05/12/2019
What is your PERMA Score?
👩🏫 PPIA FACT #3
According to Seligman’s PERMA model of wellbeing, there are five ingredients to a flourishing life: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.
In this post, you’ll learn what they stand for, how you can measure them, and how you can foster them through daily wellbeing habits.
🥰 P for positive emotions
Firstly, positive emotions refer to pleasant feelings like love, joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, and awe. Positive emotions do not only feel good but also have some instrumental value: According to Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions both BROADEN our awareness (and thereby encourage creative thinking and divergent problem solving) and BUILD our social and psychological resources over time, making us more resilient in the process.
🧗♀️ E for engagement
When you do a challenging task that you enjoy and really care about, you can become fully engaged and enter a so-called ‘flow’ state. When you are in flow, you are completely absorbed in the task at hand and lose all sense of time and space. Flow states often occur during activities like climbing, dancing, or crafting, but they can also be triggered by engaging tasks at work.
👫 R for relationships
It probably won’t surprise you that positive relationships form a core building block of wellbeing. I think we can all agree that everybody needs someone. Research has long confirmed that enriching, energizing relationships are important in all areas of life, be it at home, at work, or in your free time. They have been found to increase not only your happiness and life satisfaction, but even your physical health.
🌍 M for meaning
According to Seligman, we are at our best when we use our strengths “to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than the self”. In other words, a meaningful life has a purpose beyond that of the individual, be it in the form of abstract values, a long-term goal, a charity, a religion, a political party, or one’s family.
🏆 A for accomplishment
Finally, we all need a sense of accomplishment in our lives. Wellbeing seems to be most promoted by goals that you have set for yourself and that are meaningful to you. Furthermore, research has found that the pursuit of intrinsic aspirations (e.g. personal growth or affiliation) is much more predictive of wellbeing than that of extrinsic aspirations (e.g. material goods, wealth, fame or appearance). Lastly and perhaps surprisingly, the link between achievement and wellbeing goes both ways: success does not only spark momentary happiness, but higher wellbeing also seems to lead to more success in areas such as school, work, and relationships.
Now, how can you measure your PERMA elements?
If you want to measure your wellbeing at work, I can highly recommend the free PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey provided by the wonderful Chelle McQuaid and her team: https://permahsurvey.com/
FYI: the ‘H’ in PERMAH stands for ‘health’, which is arguably also vital for wellbeing.
For measuring your PERMA outside the workplace, you can either take the free PERMA survey here https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ or simply rely on your own assessment and ask yourself:
How does each of the PERMA elements show up in my daily life? Which ones do I have a lot of, and which ones are currently less present?
Lastly, check out the comment section for ideas on how to increase each of the PERMA elements in your life.
I wish you a wonderful day full of P, E, R, M and A 🌷
