Women come to me often wondering why they are having a hard time finding their own place of well-being or inner calm. So I’m always looking for the hard facts. Specifically, my curiosity has always been around complete well-being: not just physical health, or financial wealth, beauty or balanced weight, and not just a healthy mind, but all of them put together. The real questions have always been how do we create complete well-being for ourselves and how do we teach it to others?

My basic premise is that complete well-being begins with building positive emotions where no emotions or negative emotions exist. Pure and simple, our history, upbringing, friends, family and many other factors play into the types of emotions that have become habitual for each of us. Sometimes lack of complete well-being stems from a build-up of lots of habitual negative emotions that fuel more negative emotions. In a way, it is founded entirely in not knowing what complete well-being feels like (or not knowing what it is like to live with an abundance of positive emotions).

I look for evidence of my theory everywhere. Sometimes I find it in one of my kids, other times in myself, and sometimes I even find it in complete strangers. Today I find it in my reading:

One article submitted towards the topic of ‘the science of well-being: integrating neurobiology, psychology and social science’ by Martin E. P. Seligman, Acacia C. Park, and Tracy Steen in the Royal Journal says: “Results from a new randomized, placebo-controlled study demonstrate that people are happier and less depressed three months after completing exercises targeting positive emotion. The ultimate goal of positive psychology is to make people happier by understanding and building positive emotion, gratification and meaning.”

Another article, this one submitted by Barbara L. Fredrickson says, “The broaden-and-build theory describes the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment and love. A key proposition is that these positive emotions broaden an individual’s momentary thought-action repertoire: joy sparks the urge to play, interest sparks the urge to explore, contentment sparks the urge to savour and integrate, and love sparks a recurring cycle of each of these urges within safe, close relationships.” In other words, positive emotions spark more positive emotions.

Both of these articles support my theory that complete well-being can be learned and that we’re all capable of living in a state of complete-well being, if only we set our intention to live there and learn how to create new positive thinking.

The reality is that working towards a state of complete well-being is a process one that never ends because life throws us new challenges every day and we have to find new ways to regain our balance. However, once you realize that this wonderful place of health, inner wealth, and richness can exist for you if only you know the secret, you are halfway home.

Knowledge is powerful. This knowledge, in my opinion, is powerful and priceless.

We all experience various challenges in life. Maybe we have to figure out how make our next rent payment. You may be dealing with depression or anxiety. Perhaps you’re having relationship or job issues? A worst-case challenge might be dealing with the death of a loved one.

The first step in dealing with any challenge is to recognize the issue. Recognizing a challenge isn’t so hard with some issues. For example, you don’t need to do a lot of soul searching to realize next month’s rent is due, and you don’t have the money for it in the checking account.

Some issues do require recognizing the challenge. Alcoholism is a good example. Most alcoholics live in denial and don’t recognize the challenges they face. Many challenges have negative associations. Who wants to be labeled addicted or an alcoholic? Even though society seems to have become more accepting of such challenges, there’s still a personally felt stigma to avoid.

Once you’ve recognized the challenge, there are additional steps you can take to overcome the challenge. One important step is to talk about your challenge with others. Discussing your issues with others has a number of benefits. First off, it helps define the problem and how it affects you. Open discussion can also help you relieve your own internal stress about the issue.

Talking about the challenge with others allows you to get their insight into the issue and potential solutions to the challenge. If the challenge is a medical issue or mental health problem, you most definitely will want to talk to a medical professional. For addictions, organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous can help.

Discussing the issues allows you to follow through with another step you can take to overcome the challenge dealing with the emotions associated with the problem. For example, at the loss of a loved one, you need to allow yourself to grieve. Holding in emotions is destructive and can cause additional mental and even physical problems owing to the undue stress.

Once you’ve recognized the challenge, discussed it with others, and allowed yourself time to deal with the emotions corresponding to the challenge, it’s time to look into solving the problem associated with the challenge. One way you can look at solutions is to research how others have dealt with similar challenges.

Another way might be to ask for assistance with finding a solution through either discussing the issue with a professional (medical professional, clergy, mental health professional, etc.) or with someone who can give you insight into a solution. Often times, you’ll find that a person who is less involved with the challenge can give you a more apparent perspective on the issue because they’re not emotionally invested in the problem and can think more clearly on the topic.

If the challenge is something where you can find a practical solution, then you should act on it. There are some issues you might not be able to solve immediately. For example, you can’t do anything about the death of a love. You can, however, look into additional ways to earn money for that overdue rent.

Some issues may be solvable but difficult to solve. You might not be able to immediately stop an addictive behavior, but on the other hand, you can certainly begin the process with the appropriate guidance and behavior changes.

Acting confidently can go a long way to teach us how to feel and be more confident. If you practice acting confident for at least part of your day every day, you will notice a difference in a month.

How does a confident person stand, sit, and walk? How do they look at a person? A confident person will look you directly in the eyes, won’t they? How do they speak? They don’t use a small voice, do they? A confident person is not afraid to ask for things, or to speak with strangers.

If you have somewhere to go like a job interview or on a date, take a few minutes before you go to daydream how a confident person would do it. Do you have a role model? Perhaps there is someone in the movies or life that you wish you were more like. How would they handle the situation? Have fun in the privacy of your home play-acting.

Sometimes you can rehearse situations with a friend to help you with your confidence. This is great for becoming comfortable with job interviews or dealing with customers. Practice and familiarity makes us feel confident.

If you would like to become good at job interviews, you could also apply for many jobs, even ones you don’t want. At first you may feel nervous, but your purpose is not to get a job, it is to get more comfortable and better at impressing others favorably. The more interviews you do, the less they intimidate you and the more confident you will be. With practice, before long, you will be very successful at getting job offers.

A great deal of how we appear to others consists of how we appear to ourselves. When we are nervous or not confident in ourselves, it often causes others to have less faith in us as well. If we believe we are beautiful, others will see our beauty. If we believe we are valuable to them, others will see our value. Always remind yourself of your qualities and the good you have to offer.