Wellness shouldn't be accompanied by selfishness

Justin Thomas says we shouldn't pursue our own wellbeing at the expense of others

The current well-being movement seems excessively individualistic, says Justin Thomas. iStockphoto

Surround yourself with positive people, get regular exercise and give generously to the needy. These are just a few of the many things claimed to help boost our well-being. The start of the New Year saw many of us joining gyms, buying activity tracking devices and just generally committing to things aimed at improving well-being. Who doesn’t want to feel more positive, energised and highly motivated?

From the pulpit of wellness we are repeatedly warned about the dangers of negativity and exhorted to surround ourselves with"positive people". Articles with titles like Dump the negative people and Seven types of negative people you need to ignore and avoid abound. Such advice is typically written by well-meaning wellness champions intent on helping us crank up our well-being levels to dizzying new heights.

For some of us, however, dumping the negative people might involve cutting connections with our pessimistic, miserable and most vulnerable acquaintances. This seems uncharitable at best, and would ultimately result in a lot of friendless pessimists. Furthermore, if someone befriends me, I would hate to think it was a calculated alliance, selfishly aimed at improving the well-being of the person doing the befriending. Friendship should be about giving as well as receiving. Rather than thinking “whose friendship would benefit me most?”, we might instead think: “who could benefit most from my friendship?”

Alongside the pursuit of positivity, physical exercise has become a staple of our well-being regimes. Keeping fit was once done in the gym or around the local park, but now, with our wearable biometrics (step counters and heart-rate monitors), the whole world has become an exercise studio. If I leave my desk to go and get you a coffee, it might be because I’m trying to clock-up my 10,000 steps for the day not because I care about your love of latte.

The links between physical activity and well-being are well demonstrated and documented. Many corporations, even governments, have come to appreciate the potential benefits of promoting employee/citizen well-being. Fit people cost less in health care terms, and positive, energetic, highly motivated individuals tend to be more productive and less likely to be absent from work. In short, well-being is good for the economy. Employers who give us gym memberships might not be as altruistic as they seem.

More recently, the well-being gurus have started encouraging us to be generous. They vigorously exhort us to give freely of our time and resources to those in need. The underlying rationale behind this call to generosity is that acts of kindness can be a means of reducing our own stress levels and boosting personal happiness. In this model of calculated generosity, happiness is no longer an incidental by-product of our good deed, it’s an end in and of itself.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health even reports a link between generosity and a reduced risk of early death. In our current pursuit of well-being, the right things are often done for the wrong reasons. Greed for anything, whether it's health, well-being or happiness, is still just greed – no more, no less.

In his book The Happiness Industry, William Davies, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of London, suggests that instead of just looking inward for answers to our lack of well-being, we might also look out at society, critically exploring the social factors (loneliness, unemployment, inequality) that may be eroding well-being and contributing to mental health problems.

The current well-being movement seems excessively individualistic – "how can I get my psychological six-pack?"– and perhaps this way of thinking is part of the problem. The UAE has traditionally been a collectivist society, so exploring collectivist models of well-being might prove particularly insightful.

Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas