How to flourish in a modern world
Some weeks ago, my sister sent me a meme that listed all the things we’re supposedly meant to achieve on any given day, written in a stream-of-consciousness-style text. The list ranged from drinking enough water to running a successful side hustle while working a nine-to-five job (which in itself feels impossible). It also mentioned a five-step skincare routine, regular yoga and cardio, eating balanced home-cooked meals, making time for loved ones, healing our emotional and spiritual wounds, spending time in nature and embracing our purpose in life.
I laughed because it’s so relatable. I want to be able to do all these things, but in what 100-hour day dimension I’m supposed to achieve them eludes me to no end. When did the list of happy-human requirements get so long?
Due to social media, we’re bombarded with messaging about what we “should” be doing to lead a fulfilled life, how we should be meeting our needs and what success or purpose “looks” like in today’s world. But despite the media around this (much of which is well intentioned), many people struggle to make the ideals of a purposeful life work for them, and the result tends to be one of demotivation and dissatisfaction.
So, what do we do? According to Dr Maike Neuhaus, we need to flip our thinking completely. Instead of focusing on what we can’t achieve, we should focus on how we can flourish.
What is “flourishing”?
When it comes to feeling happy and content in life, positive psychology research tends to focus on two core concepts:
Hedonic happiness: Happiness is the experience of more pleasure and less pain and is composed of an affective state (positive versus negative) and a positive cognitive state (a sense of satisfaction with life).
Eudaimonic happiness: Happiness results from pursuing, attaining and maintaining a sense of purpose, meaning and personal growth.
Most people focus on hedonic ways to achieve happiness and while that’s important, if we want to lead a flourishing life, we need to focus on eudaimonic happiness, too. “We’re not very good at identifying what we need to be happy,” Dr Neuhaus explains. “When it comes to flourishing, it’s really about the ‘whole package’. When we flourish, we experience a wonderful combination of joy, personal growth and connection. Flourishing includes hedonia and eudaimonia — both are important, even though hedonia gets a bad rap! Flourishing also includes social wellbeing — connection to oneself and others.”
To better understand flourishing, Dr Neuhaus tells me about its opposite component — languishing. “When we’re languishing, we’re really on that autopilot way of tackling our days. We’re not feeling any joy or connection to our work, others or ourselves. Everything feels a bit meh and no amount of holidays or rest days will change this.”
Thinking about our needs
During my conversation with Dr Neuhaus, I’m reminded of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and his concept of self-actualisation. The theory of self-actualization dictates that only when we fulfil our emotional, physical, material and spiritual needs can we reach our full potential. Abraham Maslow created his Hierarchy of Needs in 1943 to better explain how we can achieve this.
In Maslow’s theory, there are five levels of needs and to reach self-actualisation, we need to address our unique requirements at each level:
Physiological needs: The basic needs required to keep us alive, including food, water, shelter, sleep and warmth.
Safety needs: Our need to feel safe and secure in our environments, at home, at work or in public spaces.
Loving needs: This goes beyond romantic relationships and includes our need to feel like we belong within our communities, friendships, family and other social relationships.
Esteem needs: This relates to the need to feel like we have been successful in our ideas of achievement and that we also receive recognition and respect from others regarding this.
Self-actualisation: This is the highest level and relates to our need to pursue and fulfil our full potential and abilities.
You might have seen Maslow’s theory depicted as a pyramid. This graphic has often encouraged people to believe that to reach self-actualisation, you must meet the needs in order, starting at the bottom. I recently learned the pyramid graphic wasn’t part of Maslow’s original theory, but a graphic design choice made much later by others, and it’s stuck through the years.
“Maslow devoted his work to helping people understand their full potential,” explains Dr Neuhaus. “Every living thing has this potential, even plants. While Maslow’s theory has many good qualities, it does make a few assumptions and he never intended it to be a pyramid! Looking at our needs in this way makes it all feel a bit like a computer game; we have to keep ‘levelling up’ to reach our potential and eventually ‘win’ the game of life, but we know this isn’t the case. Life is filled with ups and downs.”
A new metaphor for a modern world
I ask Dr Neuhaus what current research suggests we can do to understand our needs and support us on our way to living a flourishing life. She points to the work of Dr Scott Barry Kaufman and his redeveloped metaphor of a sailboat.
“When it comes to our needs, we need something flexible and functional. A sailboat is a fantastic metaphor to consider,” explains Dr Neuhaus. “Think of it like this: your boat has a sail and hull. The sail encompasses your growth needs — purpose, love and exploration. The hull encompasses your security needs — self-esteem, connection and safety. You cannot open your sail and steer your ship forward if your hull is full of holes. The more holes you have, the more likely you will sink into languishing. When you start to take care of the holes, you can start to move forward.”
I love this metaphor and how Dr Neuhaus explains that sometimes our sail will be wide open, but then we discover a hole. So we might bring the sail in and focus on patching the hole. Dr Neuhaus is quick to point out that it doesn’t matter if we have a few small holes in the hull or how long we might need to ‘repair’ them, these needs don’t have to be perfectly met to keep working on our growth needs.
“It’s a very dynamic process and once we get a strong handle on our growth and security needs, we can start to get proactive and steer that ship where it feels right and where it is most important for us to go, aligning with our values,” says Dr Neuhaus.
Find your path to flourishing
So how do we uncover our growth and security needs to understand how to best support and meet them? Dr Neuhaus has some great advice:
Understand your strengths, talents and values
“Realising your full potential is an innate human need,” says Dr Neuhaus. “Purpose is your values in action. To understand your purpose, you need to know your values. Dedicate time to understanding what is most important to you, what you want to experience and how you want to show up. This will help you cultivate an understanding of your core values. Understanding your talents and strengths allows you to pursue those values efficiently, successfully and joyfully.”
Be curious
“Curiosity is a key character trait that we need to cultivate to learn more about our passions,” Dr Neuhaus advises. “Curiosity keeps us open to new experiences, new connections and new ways of doing things — it’s also essential for helping to uncover our values, strengths and talents.”
Develop self-leadership
“My deepest passion is to help people live lives that excite them or get them excited again for all the things they used to enjoy, but have got lost along the way,” says Dr Neuhaus. “One crucial way I do this is through helping others cultivate self-leadership.”
Dr Neuhaus teaches self-leadership through three components: self-knowledge, self-goal-setting and self-regulation, and it all starts with having some goals for yourself and your life. “We begin with where your goals sit across these three elements and then determine how we can move forward. You need to align your goals with your values, otherwise they’ll leave you cold. Once you understand what humans need to flourish and what that looks like for you personally, the most efficient way to pursue this is through self-leadership. At the core of this are your values upon which your goals are set.”
An essential element of flourishing is that it isn’t a shot-in-the-arm quick fix. The idea encompasses the breadth and length of our lifespan, allowing us to find our own pace and take the time to learn from our lived experiences.
When I think of flourishing, my mind immediately turns to nature and how it transforms throughout the seasons, never failing to achieve its purpose during each chapter. Alongside my new sailboat metaphor, I’m also inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Dr Maike Neuhaus, aka The Flourishing Doc, is a psychologist, coach and a flourishing and self-leadership fanatic. Find more advice on how to lead a flourishing life via her website theflourishingdoc.com and @theflourishingdoc on Instagram.
