Eudamonic wellbeing is another wellbeing theory, but focuses on what the hedonic approach does not acknowledge: meaning. Eudamonic wellbeing is influenced more by the internal environment of a person than their external environment. The happiness stems not from low negative affect and high positive affect, but attributing a meaning and contentment with one's current place in life. There are three approaches to eudamonic wellbeing, all of which have different requirements to achieve happiness yet all involve a social component, autonomy, and competence in abilities.
The actualization of human potential has six components. These include self acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, positive relations, environmental mastery, and autonomy. This theory is concerned with inner happiness coming from accepting who you are and feeling in control of your environment and how you interact with it and others.
Seligman came up with authentic happiness. His theory focused on the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. The pleasant life is closer related to hedonic wellbeing, but the good and the meaningful lie fully within the eudamonic approach. The meaningful life looks at finding some guiding force in life bigger than oneself such as religion or family and the good life is more about finding flow within tasks.
The third approach is the self-determination theory. This theory has elements of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy allows one to make his or her own choices without outside influence. Competence is having control to create a desired outcome for the individual. Relatedness is connecting with other groups of people.
These three theories all focus on contentment with oneself, which is often a popular theme in today's pop culture. Many songs focus on struggles of accepting who you are. After fully accepting who you are can you achieve true happiness in life. No matter of outside influences can bring true happiness if you can't accept your true self.
"Cause I'm beautiful to me. Doesn't that mean a thing? I feel lovely just the way that I am" - Sara Haze Lovely
I enjoyed your post. It was designed very well and included the important facts like the six components of actualization of human potential, authentic happiness, and self-determination theory. Also, I enjoyed the quote at the end.
ReplyDelete