What in the Wellbeing?
Originally I had planned to write a
blog post covering the subject of well-being but when I started planning it out
I realised it was such a rich subject area that this may need to be a series of
posts! This first post however aims to take a general look at well-being and how
we can help ourselves recognise what obstacles
we, albeit unintentionally, may put in its way.
As
a concept or buzz-word ‘Well-being’ has become more popular and pervasive today
than ever. Some universities offer well-being weeks to new students 1, some housing associations are
making plans to help improve their resident’s well-being2 and even
mobile apps claim to be able to strengthen your well-being 3. The Japanese
government has started to use indicators such as Gross National Happiness
alongside the tradition GDP to show the value they are putting on their resident’s
happiness 4. Personally I have myself previously enjoyed
working with a learning disabled client group at a local Well-being group teaching
about subjects ranging from mindfulness to fun with food.
The
dictionary defines well-being as, ‘a state of being contented and healthy: a sense of wellbeing.’5
This
definition can obviously mean a lot of things to a lot of people! There do seem
to be some generally accepted ideas on what can add to and take away from well-being. Studies have shown that suffering from a
chronic illness 6 or being sleep deprived 7 can have a
huge knock on effect in taking well-being away. However research has shown that activities
such as being more eco-friendly 8, creating or joining a group 9
or noticing nature in our daily routine 10 can promote a boost in general well-being.
Yet
what about us personally? What can we do to help keep our own personal flow of well-being going? This is a time of year where we are often encouraged to think
about the greater well-being of others either by giving gifts, being charitable
or attending several social functions (even when we would rather than just putting
our feet up). So it can be easy to assume that well-being is out there and or
lives within other people and all I need to do is just go out and find it
somehow or give more. Then following on
from this logic in January we have the inevitable ‘blue Monday’ the apparently
most depressing day of the year as part of the aftermath.
As
Sydney J Harris said, “Happiness is a direction not a place.” Taking
control of our personal well-being starts with understanding the parts of
ourselves that, albeit unintentionally, sabotage our well-being. The following
concepts, that are central concepts in Block Clearance Therapy, are major
players in this regard:
-Taking
a Balanced Responsibility
-Marking Achievements
-Patience and Trusting the Process of Life
With the examples I gave about the time of year we are in
it is easy to run our own fuel tank of energy or positive emotion to run dry
with the business of life. When our personal fuel tank is high then we can
really go the distance for ourselves and for others. It is more often the case than
not though, especially at this time of year, that we end up in a state of imbalanced-responsibility.
Imbalanced-responsibility is where our internal sense of responsibility swings
back and forth. This usually presents in someone as them giving their all to
others and taking too much responsibility for them and then forgetting to look
after their own needs and therefore not being self-responsible. When we have let our fuel gauge run low and
not found the time for self we can become tired, irritable and ultimately
resentful. This is not just a thief of joy but then then leads us to a
secondary problem….
Thankfulness has been touted a real boost to well-being and success in a recent study11. However it is hard to try and adopt
an attitude of gratitude if we are fast becoming tired, irritable and resentful
via imbalanced-responsibility.
Thankfulness and gratitude does serve another important purpose for our
mind, it helps us to recognise what is already working in our life. In Block Clearance
Therapy we encourage people to celebrate their achievements as by doing this it
effectively marks where we have been and what we have accomplished or learnt. To
our subconscious we are saying, ‘Yeah, I got that!’ When we don’t mark what we have achieved,
then we are sending out a signal that we haven’t learnt enough and this then risks
attracting something we don’t want to keep us learning. Sometimes mistakes we, or others, have made
can get us stuck in the energy of the mistake and not the learning of the
lesson. There is always something to learn about a situation even if we don’t
like it. By ignoring the pearl gained (or the wisdom) and only seeing the grit (or
the dark part) we take away our achievement’s in life. Perhaps we aren’t in the country pile we’ve
always wanted or driving the car of our dreams but if we have health, food and
love then we are often richer than most can dream of.
Another barrier to our progression to internal well-being can be our patience at the process of life. In practical terms gaining happiness
and emotional well-being can happen in instalments throughout the course of a
lifetime. Instead of seeing it as something to be acquired quickly like a
purchase it can be easier to see it as something to break it down in to steps. It
could be that this month you decide to set aside time to read a novel or learn
to use a meditation app. Life is an on-going
process of acquiring knowledge, self-awareness and then positively putting things
in to practise.
One thing that often pops up in Block clearance Therapy
is Trust. Often people want to have
their life and direction figured out all the time. Perhaps they think this will
help them feel safe or in control. Sometimes to sit in confusion or wait in
limbo can seem alien. Yet by allowing this for ourselves means we are sitting
in the flow (or lack of it) and then often that then allows the energy to
change and find its direction.
Inevitably however some issues do take longer and take more
of our time and energy. It’s very human
to get frustrated when we have tried hard to change or manifest something and
yet, despite the self-help articles or whatever we are using, it does not
appear to be on the horizon. Sometimes it may even seem that the light at the
end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. This
can knock our trust in the process of life. Some books, articles and
motivational speakers suggest that thinking alone will create anything we want
in life. However they seem to have forgotten that we all have an individual subconscious
system that deems some areas as ‘safe’ and some areas as ‘not safe’ and this
was set up in childhood. Sometimes things don’t flow as we’d like as it is not
where our internal GPS was set up to flow to and until we look at its
programming it will continue to do so. Another barrier can be that we are
asking for flow in a light and positive manner and yet light cannot go where there
is darkness. We all have a shadow side to our personality. This is where our fears, frustration, anger
and sense of lack dwell. Sometimes it
may seem that this darker side seems to win out. When can learn to stand back and appreciate
that our mind, body and spirit are indivisible we can then learn to work with
all parts of our being. Working to find inner harmony means accepting and
learning to nurture ourselves in all the parts of our being. Within us we all hold the knowledge of how to
catalyse our light to triumph in dispersing the darkness. Some of us just need
to be reminded of where we hid the key.
References:
5.
Collins New English Dictionary, HarperCollins,
1997
8.
https://the-peak.ca/2017/11/sfu-research-reveals-being-eco-friendly-promotes-personal-well-being/
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