The PERMA Model

Positive Emotion

Positive emotion is the most intuitive, but it's more than just smiling more and feeling good; it includes hope, gratitude, amusement, awe, and general optimism about the future. Having high positive emotion allows you to be more resilient to stress and recover much faster. You cannot force yourself to be happy all the time, but you can train yourself to notice the good. Experiencing positive emotion is fairly heritable, so don't worry about being as optimistic as everyone around you; just be better today than you were yesterday.

Practical Takeaway: Try Gratitude Journaling

The human brain has a built-in negativity bias, as this was important back when we were running from predators or needed to prepare for the winter. To rewire this, keep a notepad by your bed and every night, write down something that went well that day and why. It could be as simple as, "I had a nice breakfast because I time to cook and relax before work." Over time, positive memories will be more readily available than negative ones.

Engagement

Every now and then, you get so absorbed in a task that you lose track of time, whether you were reading a book, playing a game, or working on a personal project. This is called "Flow," which is a high level of engagement where you are fully deploying your mind and skills on something that's not too easy, not too hard, but moderately challenging. The founder of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, said this experience is so satisfying that people complete the task for its own sake, rather than for what they get out of it. Components of flow include sufficient difficulty, a clear goal, immediate feedback, and alignment with personal interests.

Practical Takeaway: Schedule Blocks of "Deep Work"

Identify your strengths and schedule a distraction-free block to pursue a goal. Turn off your phone, close your social media tabs, and immerse yourself in a challenging hobby. Flow requires uninterrupted momentum, so aim for 30-90 minutes at least once a week. As you get used to these scheduled blocks, you will find yourself more likely to experience flow in other areas of your life, like while having a good conversation or building furniture.

Relationships

Kindness for another person produces the most reliable increases in well-being, and one of the best sources is through reucrring interactions with your close friends and family members. Humans are hardwired for connection and among all the various factors in long-term health, deep relationships are the strongest positive predictors. Joy, meaning, laughter, and feeling of belonging are all amplified through relationships, and that support and connection is the great antidote to the down periods in life. Research shows that doing something for someone else produces a greater positive impact than doing something for yourself, and our capacity for love, compassion, empathy, and cooperation is innate to who we are as human beings.

Practical Takeaway: Active Constructive Responding (ACR)

People tend to be good at supporting others when they're down, but we don't do enough for one another during a victory. ACF is the practice of enthusiastically celebrating someone else's good news, like a promotion or marriage. "That's great" isn't enough; put down the phone and ask questions to help them relive the joy. "How did you pull that off? How did you feel when they told you?"

Meaning

Life is about serving something bigger than yourself; chasing personal pleasure and inconsequential goals ultimately leads to an empty feeling. Meaning will look different for everyone, as family, community service, religion, and professional causes are all areas that can lead to high levels of satisfaction. Mattering is a basic human need and helps us be more resilient in the face of adversity. While many people have heard the Ancient Greek work, hedonic, which is simply feeling good, but few have heard of it's counterpart: eudaimonic. Eudaimonia was their word for meaning, purpose, and fulfilling your true potential, going beyond temporary happiness.

Practical Takeaway: Job Crafting

Raising a family is an obvious mainstream source of meaning, while it's also relatively straightforward to volunteer for a cause, but few people know about job crafting. Not everyone is curing diseases or making new scientific discoveries, so you have to identify where and how you're helping others in your daily work. No matter your job, you can actively reframe how your tasks impact the world.

• Grade School Teacher: You are fostering an environment for critical thinking and empathy for future leaders.

• Hospital Janitor: You are actively preventing infection and disease, saving vulnerable lives.

• Software Engineer: You build easy-to-use tools that reduce frustration for users every day.

Achievement

We have a deep, biological drive to mastery, oftentimes pursuing success for its own sake. Whether it's in workplace, a sport, games, or hobbies, people pursue accomplishment even when it doesn't necessarily lead to anything else. Setting goals, making progress, and crossing the finish line builds self-efficient, an important belief or feeling that you are capable of handling challenging tasks. Like the other parts of PERMA, this will look very different for everyone, but we all love being good and things and reaching our goals.

The Actionable Strategy: Micro Goals

Burnout occurs when we have their huge, multi-year goals and feel like we'll never finish. To combat this, we can break up amitious projects into several micro goals that can be completed in a day or a week. Instead of just having the goal of, "I will complete a marathon," also set goals of running three miles without stopping or running a certain distance over the course of a week. Completing goals more consistently helps motivate you to keep going and achieve more.