It’s been a great week chatting passion and purpose with you! I get so fired up about this stuff, and I hope you feel like you have a little more clarity in terms of where you want to go and what’s important to you.

If you’re still working through it all, be sure to pick up Maryalice Goldsmith’s Pursuing Purpose course – TODAY IS THE LAST DAY to enroll. It’s an 8-week educational program that walks you through how to find your BIG WHY. And why does that matter? Because when you have a clear purpose, it creates direction and flow, so you can quit feeling so overwhelmed, distracted and ineffective all the time.

Finding and following your purpose is what makes you productive and deliberate in what you do. I loved the training, and I know you will, too! Get access to the online training here.

Next, I want to introduce a concept called the PERMA model for happiness, developed by Dr. Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology and author of the book, ‘Flourish.’

Seligman developed the PERMA model to describe the 5 areas that we can develop in order to not only feel happy, but also thrive. Because as much as we’d like to believe that we just “think positive thoughts” and all of a sudden it’s Pollyanna-time all the time, that’s not how it works.

In fact, operating with positivity isn’t about being happy all the time. It’s a way of being in the world so that even when shitty stuff is happening, we can still find a way to get through it with confidence, self-compassion and optimism.

Positivity is an operating system. And you develop it by honing these 5 concepts:

P – Positive emotions

E – Engagement

R – Relationships

M – Meaning

A – Accomplishment

Some people feel more excited and hopeful when they’re accomplishing things. Others feel more alive and happy when they are engaging with others. Still others need a deep sense of meaning in what they’re doing to feel optimistic and effective.

The key is that all 5 of these need to be tapped into in order to increase our happiness, though usually one will be stronger for most people.

My strongest one is meaning. I need to feel a deep sense of purpose behind what I am doing day-to-day. If I don’t, then I tend to feel like, “Who cares? This is not making any difference!” (I feel bad for all high school math teachers trying to get kids excited about the applicability and relevancy of calculus!).

For me, I need to always feel tapped into a bigger ‘why’ when I am working or engaging with others or just hanging out in my free time. Hence, why my mom calls me “so intense” and says that “it’s lucky you and Jade found each other because no one else could ever put up with you!” Lol. Okay, so I’m a little intense ;)

Anyway, to me, meaning is the most important. But the others are relevant, too.

So how do we do we increase our level of each of these markers? Here’s how I navigate it:

This is tricky because when it comes to nutrition and exercise, it’s easy to go negative: “This sucks, I am so bad at this, why can’t I stay on this friggin’ program, why is this so hard, I can’t do it!”

I get it, I do. And for many years, the way I “kept myself in line” was negative motivators: guilt, shame, remorse and self-disgust. But the interesting thing was that as much I thought those things were working (and I was scared to give them up!), once I started adopting positive emotions like gratitude, self-compassion, recognizing my humanity and giving myself the win, it was then that my actions turned around. I was MORE motivated to eat well, stay consistent with training and was able to be more resilient in my eating, not letting a single slip-up turn into a weeklong binge.

To cultivate positive emotions, you have to catch yourself in the negative. Whenever you are sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, berating yourself, insecure, whatever. Ask, “Is this emotion serving me?”

You can’t control your thoughts but you can question their utility. Choosing positive is a practice, but accordingly to Seligman, the more you do it, the easier and more automatic positivity becomes.

We can look at this two ways: 1) engage with other positive, like-minded people and 2) engage in a journey of sorts. I will talk more about relationships in a second, so let’s start with the latter.

One of my favorite things that Shawn Achor, positive psychologist and NY Times best-selling author, says is, “Happiness is the joy you feel while working toward your fullest potential.” I like this definition because it allows for striving and pushing.

I think many of us think of “being happy” as a static place, where you’re just content, and even complacent. That’s not it at all. In fact, people feel the most alive and fulfilled when they are working toward something that has meaning for them. This doesn’t mean it’s always easy or pleasant, but it has purpose.

The key, however, is learning to balance that striving with gratitude, so as to not fall into the black hole of never-ending dissatisfaction. So ask, how am I engaging in something that has purpose to me? What steps am I taking? What thing I am doing regularly that is filling me up?

We all have them. But how many of yours are positive relationships? How many possibility thinkers do you surround yourself with, versus preventative thinkers?

One of my favorite ways to expand my relationships is looking for those whose accomplishments and successes are beyond my own. I know that I am the average of the five people I spend the most time with, so I try to cultivate my inner circle to include mentors and friends who can teach me.

Look around you. Do you have anyone in a mentorship role, a coaching role? Anyone you can learn from? Might do you well to engage someone like that. Cultivating positive relationships gives us permission to be more, create me and inspire more.

Cultivating any kind of relationship can be hard for people who are naturally introverted or who like to stay behind a computer screen and feel like they are “interacting” via virtual connection. While online connection is fun, it’s not as impactful to our happiness as real, in-person connection. Which is why I am a huge fan of in-person events, like The Bliss Project (I am speaking at later this month) and the Radiance Retreat. There is nothing like face time, engaging with people of similar values and interests. Even if it’s not in your nature, force yourself a little bit, because the most positive and fulfilled people are the ones who are looking to make connections and foster meaningful alliances.

My fav. I think of meaning similar to the way I think about purpose: they create deliberateness and focus and provide built-in motivation. When I can see that something I’m doing is making an impact for someone else, I feel compelled and excited to keep doing it.

I’ll give you an example of doing something that didn’t fulfill me in that way: fitness modeling and trying my hardest to “land a cover.” I love my magazine covers and I proud of them, but they also held very little meaning outside the sense of accomplishment I felt inside at doing something that not many people had done (accomplishment is the last concept, below, we’ll get to in a second). I tried to tell myself that I was “inspiring other people with my fit body.” Um, okay, maybe. But walking around with a 6-pack is not nearly as inspiring as getting on my blog and talking about the real shit women are dealing with and the struggles we all have and being honest and open about solutions. THAT has way more meaning than being an example of someone “in shape.”

It took me many years to make that transition, and now I’ll choose my intellect and communication skills over my body. Every single day.

Without accomplishment, I think it would be difficult to continue down a path to completion. Part of what gives the blood, sweat and tears of the journey a sense of purpose is arriving somewhere – seeing the fruits of your labor.

For me, achievement is interlaced with meaning, however. Though I can feel grateful and even relieved when I achieve something I am proud of, its impact doesn’t last context. For example, while winning a competition is amazing and something to be recognized, the impact of that journey is easily forgotten if not leveraged for another purpose, and in my mind, something other-focused—like turning that “celebrity” into a platform to talk about positive body image or self-love. Just my $0.02!

But that’s not to take away from the fact that the simple completion of something that takes effort needs to be recognized too. Train and complete a 5k? High five! PR on your squat? Amazing. Study and pass that exam you’ve been working toward? Nice job! The key here is appreciation and gratitude. Capture those feelings around an accomplishment and feelings of fulfillment can skyrocket.

 SO.

Which of the 5 is the most impact for you? Which do you think is the one that moves you to happiness and personal fulfillment the most? How are you doing cultivating the others?

Again, this comes down to purpose and deliberateness – aim. Where are you headed? Can you stop your hectic schedule for one second to ask, what am I doing, and why?

These questions might feel like they are for those really struggling or who need a lot of help. But I can assure you that if you don’t get used to asking them, there’s a good chance you will wake up 10 years from now asking what the heck just happened and how did I get here? ;)

Purpose and meaning and connection and conscious engagement cultivate happiness and wellbeing. And they deserve some mental attention from you!

To an amazingly fulfilling week!

Xo,

Jill