Cultivating your own well-being doesn’t mean avoiding discomfort altogether, according to neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Instead, it’s about achieving balance and flexibility in life. This means prioritizing quality relationships, monitoring social media usage, and engaging in activities that bring joy and reflection.
True well-being isn’t just about having positive experiences; it’s also about learning from discomfort and taking control of your own actions and habits. By accepting healthy levels of suffering and choosing to grow through them, you can achieve wellness as a state of being, rather than just a destination.
Immordino-Yang notes that well-being is not just the absence of disease or strife, but rather an ability and flexibility to manage oneself. This means it’s both a capacity and a state. She believes that practical actions can be taken to support one’s own well-being, such as prioritizing meaningful relationships, controlling social media use, and engaging in activities that bring joy and reflection.
By constructing meaningful stories about your experiences and privileges the things you enjoy doing with people you care about, you can cultivate a sense of well-being. Giving back to others and being engaged with them also reaps benefits for yourself.
Source: https://bigthink.com/the-well/wellbeing-explained-by-a-neuroscientist/