UNIT IV

HEALTH AND WELL BEING

 Well being and resilience
• Wellbeing involves having positive self image and
esteem. Well-being is a positive outcome that is
meaningful for people. Well-being, also known as
wellness, prudential value or quality of life.
• Positive well being ?
• Negative well being?
• Subjective well being?
• Resilience, which is directly related to wellbeing,
is about having the ability to cope with and adapt
to new situations.
• Martin Seligman, says the way that we explain setbacks to
ourselves is also important. This "explanatory style" is
made up of three main elements:
• Permanence – People who are optimistic (and therefore
have more resilience) see the effects of bad events as
temporary rather than permanent.
• Pervasiveness – Resilient people don't let setbacks or bad
events affect other unrelated areas of their lives.
• Personalization – People who have resilience don't blame
themselves when bad events occur. Instead, they see other
people, or the circumstances, as the cause.
 Why Resilience is important
• Resilience can help protect you from various
mental health conditions, such as depression
and anxiety.
• Resilience can also help offset factors that
increase the risk of mental health conditions,
such as being bullied or previous trauma.
 How to build resilience?
• Find a Sense of Purpose
• Believe in Your Abilities
• Develop a Strong Social Network
• Nurture yourself
• Be optimistic
• Learn from your mistakes and failures. ..
 Optimism
• A belief or hope that the outcome of some
specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will
be positive, favorable, and desirable. It is a
mental attitude characterized by hope and
confidence in success and a positive future.
 Characteristics
• good things will happen in the future.
• expect things to work out for the best.
• feel like you will succeed in the face of life's challenges.
• feel that the future looks bright.
• think that even good things can come from negative events.
• see challenges or obstacles as opportunities to learn.
• feel gratitude for the good things in life.
• always looking for ways to make the most of opportunities.
• a positive attitude about yourself and others.
• accept responsibilities for mistakes but don't dwell on them.
• don't let one bad experience muddy your expectations for the
future.
 Impact of optimism
• Better mental as well as physical health
• Greater achievements
• Persistence
• Better Emotional Health
• Increased Longevity
• Less Stress
 Negative effects of optimism
• Optimism bias: Sometimes excessive
optimism can lead people to overestimate the
likelihood that they can experience good
things while avoiding bad things
• Poor risk assessment
• Toxic positivity:
 Ways to improve optimism
• Focus on what's going well
• Look for the benefits
• Practice gratitude
• Look ahead
• Build yourself up
 Life satisfaction
• the evaluation of one’s life as a whole, not
simply one’s current level of happiness.
• Sometimes life satisfaction interchangeably
used for happiness but it is quite different
from happiness.
• Life satisfaction is the degree to which a
person positively evaluates the overall quality
of his/her life as a whole. In other words, how
much the person likes the life he/she leads”
 Definitions
• “An overall assessment of feelings and attitudes
about one’s life at a particular point in time
ranging from negative to positive”
(Buetell, 2006).”
life satisfaction refers to an individual’s overall
feelings about their life.
It is a global evaluation rather than one that is
grounded at any specific point in time or in any
specific domain.
 Life Satisfaction Theories

• There are two main types of theories about life

satisfaction:
• Bottom-up theories: life satisfaction as a result
of satisfaction in the many domains of life. we
experience satisfaction in many domains of
life, like work, relationships, family and friends,
personal development, and health and fitness.
Our satisfaction with our lives in these areas
combines to create our overall life satisfaction.
• Top-down theories: life satisfaction as an
influencer of domain-specific satisfaction
(Heady, Veenhoven, & Wearing, 1991).
• top-down theories state that our overall life
satisfaction influences (or even determines)
our life satisfaction in the many different
domains.
 Contributing Factors of Life Satisfaction

• Life chances: Societal resources like economic welfare,

• social equality,
• political freedom,
• culture, and moral order;
+ personal resources like social position,
• material property,
• political influence,
• social prestige, and family bonds;
+ individual abilities like physical fitness,
• psychic fortitude,
• social capability, and intellectual skill.
• Course of events: factors like need or affluence,
• attack or protection,
• solitude or company,
• humiliation or honor,
• routine or challenge, and
• ugliness or beauty.
• These are the things that can confront us as we go
through our daily life, causing us to lean more in one
direction or the other: towards greater satisfaction or
greater dissatisfaction.
• Flow of experience: includes experiences like, anxiety
or safety,
• loneliness or love,
• rejection or respect,
• dullness or excitement, and
• repulsion or rapture.
• These are the feelings and responses that we have to
the things that happen to us; they are determined by
both our personal and societal resources, our
individual abilities, and the course of events.
• Evaluation of life : is an appraisal of the
average effect of all of these interactions.
• It involves comparing our own life with our
idea of the “good life,” and how the good and
the bad in our life balances out.
 Factors affecting life satisfaction
• Personality
• Self-esteem
• Outlook on life
• Life events and experiences
• Family
• marriage
• Age
• Seasonal effects
• Values
• Culture
• Carrer