How To Flourish in 10 Steps

Flourish refers to “when people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning, and positive social functioning, most of the time.” That means that flourishing encompasses many feelings, activities, and thoughts that make people feel happy and complete.

Flourishing includes positive emotions, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose in life, close relationships, and often virtues like wisdom, courage, and kindness. Flourishing is similar to the idea of having optimal well-being.

So, how to flourish? Try these strategies to help yourself flourish.

• Practice Gratitude
• Build Better Social Relationships
• Savour
• Imagine Your Best Possible Self
• Do Random Act Of Kindness
• Volunteer
• Be Yourself
• Know Your Worth
• Get Your Needs Met

To Flourish, Practice Gratitude

One of the most powerful way to boost your well-being the practice gratitude using a journal. Gratitude journals (writing down things in life you are grateful for) have been found to increase several aspects of flourishing.

Just taking a few minutes each day to write down the things you’re thankful for can lead to happiness, improved relationships, and a deeper sense of fulfilment. Try including this in our morning or bedtime routine.

And guess what? It doesn’t have to stop there! You can share the experience with a friend or a romantic partner. Swap stories of appreciations with each other to feel more connected and uplifted.

To Flourish, Build Better Social Relationships

Developing healthy relationships is one of the best things we can do to flourish. That’s because social connection is sometimes thought to be the most important determinant of our health and happiness.

For example, social connection has been shown to be one of the strongest predictors of mortality. That’s why investing in our relationships is so important.

So, whether it’s spending quality time with your family, catching up with your friends, or being kind to your neighbours and colleagues, investing in your relationships is essential for your emotional self-care routine and overall well-being.

To Flourish, Savour

Savouring does not just refer to how one appreciates the taste of a meal. You can savour life by enjoying the positive experiences through thinking about happy events, sharing or celebrating something good with others, and paying more attention to positive emotional experiences.

Whether it’s replaying good memories in your mind or sharing joyful news with friends, or taking a moment to appreciate peace, these savouring moments play a big role in your life. For example, think about what your are thankful for today and write them down in a positivity journal.

In fact, research shows that when taking time to savour life improve happiness levels.

To Flourish, Imagine Your Best Possible Self

Thinking about your ideal life or the best possible version of yourself in the future can increase happiness, life satisfaction, and optimism, important elements of flourishing.

So, try visualising a future where you are thriving in your career, relationship or personal growth as this will help you feel more hopeful with your life right now. Actually, this one of the way you can tap into your potential, and move toward the life you really want through a manifestation journal. Why now pick a journal of your choice from out collection of free tools today and get started?!

To Flourish, Do Random Acts Of Kindness

​Doing things you wouldn’t normally do to help others or be kind has positive effects on multiple aspects of flourishing, like happiness and positive emotions. These acts can even inspire others to do the same.

To Flourish, Volunteer

Volunteering, like acts of kindness, can help you flourish by providing a sense of social connection, purpose, happiness, and well-being. 

These acts of kindness are some of the habits to you can include in your routine to improve your lifestyle. They will help you lift your mood

To Flourish, Be Yourself

Inauthenticity can occur when we focus too much on meeting other people’s expectations. This is dangerous because we can lose touch with who we are.

The reality is: you are the happiest when your actions reflect your core values, and personality. That’s why to be happy and flourish, you need to show up as yourself and for yourself – making sure that your actions represent you. Why not download and use the happiness list in our free tools to log your happy moments to get started?!

Once you show up for yourself, you can flourish more easily. 

To Flourish, Know Your Worth

If we don’t like ourselves much, we can struggle to flourish.

By getting clear and knowing your worth, you can start to feel better about yourself, your life, and value. Practicing things like self-compassion and reversing negative self-talk are good places to start as they will help you change your mindset and feel more confident.

To Flourish, Set Meaningful Goals

Setting meaningful life goals and working towards these goals can help us flourish. Why? Well, simply setting and working towards goals can help us better understand what really matters to us so that we can pursue meaning more easily.

Whether your goals are big or small, they will motivate you – making you feel connected to what’s important to you. Setting goals make you discover more about yourself including your strengths and destination.

To Flourish, Believe You Can

There is actually a lot of evidence that believing in something makes it more likely to come about. Our positive expectations actually do help lead us to positive outcomes.

This means that, when you expect something positive, you’re more likely to grab the opportunities that lead to positive outcomes. If you believe that you can, you are more likely to do.

So try to be optimistic about your ability to flourish.

Bottom Line

Flourishing isn’t about being happy all the time. It’s really about being intentional in taking the steps to build a life that feels meaningful to you.

Whether you practice gratitude, goal setting, or being kind to yourself and others, all these steps will help you feel happier in life.

So, including these strategies in your routine, and taking it one step at a time will help you build habits with great positive impacts in your life over time.

I hope this post helps you flourish. What strategy are you going to start with? Share with us in the comments below 🙂

References

• Holt-Lunstad, J., Robles, T. F., & Sbarra, D. A. (2017). Advancing social connection as a public health priority in the United States. American Psychologist, 72(6), 517.

• Goldman, B. M., & Kernis, M. H. (2002). The role of authenticity in healthy psychological functioning and subjective well-being. Annals of the American Psychotherapy Association, 5(6), 18-20.

• Vlachopoulos, S. P., & Michailidou, S. (2006). Development and initial validation of a measure of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in exercise: The Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale. Measurement in physical education and exercise science, 10(3), 179-201.

• Emmons, R. A. (2003). Personal goals, life meaning, and virtue: wellsprings of a positive life.

• Benson, H., & Friedman, R. (1996). Harnessing the power of the placebo effect and renaming it remembered wellness. Annual Review of Medicine-Selected Topics in the Clinical Sciences, 47, 193-200.