Rigorousness - Ability to persist in the pursuit of meaningful ends.

Organization - Having the ability to assemble relevant resources toward achieving goals.

General Consensus - Feeling a sense of being deserving of achieving one's goals.

Integration - Experiencing a harmony among different facets of the self, rather than inner conflict.Vision - Having a sense of personally meaningful and relevant goals.Nico Rose identifies five factors comprising a VIGOR acronym that are predictive of our productivity and well-being: Working long hours was natural in such an environment, as it is in many business startups: even when the work wasn't fun, it still was meaningful and fostered a sense of fulfillment.įascinating research from Dr. There was a palpable sense of doing important work and a real love for the research and discovery process. Many years ago, I worked with a group of medical researchers at an academic health center. This aids our persistence and resilience, and it becomes contagious in the workplace. When we are engaged in activities that draw upon our values and strengths, we experience them as intrinsically rewarding and become absorbed in our doing. One way such subjective well-being manifests itself in the workplace is through the experiences of flow described by Csikszentmihalyi. When we treat ourselves constructively and forge meaningful bonds with others, life itself becomes happier and more fulfilling. A fascinating implication of Buettner's work is that well-being is a function of relationships: how we treat ourselves and how we interact with others. These are activities that engender not only enjoyment, but also a sense of value and significance. He suggests that a significant portion of the variation in thriving can be found in how people eat, exercise, and relate to others. Interestingly, this fits with the cross-cultural research of Dan Buettner, who studied patterns of thriving across the world.

If people find meaning, challenge, and joy in the process of performing their work, the odds are good that they will sustain the motivation to work past any temporary setbacks of outcome. The intrinsic rewards of their hunt for ideas sustains them emotionally during those inevitable periods of reduced profitability. Others are more focused on the process of uncovering opportunities in markets, immersing themselves in intellectual curiosity and rigorous research.

Some are highly focused on making money and quickly lose a sense of positivity and satisfaction when profits are scarce. This dynamic is readily observed on trading floors, where money managers bring a variety of motivations to the workplace. Indeed, the absence of satisfaction is most likely to lay the groundwork for negative emotional experience, such as frustration.

If a person does not feel fulfilled by their activities, it's unlikely that they will be sustained by day-to-day pleasures. It is here that satisfaction with life becomes particularly important. Research finds that people who bring a high level of well-being to their work lives are most likely to be productive and successful, and they are most likely to be creative and helpful to others. It is also necessary to feel fulfilled and gratified by one's activities.

Satisfaction with life - A key finding from the researchers is that there is more to our well-being than simply being happy.

Absence of negative emotional experience - Well-being is enhanced if stress and frustration levels are not high.

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