The difference between Happiness, Wellbeing, resilience, fulfillment, and success

There is so much discussion and confusion between similar, at times overlapping yet different concepts such as Happiness, Wellbeing, fulfillment, resilience, and success.

Here I want to briefly share my opinion and definition of each, before diving deeper into the topic of Wellbeing which is the focus of this post.

Happiness is like a blossoming flower. It’s for me the ultimate goal of life and the best way possible to live life, it’s both the emotion we feel when our needs are met and the attitude with which we choose to live. I have written more about it in Three Types of Happiness & why Happiness Contribution is a better goal than Happiness
Wellbeing is like the soil and every other element needed to create and nurture the conditions for a flower to blossom. It’s the foundation of happiness, it’s the path we choose to create and constantly walk, it’s the neural pathways (like brain muscles) that we can develop and keep active through continuous practice, it’s our operating system as I will share in this post.
Resilience is like the capability of the flower to resist the wind and any other temporary weather conditions, staying grounded and continuing its growth and blossoming process. By working on our wellbeing, we strengthen our resilience.
Fulfillment is like the sunflower seed becoming a sunflower and the tulip seed becoming a tulip. It’s about our capability to reach our potential and let our seed blossom.
Success is about deciding how many flowers we want to see in our garden and getting exactly that amount or more blossoming. It’s about setting a goal and reaching it, that goal may make us feel also happy or fulfilled or not, and that goal may keep us healthy or may get us to burn-out.

Hence while all these elements are linked and influencing each other, they are different and each has its own mechanics and ways of nurturing them.

In this post I want to focus on Wellbeing and and how we can maximize it with the SPIRE framework.

What are the SPIRE elements?

SPIRE is the framework used by Tal Ben-Shahar to indicate the 5 primary elements of wellbeing: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional.

Tal Ben-Shahar’s entire Happiness Studies Academy is centered around this framework to organize what science, history, philosophy, religion, art, business and literature have to teach us about each element; and so it’s the Uppiness Game (interactive and fun online game to maximize learning to enhance our happiness) of which I’m a facilitator.

For Tal, Wellbeing is really about wholebeing, and he has identified twelve principles of wholebeing which include two general principles, and then two principles for each of the SPIRE elements.

I joined the very first cohort of Tal’s Happiness Studies Academy in 2018, while I was also doing research for my book Yellow Goldfish/Factor, graduating in December 2019. After that, I deepened my knowledge and practice of wellbeing with additional courses from QiGong, Laughter Yoga, Heart Coherence, Positive Intelligence, and Yoga. And, since I like to create frameworks that help me conceptualize and collect my knowledge in ways I can easily access and recall, I created a framework combining the learnings and elements from multiple areas and courses.

How can we nurture wellbeing: SPIRE elements and principles.

I have been reflecting a lot about the connections between all these elements and approaches, and ultimately come to the conclusions that:

the SPIRE wellbeing elements represent the “operating system” with which we (can) choose to operate
our soul, body, heart, mind, and lungs represent the hardware,
all the possible paths (covered in this post) and the Yellow Factors (identified in my book) represent the software and
the doing are the actual practices (of which there are dozens to choose from for each hardware and element)

For each of the SPIRE elements, I cover the following elements in two posts:

Two Principles as identified by Tal Ben-Shahar as part of the HSA curricula
Related hardware, software, and practices, as connected by me across all my learnings
Elements Highlights (post 1) and Favorite quotes (post 2), mostly based on the learnings from HSA
Questions for refleAction, a combination of learning from HSA, Uppiness game, and other courses
The very first step you can take to nurture this wellbeing, based on my own learning and experience
A summary visual with paths and Yellow Factors (post 1) and a summary visual with paths and quotes (post 2)
Link to the recording(s) of Laugh&Learn Laughter Yoga sessions inspired by each of the wellbeing elements (different sessions in post 1 and post 2)

The main sources for these blog posts are:

Happiness Studies Academy and the book Happiness Studies: An Introduction by Tal Ben-Shahar,
and my own book Yellow Factor (formerly Yellow Goldfish Factor, co-authored with Stan Phelps), and the research done while writing it;
various courses followed in the past 10+ years (mostly NVC Empathic Communication, Yoga, Laughter Yoga, Positive Intelligence, Heart Coherence)

Let’s look at each of these elements in more detail.

Spiritual wellbeing: principles and highlights

This wellbeing two principles are:

A purposeful life is a spiritual life
The ordinary is elevated to the extraordinary through mindful presence

Related hardware, software, topics, and practices

Hardware: Soul (Silence and Universe)
Action: being
Software/Topics: Job, Career, Calling, Goals, Strengths, Passion and Performance
Yellow Factor: Purpose & Integrity
Practices: Mindfulness, Meditation, Silence, Flow

Spiritual Wellbeing: Favorite quotes

🌻 “The process of striving after goals is crucial for our happiness & positive affectivity” David Watson

🌻 “Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor it is about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing towards the peak” Tal Ben-Shahar

🌻 “Everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. It is this spiritual freedom that makes life meaningful and purposeful” Viktor Frankl

🌻 “A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.” Peter Drucker

🌻 “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.” Peter F. Drucker

🌻 “A man should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths. The man who always knows exactly what people cannot do, but never sees anything they can do, will undermine the spirit of his organization.” Peter F. Drucker

🌻 “When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a candle in a windless place” Bhagavad Gita

Questions for refleAction

📌What are my performance strengths?

📌What are my passion strengths?

📌How can I increase the time I spend in the Peak Potential Zone?

Action

The very first step you can take to nurture this wellbeing:

✅ Take the VIA Character Strengths Assessment to find out your Strengths

✅ Select one of your top strengths and commit for the next week to address any challenge and opportunity using that strength

This wellbeing in one image

Laughter Yoga sessions inspired by this wellbeing elements

LaugherZoom 2023_12. “Laugh & Learn” inspired by Nepal & Spiritual Wellbeing.

LaugherZoom 2023_21. “Laugh & Learn”: Soul & Silence.