- Health – physical and mental wellbeing.
- Aesthetic experience – natural and created beauty.
- Play – a good with many modes of expression: creativity, the arts, games, sport, humor, conversation…
- Pleasure – the thing that makes positive emotions positive.
- Yes-saying – What values do we say yes to? Values are the foundation of meaning and purpose
- Life – appreciating and enhancing the web of life (biophilia and nature connectedness).
- Information – the goodness of knowledge and lifelong learning.
- Friendship – social health and the spectrum of positive social interaction.
- Engagement – absorption, flow, and being in the zone.
The H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E. framework is an aggregation and distillation of many models of wellbeing: 5 Psychological Vitamins – Corey Keyes, 5 Elements of Well-Being – Gallup, PERMA – Martin Seligman, PERMA+4 – Stewart Donaldson, 10 Keys to Happier Living – Action for Happiness, Workplace Mental Well-Being – Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, NIRSA’s 8 Factor Wellbeing Wheel, 5C’s of Well-Being Culture – Kerry Sanderson, The Greater Good Science Center’s Keys to Well-Being, 6 Stages of Successful Adulthood – George Vaillant, and Self-Determination Theory – Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. We removed instrumental goods (like economic wellbeing, since money is not valuable in and of itself) and distilled the remaining goods down to H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E.’s nine broad themes. The H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E. framework is a tool to give people a broad overview of wellbeing science in a memorable way. Click- here – for a YouTube playlist themed around the H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E. framework.
We recommend writing out and ranking your top three values in your own words in light of your own strengths, any H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E. domains that speak to you, your passions, and any other quality of being or doing that matters to you. Each value can serve as a source from which an infinite number of goals can be derived. The H.A.P.P.Y. L.I.F.E. framework can also be used as a set of domains in which to set goals. Hope (psychological) is the essence of positive mental wellbeing and consists of three parts: goals thinking, pathways thinking (which includes the ability to create new pathways as challenges arise), and agency. Self-efficacy or agency expands from iteratively turning one’s goals thinking and pathways thinking into action. The expansion of agency that occurs through successful actions, in turn helps to strengthen one’s goals thinking and pathways thinking. It may be beneficial to explore wellbeing science on Google Scholar as you formulate your values, goals, and pathways.