I will admit my bias right off the bat – I believe that the ultimate bottom-line of education is the well-being of individuals and communities. I cannot get excited by the idea that the deepest purpose of educational institutions is transmitting information and facilitating matriculation. Offering students a curriculum that will serve them for a lifetime is not the same as getting students through a curriculum that is created independent of their needs. When we lose sight of this, we can end up working at cross-purposes with the goal of increasing well-being in the world.
In order to know what we are working toward, it is helpful to have a clear concept of what well-being is. The study of human flourishing has picked up considerably over the last three decades. According to researchers in the relatively new field of positive psychology, “well-being encompasses social, emotional, psychological, and physical aspects that help shape overall positive life functioning.”[i] I simply refer to well-being as a peaceful and powerful relationship to life.
Well-being is not a one-dimensional construct. It has conditional and unconditional aspects. Conditional well-being depends on what shows up – the circumstances of our lives. Conditions include the genetics we were born with, the environment we grew up in, the weather, the people around us, the resources we have access to, as well as the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs that pop up as we live our lives. One of the realities of life is that conditional well-being is largely outside our control.
Unconditional well-being depends on what we practice – the choices of our lives. What we practice includes the skills we intentionally develop, the internal resources we cultivate, and our responses to circumstances. These choices affect the quality of our lives in the present as well as shaping pathways in our brains for the future. It is the unconditional aspects of well-being where we can have the greatest influence because what shows up in a complex and continually changing universe is outside our control.
Well-being can also be understood in terms of hedonism and eudaimonism. Eudaimonia is the experience of "living life in a full and deeply satisfying way," while hedonia is "the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect."[ii] In other words, hedonic well-being refers to comfort and pleasure, while eudaimonic well-being refers to meaning and purpose.
The spectra of well-being from conditional to unconditional and from hedonic to eudaimonic helps us understand a sobering trend that is occurring in modern society. Our young people are becoming more anxious, stressed, depressed, and narcissistic. This is not the pessimism of an older generation wistful for days gone by – this is what we have learned from extensive data collected over the last eight decades.[iii] And there is good reason for this. Our culture is increasingly emphasizing conditions and comfort as defining a good life. Students are encouraged to look at their circumstances as a primary determinant of their value – grades, college admissions, awards, and numbers of friends and followers on social media.
To be sure, conditions affect well-being, but conditions are mercurial and often uncontrollable. Focusing on the uncontrollable to determine the quality of our lives is a very effective strategy for fueling anxiety, stress, and depression. Focusing on what others think of us – feeding off of approval and recoiling from criticism is a great way to feed narcissism. Our growing focus on the conditional aspects of well-being is having significant negative impact on the health of our kids, our society, and indeed, the health of our planet.
The other shift that has been growing in momentum for some time is the emphasis placed on the role of comfort in a good life. In a consumer society, a common message is that discomfort can be avoided with a purchase or an upgrade. This obsession with comfort ignores the obvious reality that discomfort is a normal part of being human. Physical and emotional discomfort contain a lot of valuable information that is often lost in our frenzy to avoid it. Further, discomfort is one of the greatest engines behind learning. The human brain is designed to resolve the discomfort that comes with making a mistake. I am not suggesting that the goal of education should be to create discomfort, but I am suggesting that the goal should definitely not be comfort. The pursuit of meaning, purpose, growth, and contribution often includes the experience of discomfort. Teachers should strive to make classrooms places that are safe, not comfortable.
In our current climate when a student expresses discomfort in the form of sadness, upset, confusion, or disappointment, there is frequently an adult trying to rescue the child from these feelings (think overprotective) or blame the child for having these feelings (think hard driving). The result is that young people come away believing that discomfort is something to be avoided and that it indicates that something is wrong with them. I see the result of this in my adult clients who cry in front of me for the first time and consistently express the words “I am sorry.”
In the effort to reduce stress, many schools have set about managing homework and course load, curating commitments, and manipulating schedules. I am not against making expectations and workloads reasonable, but there is a downside to this approach. Focusing on managing the environment can leave students ill-equipped when they leave the school and enter less thoughtfully manicured circumstances. We do not want students simply nostalgic for the caring schools they left; we want them prepared to cope with whatever environment they will enter. We want our students to be cognizant of the powerful life skills that they have taken with them.
So, what do we do? We teach the skills of well-being. We know that the unconditional aspects of well-being hinge on the ability to self-regulate – to make choices based on meaningful goals, values, commitments, and connections to others.[iv] Self-regulation, like well-being, has multiple components. When we look at the hierarchy of self-regulation, social skill is on top – the ability to form meaningful, positive relationships is the single greatest predictor of well-being over a lifespan.[v] Next is behavioral self-regulation – healthy, purposeful behavior is obviously instrumental for a person to thrive. And underpinning behavior is emotional self-regulation – the ability to know what one is feeling and to work with it effectively. Although we like to think of ourselves as primarily rational beings, our behavior is driven more by emotion than most of us realize – working well with feelings is crucial to self-regulation and well-being.
Finally, forming the foundation of the self-regulation architecture is awareness – attentional self-control. This is the ability to aim attention on what is present and important, to notice when it has wandered, and to bring it back. Attention is a resource, and awareness is the skillful use of this resource. Unfortunately, this skill is not commonly taught in schools. We assume that students (and adults) know how to use their attention skillfully. If they do not appear to, then we give them unhelpful instruction such as “pay attention!”
The good news is that the skills of awareness can be developed with practice.[vi] I work with many schools that are finding ways to build this practice into daily activities. Teachers are learning to ask better questions such as “where is your attention right now?” or to give useful prompts such as “raise your hand if you are thinking about something other than what we are discussing.” Helpful guidance is being given such as “notice where your attention is right now and bring it back if it has wandered.” Rather than solving emotional or social challenges for students, teachers are asking “what’s most important about this situation?” and “what do you think would be most helpful for you to do next?”
Teachers of all kinds of subjects, from math to physical education, are spending short periods of time in mindfulness activities during class helping students develop the skills of attentional control. There is good reason to do this – it builds skills for a lifetime and it increases retention of information during the class.[vii] Researchers have found that even a short period of training can help students notice more quickly when their attention has wandered.[viii]
Awareness supports self-regulation, which in turn, supports well-being. Better than ever, we understand the principles and practices that support human flourishing. We have the knowledge, but do we have the will? Every school has the opportunity to ask themselves the question “do we want to be a school that strives to send our students to the Ivy League – some of them with the skills of well-being – or do we want to be a school that strives to give our students the skills of well-being, with some of them going to the Ivy League?” The choice is ours.
Dave is the CEO of Applied Attention. He works with schools to create purposeful and positive cultures of well-being among the adults and students. His work is research-based and human-centered. You can reach him at dave@appliedattention.com
Resources Cited
[i] Keyes, C. L. M., & Waterman, M. B. (2003). Dimensions of well-being and mental health in adulthood. In M. H. Bornstein, L. Davidson, C. L. M. Keyes, C. A. Moore (Eds.), Well- being: Positive development across the life course (pp. 477-495). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
[ii] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: An introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), 1-11.
[iii] Twenge, J. M., & Gentile, B., et al (2010). Birth cohort increases in psychopathology among young Americans, 1938–2007: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the MMPI. Clinical psychology review, 30(2), 145-154.
[iv] Gagnon, M. C. J., Durand-Bush, N., & Young, B. W. (2016). Self-regulation capacity is linked to wellbeing and burnout in physicians and medical students: Implications for nurturing self-help skills. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6(1).
[v] Waldinger, R. J., & Schulz, M. S. (2010). What's love got to do with it? Social functioning, perceived health, and daily happiness in married octogenarians. Psychology and aging, 25(2), 422.
[vi] Tang, Y. Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., ... & Posner, M. I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(43), 17152-17156.
[vii] Ramsburg, J. T., & Youmans, R. J. (2014). Meditation in the higher-education classroom: meditation training improves student knowledge retention during lectures. Mindfulness, 5(4), 431-441.
[viii] Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness training improves working memory capacity and GRE performance while reducing mind wandering. Psychological science, 24(5), 776-781.