PERMA

PERMA

Many scientists have researched what sustains subjective well-being over years of life. Martin Seligman has codified his research, as well as findings from others, int a five-letter acrostic: PERMA, which stand for the five foundational elements people need to be experiencing to maximize their Subjective Well-Being (SWB):

Positive Emotion: To keep the dogs of depression away, you need to be regularly experiencing positive feelings and emotions, including pleasure, gratitude for the good things in your life, and hopefulness for the future. People with sustained SWB have a willingness to enjoy the present for its own sake.

Engagement: You should be regularly involved in meaningful activities, including feeling lost in a project. It should be so meaningful that you lose track of time, of where you are, and even of who you are.

Relationships: You should have many positive relationships with family and friends and be regularly interacting with them. Having many relationships is a powerful bulwark against depression.

Meaning: This is the argument to be in constant service to something that is larger than you are, including God, a cause, an idea, or a charity – something that continually forces you out of your own experiences and into the experiences of others. There is actually a prosocial twinge to this idea: Doing good for people by serving something larger than you is another way of doing good for yourself.

Accomplishment or achievement: The idea is to achieve some goal, creating a mastery over some skill in the service of that goal – something achievable so that a sense of accomplishment is explicitly experienced. Running a marathon, especially if you've never done before, is a good example. But this category is not asking you to burn yourself out; it is simply an appeal not to be listless or unfocused, both of which are often experienced by depressed people.

(From Your Best Brain, Course Guidebook, by Professor John J. Medina).

Though not as severe as depression, dysthymia can stay with you for years and is still considered a mood disorder. Photo by Elena.