How to Improve Your Psychological Well-Being: Insights from an Expert

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Psychological well-being is about more than feeling good—it’s about building a life filled with meaning, balance, and emotional strength. In this article, you’ll find practical strategies and actionable insights to improve your well-being. Guided by the expertise of Dr. Rick Hanson, a leading neuropsychologist and creator of the Foundations of Well-Being Course, this guide draws on his teachings to help you develop the tools needed for lasting mental health and personal growth.

What is Psychological Well-Being?

• Definition of Psychological Well-Being Based on the work of Dr. Rick Hanson

Psychological well-being, as described by Dr. Rick Hanson, is the foundation for a meaningful and balanced life. It’s not merely the absence of distress but the presence of positive inner strengths that support emotional balance, resilience, and deep connection with oneself and others. Well-being involves meeting your core needs such as safety, satisfaction, and connection while developing inner resources like mindfulness, self-compassion, and a sense of purpose. By nurturing these strengths, individuals can create a stable, enduring sense of peace and fulfillment.

• Definition of Psychological Well-Being Based on Science

Psychological well-being, as defined by scientific perspectives, refers to a multidimensional evaluation of mental health, encompassing both positive and negative aspects. It includes factors such as positive affect, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and vitality, as well as the ability to manage anxiety, depression, and self-control. It is often measured through frameworks like the Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI), which assesses dimensions such as anxiety, vitality, emotional ties, and overall mental health.

What are the Pillars of Psychological Well-Being?

Psychological well-being is built on a foundation of essential strengths that support a meaningful and balanced life. These strengths, explored in Dr. Rick Hanson’s Foundations of Well-Being Course, offer practical tools for emotional growth and resilience. Here are the key pillars of psychological well-being:

Compassion: Compassion starts with being kind to yourself and others. It involves understanding your own needs and practicing self-acceptance while extending empathy and care to others. This pillar helps to build stronger relationships and creates a sense of belonging.

Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the practice of staying present in the moment. It helps you manage stress, respond to challenges with clarity, and find refuge in your inner calm. By focusing on the here and now, mindfulness cultivates a deeper sense of peace and resilience.

Learning: Learning fosters personal growth by encouraging curiosity and embracing new experiences. It involves developing skills like taking in the good, finding joy in ordinary moments, and linking positive and negative experiences to build inner strength.

Grit: Grit emphasizes perseverance and determination. It helps you move from helplessness to a sense of agency, protect what matters most, and maintain vitality through life’s challenges.

Gratitude: Gratitude is the practice of recognizing and appreciating the good in your life. It helps shift your focus from what’s missing to what’s abundant, nurturing positive emotions and a greater sense of fulfillment.

Confidence: Confidence involves knowing your worth and standing up to your inner critic. It’s about building self-esteem and developing the courage to take life less personally, helping you feel grounded and secure.

Calm: Calm is the ability to relax, center yourself, and see threats clearly without overreacting. It provides the tools to cool anger, reduce stress, and create a sense of safety within.

Motivation: Motivation encourages you to align your actions with your values. It involves cultivating healthy passions, setting meaningful goals, and using self-discipline to achieve what matters most to you.

Intimacy: Intimacy focuses on fostering meaningful relationships. It emphasizes empathy, emotional warmth, and creating trust-filled connections that enrich your life and support your well-being.

Courage: Courage is the strength to face challenges, express your feelings honestly, and repair relationships. It also includes the capacity to forgive yourself and others, which helps to release emotional burdens.

Aspiration: Aspiration inspires you to pursue your dreams and align your life with your values. It’s about setting goals with purpose and meaning, while staying flexible and open to change.

Generosity: Generosity is the act of giving from the heart. It includes widening your circle of care, contributing to others, and putting your values into action. This pillar fosters connection and a sense of purpose.

Strategies to Improve Your Psychological Well-Being

Psychological well-being is cultivated through small, consistent actions that help you develop inner strengths and a balanced outlook on life. Below are strategies, inspired by Rick Hanson’s teachings, including insights from his books Hardwiring Happiness and Resilient, as well as practical steps to integrate these strategies into daily life.

1. Savor Positive Moments

Positive experiences are fleeting, but they hold the power to shape your mind and build a foundation of inner peace. Often, we let these moments pass without truly absorbing them. Rick Hanson’s HEAL framework emphasizes the importance of not just noticing beneficial experiences but embedding them deeply into the brain’s structure to create lasting emotional resilience.

How to Practice:

1. Pause and Notice: When something good happens—a kind word, a moment of joy, or even a pleasant sensation—pause and bring your full attention to it.
2. Enrich the Experience: Focus on the details of the experience, like the warmth of the sun or the tone of someone’s voice, and imagine the positive feelings growing stronger.
3. Absorb the Moment: Visualize the experience soaking into you, like water into a sponge. Imagine it becoming a part of your inner strength.
4. Link for Healing: If it feels safe, gently bring to mind a difficult memory or feeling and connect it to the positive experience, allowing the good to soften the impact of the negative.

This process helps rewire the brain for greater emotional stability and fosters a sense of well-being that lasts beyond the moment.

2. Practice Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is the practice of being kind and understanding toward yourself, especially during moments of failure or difficulty. Rick Hanson highlights that self-compassion is foundational to psychological well-being, as it helps you recover from setbacks without harsh self-judgment.

How to Practice:

1. Recognize Your Struggles: Start by acknowledging your pain or difficulty. Say to yourself, This is hard right now, and that’s okay.
2. Be Your Own Ally: Imagine how you would comfort a friend in your situation. Use those same words and gestures to soothe yourself.
3. Try the Child Exercise: Picture yourself as a child facing your current struggles. Offer that child the same love, care, and understanding you’d give to someone you deeply care about.
4. Speak Kind Words: Place a hand on your heart or another comforting gesture and say, I am doing the best I can.

By practicing self-compassion, you build emotional resilience and create an inner sense of safety that helps you face life’s challenges.

3. Engage in Mindfulness Practices

Mindfulness is the ability to stay present with your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. It allows you to approach life with clarity and composure. Rick Hanson emphasizes how mindfulness strengthens the “core muscles” of psychological well-being by helping you become less reactive and more grounded.

How to Practice:

1. Start with Breathing: Sit quietly and focus on your breath. Notice the sensation of air entering and leaving your body. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the breath.
2. *Note: for some people, focusing on the breath can be an uncomfortable experience, and if that’s the case for you, find something else to focus on, such as the feeling of your feet planted on the floor. 
3. Practice Letting Go: During moments of stress, try the “Let Be, Let Go, Let In” approach:
   • Let Be: Acknowledge what you’re feeling without judgment.
   • Let Go: Release what you don’t need to hold onto, like tension or frustration.
   • Let In: Welcome calm, peace, or any other positive quality you need.
4. Mindful Observing: Spend a few minutes observing your surroundings, noticing details like colors, sounds, and textures.

Mindfulness helps you respond to life with greater awareness and reduces overthinking.

4. Cultivate Gratitude

Gratitude shifts your focus from what’s lacking to what you have. Rick Hanson often refers to gratitude as a “resource builder” that strengthens your emotional reserves and deepens your connection to the good in life.

How to Practice:

1. Keep a Gratitude Journal: Write down three specific things you’re grateful for each day, such as a kind gesture, a warm meal, or a moment of beauty.
2. Reflect on Gifts: Use the Receiving the Gift practice to focus on something someone did for you. Reflect on the effort they made and the impact it had on you.
3. Express Gratitude: Share your appreciation with others through words or small acts of kindness.

Gratitude is a powerful antidote to negative thinking, fostering a more optimistic and connected perspective.

5. Build Emotional Balance

Emotional balance means being able to handle life’s ups and downs without becoming overwhelmed. Rick Hanson emphasizes that resilience and calmness are key to maintaining this balance, allowing you to face challenges with strength and grace.

How to Practice:

1. Cooling Anger: When you feel anger rising, take a deep breath and step back. Visualize the anger as a flame being cooled by a gentle breeze.
2. Safe Space Within: Imagine a peaceful place where you feel completely secure. Return to this image whenever you feel stressed or threatened.
3. Label Your Emotions: Naming your emotions—I feel anxious right now—can help you understand and manage them more effectively.

Emotional balance creates a foundation of stability that supports your overall well-being.

6. Align with Purpose

Living with purpose gives your life direction and meaning. Rick Hanson’s teachings encourage identifying your core values and aligning your actions with them to create a life that feels fulfilling.

How to Practice:

1. Reflect on Your Values: Take time to write down what matters most to you, such as family, creativity, or helping others. Ask yourself, Am I living in alignment with these values?
2. Set Meaningful Goals: Break your values into small, actionable steps. For example, if family is important, schedule regular quality time with loved ones.
3. Revisit and Adjust: Regularly reflect on your goals and adjust them as needed to stay true to your purpose.

Living with purpose provides a sense of fulfillment and clarity, even in the face of life’s uncertainties.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and a New York Times best-selling author. He co-hosts the “Being Well” podcast, which explores practical science for lasting well-being.

In the episode titled “If you feel stuck, this is for you,” Dr. Hanson and his co-host Forrest Hanson discuss strategies to overcome feelings of being stuck in life. They explore psychological tools and practices to help individuals move forward, emphasizing the importance of self-compassion, mindfulness, and resilience.

For more insights, you can watch the full episode below:

Why Psychological Well-Being Matters

Psychological well-being plays a crucial role in shaping how we experience and navigate life. It impacts several key areas, including:

1. Emotional Health: Psychological well-being supports emotional balance and resilience. It helps manage stress, reduce anxiety, and foster a stable sense of peace, enabling you to handle challenges with greater ease.
2. Relationships: Strong psychological well-being improves your ability to connect with others. It enhances empathy, trust, and communication, strengthening bonds with loved ones, friends, and colleagues.
3. Personal Growth: By fostering a positive mindset and embracing new experiences, psychological well-being encourages continuous self-improvement. It helps you learn from setbacks, build confidence, and align with your goals.
4. Resilience and Stress Management: A solid foundation of psychological well-being equips you to remain calm and focused during difficult times. It helps in bouncing back from setbacks and maintaining clarity under pressure.
5. Physical Health: Psychological well-being is linked to better physical health outcomes, including reduced stress-related illnesses and improved immune function. A healthy mind contributes to a healthy body.
6. Sense of Purpose: Feeling purposeful and aligned with your values is a key aspect of psychological well-being. It drives motivation, satisfaction, and a greater sense of fulfillment in daily life.

Overcoming Challenges to Psychological Well-Being

Building psychological well-being often comes with obstacles, but recognizing and addressing these barriers is essential. Common challenges include:

1. Negative Thought Patterns and Self-Criticism: Persistent negative self-talk can erode confidence and resilience, making it harder to see the good in life.
2. Chronic Stress and External Pressures: Ongoing stress from work, relationships, or personal challenges can overwhelm your emotional resources and disrupt balance.
3. Lack of Time or Motivation: Busy schedules and low energy can prevent you from prioritizing practices that support well-being.

Overcoming these challenges involves building inner strengths, such as mindfulness, self-compassion, and gratitude, to counter negativity and create a foundation for lasting emotional health.

Psychological Well-Being in Everyday Life

Psychological well-being isn’t built overnight—it’s cultivated through small, consistent practices integrated into your daily life. Simple rituals can create profound, lasting change by reinforcing positive habits.

1. Start with Simple Rituals: Begin your day with mindful moments, such as deep breathing or setting intentions. End it with reflective journaling to note moments of gratitude or lessons learned.
2. Celebrate Small Wins: Recognize and acknowledge progress, no matter how small. Celebrating small victories builds motivation and reinforces a positive mindset.
3. Focus on Consistency: Lasting change comes from small, repeated actions that reshape mental habits and neural pathways over time. Whether it’s practicing mindfulness for a few minutes or savoring a positive moment, consistency is key.

Conclusion: Your Path to Greater Well-Being

Psychological well-being is a lifelong journey of small, intentional steps toward greater emotional resilience and balance. Even small efforts—like practicing gratitude or mindfulness—can lead to meaningful improvements in how you feel and interact with the world.

For those ready to dive deeper, Rick Hanson’s Foundations of Well-Bein Course offers practical guidance and insights to help you develop the inner strengths needed to thrive. Start today, and let each step bring you closer to a life filled with joy, connection, and purpose.

Stephanie Veillon is a creative director and instructional designer with over 15 years of experience supporting clients in the mindfulness, personal growth, well-being, learning, and psychology fields. She leverages technology, design, marketing, and best online practices to tell client stories and enhance student experience.