What do YOU need? - Part Two

“For each environment there is a best organism, for each organism there is a best environment."          

                                                                                                         Lee Cronbach (psychologist)                                               

In addition to the personality traits discussed previously, there are several other individual variables to consider when you try to enhance your well-being.

1) Signature Strengths

Although there is some overlap with personality traits, signature strengths are more detailed characteristics, which also resonate with your beliefs and values. There are 24 signature strengths falling into 6 broad categories:¹

•         Wisdom and Knowledge (e.g. Curiosity, Creativity, Emotional Intelligence)
•         Courage (e.g. Valor/Bravery, Integrity/Genuineness/Honesty)
•         Humanity and Love (e.g. Kindness/Generosity)
•        Justice (e.g. Fairness/Equity, Leadership)
•        Temperance (e.g. Self-Control, Prudence/Discretion/Caution)
•        Transcendence (e.g. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, Spirituality)

You should aim to express or apply your greatest signature strengths every day. Because your core strengths are the qualities and virtues most important to you, choosing an activity resonating with these qualities increases your well-being.^2,3 For example, if you are a person with Curiosity/Interest in the World and Valor/Bravery belonging to your top strengths, you may feel under-challenged in a 9-5 office job and might be better off choosing a career, which allows you to travel and/or encounter unexpected situations. If your top strengths are Creativity and Appreciation of Beauty, you may choose an artistic profession or at least a hobby allowing you to apply these strengths. You can do a free signature strengths test at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu or https://www.viacharacter.org (both free but registration required).

2) Maximizer vs Satisficer

When making decisions, there are two different styles:⁴

• Maximizers always try to get the very best when making a decisions. They spend a lot of time weighing up pro’s and con’s and examine each available choice in depth.
• Satisficers make decisions based on whether an available option satisfies their needs or not, and stop looking once they have found an acceptable solution.

Although maximisers often have an objectively better outcome than satisficers, e.g. getting jobs with a higher salary, or getting better value for money when making purchases, they are ironically often unhappy with their choices. They also tend to generally report a lower level of happiness and life satisfaction, and a higher level of depression and regret. If you are a maximiser, it may be helpful to review your decision-making style. There are many situations where maximizing the outcome is not really necessary, and you may not only save yourself some time but you might also increase your happiness, if you select the satisfying option.

3) Further differences

There are many other individual differences and preferences. For example people vary in the degree and type of physical activities they need for optimal well-being, general energy levels, and whether they prefer an urban or rural environment.

Some people can be particularly sensitive to external stimuli, and have a great depth of cognitive processing and high emotional reactivity. The life of these highly sensitive persons has its own challenges as they may need to limit their exposure to highly stimulating situations, but it can also be very rewarding, e.g. as they are often highly intuitive and find great pleasure in music, art and literature.⁵

We also vary in the degree of self-knowledge and in the degree that we act upon our personality and character differences. For example, although you might be a very agreeable person who avoids conflict, you can learn to be assertive in situations, which matter to you.

4) Influence of society

In the first post we mentioned that there may be some cultural differences, where in most European countries and the U.S. the majority of people seem to predominantly seek a high arousal-type of happiness (e.g. joy and excitement), whereas people in many Asian countries prefer a more low-arousal type of happiness (e.g. peace/harmony).⁴ Another aspect to consider is whether the society we live in (not only the country but also our immediate community- family, friends, colleagues etc) are predominantly ‘individualistic’ or ‘collectivistic’. Individualistic societies tend to value the individual freedom and the right to individual choice, whereas in collectivist societies the ‘greater good’ of the group is more important. Again, there is no right or wrong, but if you are a more ‘individualistically’ inclined person living in a collectivist society, you may find the personal sacrifices and limits of self-expression difficult to live with, whereas a more ‘collectivist’ person in an individualistic society may miss social support and a sense of common identity/belonging.⁴

  

5) Which aspect of well-being do you want to improve?

Because we all have different personalities, life circumstances, attitudes and degree of self-knowledge, we may also need to change different aspects of our well-being. For example, somebody may have a really high positivity ratio (positive vs negative emotions) but feel unfulfilled due to a lack of meaning in life. Somebody else may have a high sense of accomplishment and meaning but still feel 'down' a lot of the time because of a low positivity ratio. Yet another person may feel that there is a specific life situation causing problems for him/her, for example a difficult family member/friend or stress at work.

Looking at it from the essential needs level, people may have real or perceived unfulfilled needs. For example they may lack safety, satisfaction or connection with others.    

A truly amazing person- What can we learn from…:⁷

Gino Strada is an Italian surgeon, who initially specialized on heart-lung transplant surgery. In 1989 he left his lucrative career to work as a trauma surgeon for the Red Cross in war zones. Realizing that in the current conflicts of the world the vast majority (approx. 90%) of injured are civilians, he founded the charity Emergency together with his wife Teresa in 1994.

Emergency provides specialized medical and surgical treatment to civil victims of war and poverty in countries such as Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Iraq and Sudan, but also has clinics in Italy. The ethos of Emergency is to deliver high quality treatment to the civilian population, as well as the transfer of medical knowledge and expertise to local health service professionals.

In addition to clearly being a very dedicated surgeon, Gino Strada has been an outspoken campaigner against war, human suffering, and against the production and use of antipersonnel landmines. In 2015, he has been awarded for his work with the prestigious Right Livelihood Award. He has featured in the Oscar nominated documentary Open Heart and has written several books about his work, including Green Parrots.

Gino Strada says of himself that he is happiest when he is operating. Talking about his challenging work he said: ‘Yes, but I always find it very interesting. When I wake up in the morning I am happy to go to the hospital. When I worked in Milan and I woke up in Italy, I was not that excited; it was more like a routine.’

Of course we cannot all be like Gino Strada- he is undoubtedly an extraordinary person. However, what we can learn from him is that while we all have our own individual ‘comfort zone’ (or a ‘best environment’) regarding the degree of adversity and stress we can cope with, it is possible to push our own personal boundaries if it is for a purpose that we passionately believe in.

To find out more about the amazing work of Gino Strada and Emergency, go to Emergency or have a look on his Laureate Webpage of the Right Livelihood Award.

Preview: Now that we have been through most of the basics, you can look at how to practically improve your well-being. Over the next months we will go through many aspects and strategies to increase our well-being step-by-step. As mentioned in the last two weeks, the degree to which each different strategy can help you may depend on your individual personality and situation. There are some things though, which apply to almost all of us- one of them is something called the negativity bias, and the other is our physiological (natural) response to stress and negative emotions. This important topic will be discussed in the next post.  

References and further evidence-based reading:

1. Seligman MEP. Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being- and How to Achieve Them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing; London, UK. 2011.

2. Lyubomirsky S, Sheldon KM, Schkade D. Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change. Review of General Psychology. 2005;9(2):111-131.

3. Fredrickson B. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive. Oneworld Publications; Oxford, England. 2010.

4. Diener E, Biswas-Diener R. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, UK. 2008

5. Aron E N: The Highly Sensitive Person. HarperCollins Publishers; London. 1999.

6. Hanson R: Hardwiring Happiness: How to reshape your brain and your life. Rider Ebury Publishing, Random House, UK. 2013.

7. References for the section truly amazing person: http://www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/laureates/gino-strada-emergency/, http://www.emergency.it/resources.html, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/14/gino-strada-emergency-giles-duley

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