Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements

This book is good for anyone interested in wellbeing and what it means to be happy. Quick read and interesting concepts.

Many definitions of wisdom focus on judgment and actions that increase wellbeing. With wellbeing central to the concept of wisdom, it becomes important to know what it is and how it can be improved.Authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter marshaled the considerable resources of the Gallup organization to identify the elements of wellbeing. They began by defining wellbeing as all the things that are important to how we think about and experience our lives. They then used carefully constructed survey methods to gather data from more than 350,000 adults in 150 countries, representing 98% of the world's adult population.Their findings are grouped into these five distinct statistical factors that describe important aspects of our lives that we can do something about:+ Career or occupational Wellbeing: how people occupy their time during the day and whether it is fulfilling. Do you like what you do each day?+ Social Wellbeing: the quality of relationships in people's lives+ Financial Wellbeing: the degree of financial security people have+ Physical Wellbeing: the extent to which people can do what they want to free of pain+ Community Wellbeing: the extent to which people feel safe and are involved in giving to their communityFor each of these five areas, they describe the detailed research findings followed by three actionable recommendations for improving your wellbeing in that area.Their research highlights the importance of balance; while a majority of people are doing well in at least one of these five areas, only 7% are thriving in all five. They also stress the importance of finding short-term incentives that are consistent with our long-term objectives.These results are remarkable because they are so unremarkable. Your grandmother may have given you similar advice, and that is good news! Absent from the list are the extremist ideologies used to justify so many wars. Trendy fashions, religious fundamentalism, and Joe Camel did not make the list.The main text is quite short; however the book includes several informative and data-rich appendices.The book purchase includes an access code to unlock an on-line program including the wellbeing finder and daily tracker intended to measure and help manage your wellbeing. These tools can help identify conditions that limit or contribute to your own wellbeing, and suggest changes that can increase your wellbeing.This book takes one more step towards establishing a broadly accepted standard for assessing and achieving wellbeing. It takes a scientific approach to discovering what humans value most and helps bring us toward a consensus on this essential issue.

Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements’ by Tom Rath and Jim Harter is a transformative guide to living a more fulfilling and balanced life. This book offers a holistic approach to wellbeing, focusing on five key elements—career, social, financial, physical, and community—that are crucial for overall happiness and satisfaction. What sets this book apart is its practical advice backed by extensive research from Gallup, making it both insightful and actionable. Rath and Harter provide valuable strategies and exercises to improve each element of wellbeing, empowering readers to make positive changes in their lives. I particularly appreciated the emphasis on strengths-based approaches, helping individuals leverage their unique qualities to enhance their wellbeing. The writing is clear, engaging, and filled with inspiring anecdotes and case studies that illustrate the principles discussed. Whether you're seeking to improve your health, relationships, or overall happiness, ‘Wellbeing’ offers valuable insights and tools that can make a meaningful difference. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to cultivate a more balanced and fulfilling life."This review highlights the book's comprehensive approach to wellbeing, practical advice rooted in research, strengths-based strategies, and its ability to empower readers to make positive changes in various aspects of their lives.

The real value of this book is in the included license to the Wellbeing Finder platform (wbfinder.com) to track your well being for 6 months. You could say what you're investing in (time and/or money) is in the research & design of the technology. The book is a simple read and is in many ways a "manual" to share the WHY behind it all. The 2nd half of the book outlining the research methods used - the references are excellent.I'm 1 week into the process and they are correct - the process of tracking and measuring encourages you to reflect and inquire into why the numbers you get are the way they are and make the appropriate changes in your life. With its focus on the 5 elements, I personally would recommend referring to other books to do any required deep dives. Here are some examples (some Gallup published, others aren't):1. physical - Eat Move Sleep is my current bible (published by Gallup). These 3 areas can be dived into further: eat:The Pleasure Trap; sleep: The Twenty-Four-Hour Society; move: currently reading Sweat Your Prayers with my bias towards dance as my "fun" way to move :)2. social - Vital Friends is a Gallup-published book. Lots of excellent relationship books out there - find one that works for you. Tribal Leadership is excellent when you are ready to shift your focus from creating dyads to triads in your life.3. financial - balancing common sense with Secrets of the Millionaire Mind and principles of The Zeitgeist Movement Defined and The Best That Money Can't Buy. BOLD is excellent if you are an entrepreneur interested in "exponential thinking"4. career - Take the Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 if you haven't already. It will not only impact your career, it will impact the 4 other areas of well being tremendously. Business Model You is excellent for those of you interested in applying entrepreneurial thinking to your own life.5. community - Your deep dive here really depends on the type of contribution you wish to be to your community. Is it philanthropy or "straight up" volunteering or something else? The training provided in the Wisdom Area at Landmark Worldwide is an excellent foundation (note: not a book - sometimes it requires actually getting your head out of books, out the house, and be with your community! :)The 5 elements is a research-driven framework that speaks to all walks of life. If you can see it as such, you'll find the book creates focus and may transform the way you see your life - more importantly, it creates a context to communicate your well being needs and listen for the well being needs of others.

Al principio cuando me llegó el libro me di cuenta que estaba muy sucio y pegajoso, pero fui comprensiva y simplemente lo limpié (aún limpiándolo se puede observar lo manchado que está), vi una mancha como de café en una hoja, pero definitivamente cuando quise usar el código que viene en el libro fue cuando confirmé que es un libro usado, el código está abierto y además esa página está recortada, la próxima vez que necesite un libro, ni de chiste lo pido por Amazon.

This book has double spaced font, so is only half the length... A quick read but contains some key insights into wellbeing, with clear chapter summaries to review the key points if you want to put the recommendations into practive. Plus contains the research to back up the statements, so you can see that it's backed by facts. I enjoyed this book and, although some recommendations are common sense, thought it was a well structured, good summary,

Great book! Makes you take stock of what is actually important in life and appreciate it. Goes well with Strengthsfinder 2.0

Excellent book useful for my research work

Tom Rath hat den großen Vorteil, dass er mit den Gallup Studien Zugang zu Datenmengen erhält, von denen andere nur träumen können. Und die Ergebnisse überraschen durchaus oder hätten Sie vermutet, dass das Wohlbefinden bei der Arbeit am meisten für das Gesamtwohlbefinden zählt? Lesen Sie und staunen Sie und nutzen Sie die Erkenntnisse in Ihrem Leben.