"Loosely speaking, I have described human flourishing as being beyond happiness in that it encompasses both feeling good and doing good (Fredrickson, 2009).
This definition is based on the foundational empirical work of Keyes and colleagues, which conceptualizes and measures human flourishing as a multidimensional combination of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (Keyes, 2002).
Following ancient philosophies articulated by Aristotle and others, hedonic well-being captures individuals' global satisfaction with life alongside their pleasant affect, whereas eudaimonic well-being encompasses their sense of purpose and meaning as well as their resilience and social integration.
In the article with Losada, we further specified this 'feel good plus do good' definition by opening with 'To flourish means to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth and resilience' (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005, p. 678).
Amidst the current rise of interest in human flourishing, major theorists (Hupert & So, 2013; Keyes, 2002; Seligman, 2011) agree that the construct includes both feeling good (i.e., hedonia) and functioning effectively (i.e., eudaimonia) and in this way is the mirror opposite of common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety, which encompass negative (or flat) affect and poor functioning."
Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance
online publication. doi:10.1037/a0033584
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