Mindful Well-Being: Nurturing the Four Core Seeds of Well-Being

This book introduces our Seeds of Well-Being Model for living a life of well-being. Chapter 1 describes our model, which is presented in the form of a map, the Map of the Seeds of Well-Being Model of the Personal Domain. Every moment of the day we are somewhere on The Map. The Map can be used to help you gain greater awareness of your current path in life in terms of your emotions and your attitudes and actions toward self and others. It also can help you to plan a future path toward greater well-being. In Chapters 2 through 5, we examine each of the regions of The Map, showing paths that lead to well-being and contrasting them with paths to be avoided. In Chapter 6, we present the Seeds of Well-Being Cool Hand and I-MOVE strategies for staying constructive, or returning to being constructive, when responding to the many challenges of our lives. We hope that you will be inspired to use these strategies, together with The Map, to help you find and stay on a path of well-being, even when the path gets a bit "bumpy" with challenges. The book includes an epilogue that describes the efforts of several prominent thinkers historically who have tried to promote greater well-being in our world. Appendix A makes explicit the theoretical assumptions underlying our model. Appendix B describes the conceptual roots of our model in terms of ancient Eastern and Western thinking about well-being, as well as modern science-based models. Finally, Appendix C provides brief summaries of the results of several classic large-scale investigations of lifestyle factors related to health and longevity.