How do you define well-being? How do you achieve it?
“Well-being for me is more of a ‘happiness’ issue; being satisfied with my life, able to enjoy friends and family, have enough financial security to not worry and to be able to do the things I want to do with my hobbies, with family and friends.
“Take time to reflect on things; walk, have periods of silence, take time to write, talk to friends, take a drive while listening to a great piece of music, have a quiet meal at home or a great meal out, enjoy the arts whether a museum, a gallery, the symphony or opera, travel.”
—Stephen Pavy ’81 (at right)
“I stay in shape, have good job satisfaction and keep my wife happy so she won’t kick me out.”
-Daniel Susie ’68
“I strive to live beneath my means in nearly every aspect of my life. I live a very full life, but do not overload mine or my family’s lives with non-sustainable, non-productive stressors, so that when those stressors eventually find me, I have the capacity to handle them, and move on past them.
“It is a different pace of processing life than we were taught to embrace while growing up. Sometimes the worst thing that could happen to us is that we would get everything we want, do everything we want, or be everything we want – at least, it has the potential to distract us from what life is really about, at worst, it could claim our lives, our souls, our hope, or the relationships with those who are close to us.”
-Chris Carpenter ’96
“Well-being, I believe, is being in a state of comfort regarding one’s physical, mental, and social needs. It’s not necessarily being completely perfect in a physical sense, nor a mental or social one either. No one is perfect, but when they reach a point where they are happy with how they look, or who they consider to be their friends, then they have certainly achieved a positive state of being.
“I think being comfortable with yourself is very important, but very difficult to do in modern America. A person’s comfort is being constantly attacked and made to be second-guessed, so to really achieve one’s “well-being” they need a social group which is positive and supporting, as well as a mind-set that takes the media’s perceptions of the “perfect” human form with a grain of salt.”
-Tim Kraft ‘11
“I try, although I am not always successful, to turn work off when I go home. I keep up ‘firewalls’ between home and work – that is not to say that I don’t socialize with co-workers, but I don’t want to bring the stress home. I also try to walk and exercise regularly which makes me feel good. Reading and having some time to myself is important. And most of all our pets (two dogs and a turtle) bring us great joy and peace.”
-Roy Sexton ’95