Landscape for Flourishing
Emotions
Emotions
All the suffering and joy that we experience in our lives, regardless of the context, stems from the emotions we have in relation to our moment by moment experiences in the world.
Emotions play a critical role in providing us with information about the world around us, assisting us to avoid things which may not be good for us and to engage with things that are good for us.
The ability to do this well is unfortunately not completely innate. So, we find ourselves often unable to manage or negotiate some of our emotional experiences very well and this can lead to poor decision making, poor behaviour and lower our levels of wellbeing.
Cultivating mental and emotional balance is what this part of our Landscape is all about; developing our emotional skills, so we can experience a full range of emotions in a manner that leads to robust decision making, generating positive emotion in ourselves and others, and managing our negative emotions in healthy ways.
The Five Domains of Positive Functioning
These domains serve as gateways to unlocking our potential for personal growth, fulfillment, and resilience, allowing us to navigate life’s challenges with greater wisdom and embrace its joys more fully.
Much of our experience is made up of what we pay attention to.
Our landscape is therefore made up from and biased by the things we pay the most attention to. Attention and Awareness is our first design element for our Landscape for Flourishing.
The second design element for our Landscape for Flourishing is Comprehension and Coping. After we pay attention, what happens next is determined by what we do with it.
Setting, pursuing and achieving goals is an essential part of our human make up and critical to designing our landscape. When we lack purpose and direction it is very difficult for us to be at our best.
In a successfully designed landscape we need to have enough positive relationships that are a source of enrichment, vitality and growth in our lives. Science shows us that one of the common themes amongst people who are happier in life is the strength and quality of the relationships they have in their lives.
