Well Being The Five Essential Elements

1. Well BeingThe Five Essential Elements By Tom Rath & Jim Harter Published May 2010 ISBN 978-1-59562-040-8

2. Gallup survey • Recent Gallup survey covering 150 countries and about 150,000 people and including past surveys and research. • Well being is not just about being happy. It is a combination of • Our love for what we do each day (CareerWell Being) • The quality of our relationships (Social Well Being) • The security of our finances (Financial Well Being) • The vibrancy of our physical health (Physical Well Being) • The pride we take in what we’ve contributed to our communities (Community Well Being) • Most importantly, it’s about how these 5 elements interact. Focusing on only one can lead to feelings of frustration and failure. • 66% of people are doing well in at least one of the 5 areas but only 7% are thriving in all 5.

3. Gallup survey • We are the biggest threat to our own well being by allowing short-term decisions to override what is best for our long-term well-being • People with highest level of well being find short-term incentives that are consistent with their long-term objectives to make it easier to make the right decisions in the moment. • E.g. wanting more energy during the day (short-term incentive) leads to exercising in the morning (in the moment decision) which leads to better health (long-term goal).

4. Career well being • Arguably the most essential of the 5 elements. • Our well being recovers more rapidly from the death of a spouse than it does from a sustained period of unemployment (more than a year). • Do you like what you do each day? • Only 20% of people could give a strong ‘yes’ in response. • More than 66% of workers worldwide are clock watchers (disengaged). • People who are engaged have an entirely different experience during the working day than those who are disengaged and show same levels of happiness and stress on workdays and non work days. These levels are very different in disengaged workers.

5. Career well being • The person people least enjoy being around is their boss. • Time spent with one’s boss was rated lower than time spent doing chores and cleaning the house.

6. Choose your boss with care • A study of 3,000 workers in Sweden showed that those who deemed their managers to be the least competent had a 24% higher risk of a serious heart problem. For those who had worked for that manager for 4 years, the risk was 39% higher than average.

7. Career well being • The most disengaged group of workers are those who have managers who are not paying attention to them. • If your manager ignores you, there is a 40% chance that you will be actively disengaged. • If your manager pays attention, even if just focusing on yourweaknesses, the chance drops to 22%. • If your manager takes interest and focuses on your strengths, the chances of your being actively disengaged drops to 1%.

8. Career well being • Career well being is one of the major differentiators that help us live long lives. • A Gallup survey of over 95 yr-olds in the USA showed that on average, they had retired at 80, not 65. • 93% said they had gained a great deal of satisfaction out of the work they did. • 86% claimed that they had had fun at doing their job.

9. Use your strengths • Essential to having fun at work is getting the opportunity to use your strengths every day. • (An aside: Peter Drucker urged people to do what they are good at, adding that at best you will become mediocre at something you’re not good at. You can only achieve excellence in something that you are good at.) • People who use their strengths every day are 6 times as likely to be actively engaged and 3 times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life. • People who use their strengths can enjoy a full 40-hr week, those who do not, usually burn out after 20 hrs.

10. Purpose • Those with thriving Career Well Being have a deep purpose in life and a plan to attain their goals.

11. Social Well Being - Beware the company you keep! • Because we tend to synchronise our moods with the people around us, our emotions influence one another throughout the day. • Our social well being is dependent on our entire network. • The odds of our being happy increase by 15% if a direct connection in our social network is happy. • The odds of our being happy increase by 10% if a friend of our direct connection is happy. • The odds of our being happy increase by 6% if a friend’s friend’s friend is happy.

12. Social Well Being • Social connections influence our habits, behaviours and health. • People with very few social ties have nearly twice the risk of dying from heart disease and are twice as likely to catch colds. • Social well being might have even more influence on how quickly we recover from surgery or major injury than conventional risk factors. • Proximity matters. Friends close by have a greater influence than those far away.

13. Social Well Being • To have a thriving day, we need 6 hrs of social time. This includes work, home, on the phone, talking to friends, sending e-mail and other communication. • The memory of socially active people over 50 declined at half the rate of those least social (study of 15,000 people). • The single best predictor of well being and engagement at work is not what people do but who they are with. • Small increases in social cohesion lead to large gains in production. • One friend can’t do it al – you need 3 or 4 close relationships.

14. Financial Well Being • The amount of money you have is not the best gauge of your Financial Wellbeing. • There is a strong connection between well being and per capita GDP (study of 132 countries). • Money doesn’t guarantee happiness, but living in a wealthy countries increases the odds of having a good life. (top: Denmark; bottom: Togo)

15. Financial Well Being • Spending on oneself does not boost wellbeing; spending money on others does. • Sadness may lead us to spend a lot more money on ourselves than we normally would. We spend the most when we are feeling the worst. • A bad mood could lead to a cascade of poor financial decisions.

16. Things versus experiences • For those earning less than $25,000 a year, experiential and material purchases produce similar gains in wellbeing. • As income increases, experiential purchases produce 2 to 3 times the level of wellbeing when compared to material purchases. • We can relive memories indefinitely. • Those with high Career Wellbeing perceive the same amount of pay much more favourably than those with low Career Wellbeing. • Irrespective of income, those with high Career and Social Wellbeing are nearly 2 times as likely to say they are satisfied with their standard of living. (Less likely to fall into the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ trap).

17. Irrationality • We are ‘loss averse’: it hurts more to lose $50 we already have than it feels good to win $50. • Finding $50 in the street will boost our wellbeing more than having $50 cut from a utility bill. • Credit cards are a ‘decoupling device’: they separate the joy of the immediate purchase from the pain of the payment.

18. Setting positive defaults • People with thriving Financial Wellbeing were not rich by traditional measures. They had enough money to meet their needs and were not worried about not being able to pay their bills. • They take control and assume responsibility for their financial future, e.g. by setting ‘positive defaults’ such as making automatic payments into a savings account directly from their paycheck.

19. Financial Wellbeing • Income, debt and net worth are the most common metrics used to evaluate the health of our finances. • People with thriving Financial Wellbeing talk about a general sense of financial security (lack of worry) instead of these absolute measures of wealth. • The perception that you have enough money has three times the impact of income alone on overall financial wellbeing. • When wealth-accumulation strategy creates daily stress, it’s not worth the potential return.

20. Physical Wellbeing • With every bite and drink we take, we make a choice: we select something that is net positive or net negative for our health. • Our genetic inheritance can be influenced by what we eat. Men who have the gene that predisposes them to prostate cancer can suppress this gene substantially by eating just one portion of broccoli per week. • Events during our lifetime can be passed on not only to our children but to future generations: the phenomenon of “epigenetic inheritance”. • If you are malnourished during adolescence, your children and grandchildren will be more susceptible to heart disease and diabetes. • The food we eat has a profound effect on our health, daily experiences and how long we live. E.g. eating one or more serving of fatty fish per week can reduce the risk of kidney cancer by 74%. • Omega 3 fatty acids also protect against Alzheimer’s, heart disease, some cancers, etc. • Eat fruits and vegetables that have darker tones of red, green and blue.

21. Physical Wellbeing • “A lack of energy often results from inactivity, not age” (Mayo clinic publication). • Recommended 20 - 30 minutes’ exercise a day 6 days a week. • Exercise is much more effective in combating fatigue than prescription drugs. • A good night’s sleep is like hitting the reset button; it clears our stressors from the day before. • Recommended: 7-8 hrs’ sleep per night. Less, or more, may cause health problems. • Learning may actually accelerate while we are asleep. We are more likely to remember what we have learned if we get a good night’s sleep. • Set positive defaults for your health.

22. The Economics of Health • 25% of the world’s population is in a lot of pain on a daily basis: 1.5 bn people are not doing what they would like to do because of physical pain. • In USA, healthcare costs are 16% of GDP, projected to reach 20% by 2020. • Cost of annual family health insurance in the USA: • 1999:$5,700 • 2009: $13,000 • 2018: $25,000

23. The Economics of Health • In 2007, 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the USA had a medical cause (Harvard study). • 75% of medical costs are due to largely preventable conditions (stress, tobacco, physical inactivity, poor food choices) • GOOD NEWS: healthy lifestyle changes can improve even the most chronic conditions very quickly.

24. Community Wellbeing • This is the element that can be the differentiator between a good life and a great one. • You need the basics: clean water, clean air, physical safety. 30% of people in USA, UK, Germany, France and other parts of Western Europe don’t feel safe walking home alone at night where they live. • Community Wellbeing is living in an area that is a good fit for your personality, family and interests. • The above are unlikely to create thriving Community Wellbeing. This requires active involvement in community groups or organisations. It’s about what we do to give back to our community.

25. Community Wellbeing • If we get a sense of joy from giving, nothing is more valuable than our time: volunteers’ “helper’s high”. Volunteers feel stronger, more energetic and more motivated after helping others. • Well-doing promotes deeper social interaction, enhanced meaning and purpose and a more active lifestyle – while keeping us from becoming too preoccupied with ourselves. • There is a link between altruistic behaviour and increases in overall longevity. • Well-doing inoculates us against stress and negative emotions. • Giving back can be personal: e.g. if parent or friend has had to deal with a specific disease and we volunteer to work for an associated organisation. • People who are engaged in their careers are 20-30% more likely to give back to their community.