More Life

If, by this point, you’ve completed the more compass module and identified what matters most to you, and you’ve integrated those insights into your own powerful version of my focus found, then you’re well on track. You have nearly arrived at the culmination of your preparation. You’ll know what you want to do with your life and why. Now it’s about making your goals happen and keeping it real. 

Of course, we are all unique and our goals will vary. Our motivations, our ambitions and our priorities will be many and varied. They’ll range from the safe, practical and pragmatic to the stretching, the downright scary and the totally audacious! Many of us will have goals to change ourselves for the better and others will aim to change the world for the better.

Should you decide to engage with us at more of me, we won’t pass judgement on any of your goals. We respect you and we will work to help you realise your goals. That said, we have opinions and ideas—if you want them!

The scientific foundations of more

In putting together the more of me model, we’ve studied the research and publications of many of the leaders in positive psychology and its related disciplines. We’re delighted that this is a rich and burgeoning field. We’ve revisited some of our existing heroes and added several more to our ‘favourite’s’ list through this lengthy, rewarding and deeply thought-provoking process! Many leaders’ findings have been endorsed and replicated and are now well established, both in the lexicon of the social sciences and the vernacular of café conversation.

We’ve collated a substantial bibliography of recommended reading and video links and we offer this as a bonus hand-out at our workshops. 

In all our research, if we had to choose just one idea to recommend to you as a summation of More Life, it would be this:

Seek wellbeing rather than happiness.

Relative happiness ebbs and flows, as it should. Therefore, we suggest happiness is a superficial and ultimately inadequate goal to seek. Wellbeing, on the other hand, is a broader, more complex and more complete notion, and there is more we can do to actively foster wellbeing in our lives.

Amongst the heroes we alluded to above, Dr Martin Seligman is, for us, right up there. He’s a thought leader in the field, with extensive experience, a large body of research and publications, and he is a former President of the American Psychological Association. In 2002 Seligman wrote a best-seller on Authentic Happiness, then later shifted his message to promote wellbeing as a far more valuable and realistic pursuit. In his 2011 book, Flourish, Seligman identified that sustained wellbeing is based on five interrelated elements:

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

There is significant weight to Seligman’s PERMA model. We recommend it and have sought to ensure that our own more of me model respects and addresses his elements. In addition, we have applied our own experience and the various works of other inspiring heroes.

Informed by Seligman’s model, but using our own language, we offer these ten tips for you as you strive and work towards the life that is your more:

1. Don’t persist with work which doesn’t feed your sense of wellbeing. 

• Your work must allow you to experience at least two elements of Seligman’s wellbeing model most days. If not, do something about it.

2. We’re far more engaged in our work and life when we’re employing our strongest innate talents.

• Identify them, use them, grow them, master them.

3. Be considered, purposeful and active.

•  If you’ve reflected on and identified what matters most to you, then you’ve found your focus and set your action plans. Stay the course. Make it happen. 

4. Make room for people in your life. 

•  Spend time with people who are good for you. 
• Prioritise people in your life. Be real, brave and compassionate with them.
• We need to be in good company when we are alone, but most of us won’t experience a high level of wellbeing if we’re constantly flying solo.

5. It’s not all about you! 

• With respect, while we are talking about your more, it’s still not all about you.
• A meaningful mission and purpose for more life is likely to be about making something better for others.

6. The journey is as important as the arriving

• Don’t totally suspend your life waiting for the arrival of a special milestone. The everyday moments and the daily steps towards the end goal, are our life in ‘real time’. 

7. Thrive while exploring

• Living with an adventurous outlook will ensure you’re constantly injecting energy into your days. Feed your passions. Believe in your ability to stretch in new ways and to new lengths. 

8. Sometimes, enough is more

• A balanced outlook towards your wellbeing will give you the perspective to flex and to find calm compromise when it’s called for. Our ambitions can sometimes be insatiable. Great peace of mind can follow when we foster the ability to feel replete even with the incomplete. 

9. Pick plenty of the free fruit of life

• Sometimes having a sharp focus on specifically defined goals can blinker us from the everyday bounty around us. 
• Hidden out in the open, the benefits of a walk or a run in the forest, or a lunch on the beach, or the view from a hilltop, or sharing a quiet cup of tea with an elderly neighbour, can be all the tonic you need. 

10. Act like the person you want to be.

• Character and authenticity show in the choices we make and the actions we take. No matter our origins or contexts, we’re all on a path of becoming. Act ahead of where you are now.

More life is thriving as we explore.

We’re driven by what matters most: doing meaningful things, with and for people we believe in and connect with. We start on the path to more life through self-awareness and considered self-direction. We live a life of appreciation. We live wholeheartedly with purpose, ambition, courage and joy. We laugh, we cry, we give, we take. We’re fully alive!