Success is easy to display outwardly with money, promotions, degrees, the 'perfect' photos on social media; the polished biography, the child who comes first. Flourishing is harder to capture authentically but much more important to our lifelong health and ultimate sense of worth.
It requires holistic work and thought and effort.
Do we feel alive, connected, and worthwhile? Are we constantly measuring ourselves against others or working with ourselves and our own unique situations?
For World Mental Health Day, The Lisa Burke Show brings together Luanna Eroles, founder of Happy Kids Academy; neuroscientist and founder Dr Anita Chavan; HR and strategy professional Neha Verma; and Robert 'Bob' Reuter, assistant professor and head of the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Luxembourg.
Our discussion revolves around one question: are we building successful lives, or lives in which human beings can actually grow?
Luanna talks about five pots that must not be allowed to run dry: hope, self-esteem, belonging, purpose, and meaning.
For me personally, it’s when you want to give back.
Bob expands the idea beyond the usual language of control and self-optimisation:
You have to confront the fact that life is uncontrollable, and that’s part of what it means to flourish.
Perhaps flourishing is not mastery over life at all, but the capacity to remain open to it – even when it refuses to follow our plans.
Hope, in this conversation, is not decorative optimism. It is a direction of travel, and something that can be practised.
Chavan describes the brain's instinct to detect threat, but also the power of changing the internal story we repeat during upheaval. Her own route from India to Australia, the United States, Singapore, and Luxembourg was shaped by setbacks as much as milestones:
Every experience counts. Every experience is shaping you, is helping you become the person you are today.
The useful question after difficult situations may therefore be less 'Why did this happen to me?' and more 'What can I carry from it?'.
The discussion becomes more uncomfortable when it turns to comparison. Schools (in Luxembourg) rank children; workplaces rate adults; social media gives everyone a public scoreboard.
Yet Bob asks, "Should we be productive all the time? Why should we be so?"
He argues that pleasure, rest, and even boredom belong to a psychologically healthy life.
Neha reaches the same conclusion from years in corporate HR:
Is it that important to be the best at everything? Because we’re not.
Performance can be measured without allowing the measurement to become a person's identity. A spreadsheet may record output; it cannot calculate a human being's worth.
Belonging is just as resistant to metrics. A person can sit in a classroom, office, or country for years and still feel outside that social community. Luanna says she finally felt more at home when she stopped sanding down the part of herself that seemed too exuberantly Brazilian:
I belong more to Luxembourg when I manage to be in my Brazilian-ness.
Anita offers an equally elegant reversal for anyone waiting to be welcomed: become the friend another newcomer needs. Belonging can begin when we risk the first hello.
It is not sameness but the freedom to arrive whole.
Purpose gives us goals; meaning connects those goals to something larger than ourselves. Small achievements can keep the brain moving, but transcendence asks who benefits when we move.
Our call to action is so modest that it's entirely achievable: Anita’s advice is:
Just go and say hello to the next person you meet.
In an age selling optimisation, perhaps flourishing begins with attention to the small leakages of ourself: water the neglected pot, protect time with nothing to do but be bored, question whose rules you are living by, and notice the person beside you.
