament).

• Relationships with Others - Healthy social relationships that are supportive, encouraging, loving, kind, and authentic. Measures of healthy relationships include to what degree members in a relationship feel a mutual sense of secure attachment toward each other and feel supported by one another.

• Engagement - The attachment an individual feels toward a community that could be measured by the individual’s commitment to stay in the community and interact with other members of the community. Educational engagement encompasses how involved an individual is in their work, their persistence in the face of challenges, and their delight in learning.

• Meaningful Experiences and Goals - Discovering meaning in life is a process that can be developed through action, experience, writing, and reflection. Three pathways to discovering meaning in life (Frankl, 1956) include: 1) creating something, doing a deed, accomplishing something, 2) connecting with nature or with others through altruistic love, and 3) recontextualizing the suffering of self and others by exploring the meaning of suffering.

• Identities (Autonomously Endorsed) - How we perceive ourselves and how we describe who we are (see, for example, Marcia's Identity Status Theory and Erik Erickson's Psychosocial Development Model). What are our strengths, our (often nonconscious) limitations, and how do we explore and more accurately understand both? We position that identities are optimally a composite of strengths that depend on social, personal, and emotional intelligences. For many humans, our identities may be projections at least partly informed by our nonconscious processes; we argue that the pathway to self-actualization comes by way of encouraging individuals to autonomously and consciously shape their own nonconscious processes, rather than by introjecting others' values and sensibilities.

  • Autonomy is the perception that our thoughts, beliefs, decisions, and actions are internally caused, and autonomy arises by working toward goals or identities we find interesting and personally meaningful. Humans can cultivate individual and collective identities and autonomy (e.g., relational autonomy). In the context of identity development, autonomy refers to self-determined (Deci & Ryan, 2016) decisions regarding one's identities that are intrinsically motivated. As instructors, it is crucial when supporting students' autonomously developing identities to support students with unconditional positive regard and to resist using coercive social pressures (e.g., "stick and carrot" measures often included in legacy grading schemes, as well as shaming, ranking, or social comparisons).

• Self-Compassion - Is a theory (Neff, 2003) for replacing self-limiting thoughts and behaviors with self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. In educational contexts, developing self-compassion is necessary in order to move from fixed mindset to growth mindset (Dweck, 2006) and benefit mindset (Buchanan, 2015) to cultivate intrinsic motivation, self-growth, and generativity.

• Efficacy and environmental mastery - Efficacy is the perception we hold of our abilities to achieve a desired goal.

  • Ryff (1989) describes environmental mastery as the ability of an individual to create and change conditions in one's life suitable to their own psychological needs. Encouraging students' locus of control is essential when developing learners' self-efficacy and environmental mastery.