A Personal Journey of a Professional Pursuit

…well-being is a holistic unity of eight components that are constantly interacting as interdependent and counterbalancing pairs. Such interaction means that if we over-or under-invest in one component overall well-being will suffer.

by Archana Mishra

our years ago, as part of a PhD degree program, I began researching whether and how people’s beliefs differ related to the concept of well-being. This professional pursuit and examination generated unexpected revelations: The experience transpired into a highly personal, transformational journey that can only be described as serendipitous. My research, intended for a broad audience, helped me grow, evolve and reflect on how my development could be meaningful to others.

Well-being Takes Many Forms

Leaders approach the concept of well-being in many different ways. My particular interest in the topic relates to how leaders define well-being, how they apply it personally, how they integrate it into their organizations, and why their approaches to well-being might differ. Interviewing leaders in private, not-for-profit and government sectors in Norway, the United States and India, I am seeking to understand why we see such different well-being practices and outcomes in organizations and societies, and how these questions are answered across different cultural and organizational settings.

What is Well-being?

As I asked research participants what well-being meant to them individually, and discussed the eight-component model of well-being (as seen below left), I began to take a closer look at the model myself, sparking a more personal question: What does well-being mean to me? According to this model, well-being is a holistic unity of eight components that are constantly interacting as interdependent and counterbalancing pairs. Such interaction means that if we over- or under-invest in one component overall well-being will suffer.

For example, overemphasis on the economy will negatively affect the environment and vice versa. If we overemphasize bringing the community together as one (social well-being), individual cultural identity (cultural well-being) will suffer, and vice versa. In other words, taking an either/or approach to well-being will create disharmony in overall well-being. Hence, we need a both/and approach, which requires a greater ability to deal with the conflicts and complexities involved in managing all eight components. The hypothesis of this study is that people gain greater ability to do this as their leadership qualities and worldviews develop and change. Hence, people begin with taking fewer components into consideration and consider more and more as they develop and eventually begin to see well-being as a holistic unity of at least eight components.

Well-being model by Dr. Lance Newey, University of Queensland, Australia.

Seeing the world in more ways allowed me to move from an “I” to an “us” mentality, eventually moving further to an “all of us” perspective. I am still working on developing the “all of us” perspective, but it gives me an idea of what such ideals and inclusiveness could mean.

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This is why sometimes we meet people who do not understand the way we see the world and vice versa, and this is why we all have different understandings of well-being.

The Missing Well-being Component

My first realization when commencing this research was how difficult it was for me to define well-being. Like many of us, my definition of well-being mainly included a healthy body and mind. When I considered the eight components and how their counterbalancing relationship would impact my overall personal well-being, it started to make sense. It also struck me that I had not spent much effort on my spiritual well-being. Here, spirituality should not be confused with religious beliefs and practices. We can loosely understand it as the recognition of a sense or belief that there is something greater than oneself, something more to being human than just sensory experience, and that the greater whole of which we are part may be cosmic or divine in nature. Hence, an opening of the heart would be an essential aspect of true spirituality.

The realization that I needed to work on my spiritual well-being came to me as a need to find a guide or an anchor without knowing why I felt that need. I came across a course on the teachings of yoga and Ayurveda, one of the oldest holistic healing systems, being offered in India. I went there and learned how both yoga and Ayurveda are about proactive and holistic well-being. I was intrigued that these traditional systems incorporate almost all eight components of well-being and place a strong emphasis on balancing these elements to both prevent and treat issues that manifest when the elements are out of balance, particularly health problems. What I learned in a week was the catalyst for opening my heart on many levels, and I continued to immerse in many philosophical and practical classes offered online by the yoga institute. I also explored various other systems of holistic healing, including Family Constellation Therapy, which brought a whole new dimension to my understanding of well-being. This type of therapy goes beyond the individual to examine our place in generational, community and other social structures to assist with issues in personal health and relationships.

Immersing myself in different teachings and practices added clarity to further deepen my research work. As I continued to read different literature for my research, I continued to open up and to interact with new and sometimes opposing worldviews.

Well-being and Consciousness

As I began to learn and reflect on various teachings, I found myself broadening my view of the world and my surroundings. Seeing the world in more ways allowed me to move from an “I” to an “us” mentality, eventually moving further to an “all of us” perspective. I am still working on developing the “all of us” perspective, but it gives me an idea of what such ideals and inclusiveness could mean. In a practical sense, this perspective is all-encompassing and includes within it all beliefs, ideas, practices and cultures. We begin to take a systems view, which means we see how everyone and everything is connected as part of a larger system in which each part has a role and its own place. The part as well as the whole complete the system; neither of them alone is sufficient.

The systems view of well-being is what allows for the ability to take all eight components into consideration when making decisions. This is not to say that all components weigh equally in all situations, but that all of them should be considered to ensure that they aren’t over-or underemphasized. For example, if I only focused on philosophical teachings now that I’ve become more self-aware and did not take care of my economic or material well-being, that would be detrimental to my overall well-being. It’s about having constant awareness to ensure harmony between each component.

Invitation to Reflect

I believe that I am now living my own research and becoming more aware of what holistic well-being means to me, my community and the whole world. Most research participants mentioned that they seldom pause and reflect on well-being despite it being so fundamental and personally foundational. Hence, I invite you to take some time and reflect on these questions and see how such reflection might change your worldview:

How do you understand well-being?
Has your understanding of well-being changed over time?
How open are you to learning about different and/or opposing perspectives? If your answer is “not very,” what stops you from being more open?
How many well-being components do you consider in decision-making?
Which well-being component(s) are you maximizing, and where is there room to grow?

Archana Mishra is the former director of Live. Work. Play. at the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC). She is now living in Brisbane, Australia, and engaged in research studies at the University of Queensland Business School. Her research interest is in the areas of well-being beliefs and practices among business and community leaders. She is currently pursuing an international research study, which has started with leaders from Anchorage, Alaska. Mishra holds an MBA and bachelor’s degrees in law and science. She has temporarily relocated to Doha, Qatar, while pursuing a PhD from the University of Queensland.

archymishra@gmail.com

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