There's a difference between a happy feeling and happiness. You feel happy when you do something nice such as eating an ice cream on a hot day. It's a short term feeling that can come and go easily.
Happiness is how you feel about your life. It's more like a long term mood of contentment. It's also called Subjective wellbeing. Learn more about Happiness & Wellbeing
Wellbeing is about the whole person. This concept is based on the science. Research has found that there's more to life than just money. Life is also about feeling connected, being curious, motivated, experiencing awe and so much more.
These different feelings, states of mind, and thoughts – or factors - connect to each other to create a whole, single entity - your wellbeing.
These different Wellbeing factors are divided into 3 categories:
Learn more about the different types of Wellbeing
Over the past 20 years many fields of expertise have come to realize that happiness and wellbeing are real and important for individuals and nations. These experts include economists, psychologists, neuroscientists, doctors and more.
In fact it's now a rich field of interest and insight in its own right, with academic departments and published journals. Private companies and governments all around the world are also investing time and funds into measuring and understanding happiness and wellbeing.
Some leading contributors include:
Better wellbeing is not a cure-all. People who are happy do get sick and lose friends. Yet the science clearly shows that - all other things being equal such as genetics - you improve the likelihood of a better life when you have better wellbeing.
But at the same time, better wellbeing is not based on extreme bliss or feeling happy all the time. Instead, an optimal degree of happiness tends to achieve better wellbeing. This means feeling mildly to moderately positive most of the time, with occasional negative emotions in certain situations.
Learn more about Happiness & Wellbeing
Of course things like money are important for basics in life such as food, housing and health. But science shows the limits of having more money. Studies of nations show, for example, that on average people have grown no happier in the last 50 years, even as their average income has more than doubled.
More happiness comes from all the factors in your life such as having better relationships, feeling more connected with your community, work satisfaction, an understanding of what motivates you and so much more - in other words, greater subjective wellbeing.
Improving one of the 3 categories of wellbeing can help you have better overall wellbeing. That's because all the factors in the categories are interconnected and influence each other. Here are just a few of the multitudes of examples:
The science is finding a wide range of benefits. Three key areas are: 1) health and longevity for you personally, 2) socially and 3) in the workplace. Learn more about the Science
These benefits appear to be at least in association more happiness and better wellbeing. For example, we know that people with high levels of 'life enjoyment' tend to live longer. This may be because they are more likely to lead a healthy life such as doing exercise. But studies are finding direct benefits such as happiness leading to changes to how the brain functions.
It's a compass for happiness, with simple and scientifically validated features including:
MAP is happiness and wellbeing made simple and effective. It helps you feel happier and have better wellbeing because:
Learn more about Happiness & Wellbeing.
Yes. Life can be difficult like losing a job, discrimination, breakup, the loss of a loved one, an illness, or economic hardship. MAP was designed to speak to humans, not a role, race, colour, or cohort. The Wellbeing Measurement and Assessment breaks down information to make it easy to understand and cut through the noise. For example if you get a low wellbeing score, the MAP Assessment and Report is sensitive to that and tries to help in a way that will be useful to you. The Wellbeing Analysis also uses a mixture of words, images, numbers, and phrases and various types of measurements because everyone learns differently and needs different types of information during different times in their life.
MAP was created to help in the difficult times as well as the times we aspire to grow. Ultimately, there is no difference about better wellbeing, it helps us to actualise our goals and improve satisfaction with our lives no matter where our wellbeing may measure today with the Happiness and Wellbeing Assessment. MAP is a compass for wellbeing across all events and experiences and these include hurts, trials and tragedies as well as the triumphs and joys.
MAP is the acronym for Meta-Analysis Profile.
Meta = A level above and beyond
Analysis = Evaluation of individual factors and how they interconnect to make up a whole
Profile = Your happiness and wellbeing
MAP is free for personal use and always will be. This commitment to you is based on our belief at MAP that wellbeing should be accessible to everyone, everywhere, for moral reasons. In addition, when people like you get involved and provide feedback, we can make MAP better for everyone, once again helping with wellbeing.
Your privacy and confidentiality is protected. Your and every other individual person's questions, answers and feedback report is encrypted and aggregated by MAP and held securely.
These are, each in its own way, positive activities. For example, meditation helps with relaxation and has health benefits. However MAP is much more. It is a scientifically validated model of happiness and wellbeing that focuses on you as whole person and all aspects of your life.
For more information about how MAP started, what it's currently doing now and people involved, read About Us.
MAP began with a book called Freedom’s Way (2004). When it was shortened and re-released it became MAP Living a Centered Life (2015), available everywhere. The book became the foundation for the theories of mental health and social wellbeing that lead to the formation of the MAP team, then the MAP Wellbeing tool, and ultimately, the discovery of the new paradigm for mental health and psychosocial wellbeing called Centeredness Theory, published in the world leading journal Frontiers in Psychology| Psychology for clinical settings.
The peer-reviewed original research article was published in Frontiers in Psychology| Psychology for clinical settings. MAP supports open science, and the article is available to read online and download for free in a number of different formats.
Yes. We are passionate about mental health and psychological well-being and sharing our knowledge. We would love to help in any way that can assist your research. Please email J.Gatt [at] neura.org.au or research[at]mapbiotech.com .
MAP works closely with its industry partner Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) a world-leading institute affiliated with the University of New South Wales and Prince of Wales Hospital. If you or your lab is interested in collaborating please let us know. J.Gatt [at] neura.org.au or research[at]mapbiotech.com .
Good question. Yes: is called MAP Workplace. Simply, it is a compass for happiness at an enterprise level, in other words, MAP at scale and offers MAP’s scientifically validated personal well-being measurements, reports, tips, activities, insights with anywhere anytime secure access at both the individual employee and team leader level.
MAP Workplace uses MAP’s scientifically validated happiness and wellbeing survey to measure and assess team and workplace health, dynamics, employee engagement, company vision, organizational values, productivity, and workplace resilience. MAP understands that these psychological inputs and health and performance outputs are critical to employee wellbeing and organizational behavior and workplace productivity because happiness is fostered and creates benefits on the individual and workplace level in a two-way flow.
Scientists have found that happiness and wellbeing can achieve workplace benefits through:
Some key findings:
Workers who experience high wellbeing are 81% less likely to seek out a new employer in the next year.
Employees with the highest wellbeing levels miss 41% less work due to poor health and are 65% less likely to be involved in a workplace accident.
Well-being can actually be a more important contributor to on-the-job productivity than an employee's chronic disease status such as diabetes.
Leaders who are actively seen to exhibit wellbeing behaviors are more likely to have team members with high wellbeing levels.
Happiness can increase curiosity, creativity and motivation amongst workers.
Happy people are more likely to engage cooperatively and collaboratively during negotiations.
Happy workers are more likely to be rated highly for financial performance and generally by their supervisors.
Greater satisfaction amongst employees is associated with better revenue, sales and profits.
Wellbeing is associated with increased clarity about roles and responsibilities and how to accomplish tasks ahead of deadlines.
Happiness at a point in time in a person's working life is associated with higher income later in life.
MAP’s validated science and technology understands that the benefits of wellbeing in the workplace are more likely with high levels of wellbeing in an individual's personal life because your personal life and your life at work interact and influence each other in a two-way flow - where personal wellbeing is the foundation
MAP’s science and technology also uses MAP’s workplace scientifically validated wellbeing assessment to measures and assess the profound relationship between social status and wellbeing.
Did you know that social status is a major cause of ill-health such as heart disease? The issue is not one of income or lifestyle, but the psychological experience of inequality - how much control your team has and the opportunities for social participation - that profoundly affects health. Human beings have an intrinsic need for autonomy and social engagement.
Some of the mechanisms for how reduced autonomy and control at work directly causes ill-health is
MAP is a unique program that takes into account hierarchy at work, with its use of designating individual employees in distinct groups called Quadrants. Read more about How MAP Works.
Discover more and signup for free at workplace.mapwellbeing.com. MAP Workplace is smart, quick and easy to set up, and provides instant, real-time results securely. Best of all, it is free for all during these covid-19 times.