In the last issue of HEN, I wrote about an experiment I was engaged in. I focused on my own wellbeing for 45 days, to replicate a fundamental wellbeing program put out by Jeffery Martin, based on his book, The Finders. The experiment involved mostly a lot of daily meditating and a deliberate daily gratitude practice for 45 days. That experiment ended just as the year did.
As I passed through the holidays and the energy of new beginnings in January, it occurred to me that I’d like to try a whole year of wellbeing.
What that meant at the beginning of January, I was not sure, but I wanted to stay in “experimental” mode with it, such that I could be free to try different things as I kept in mind the overall theme of fundamental wellbeing for the year.
I started with exploring the idea of rating my sense of fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis, possibly multiple times a day. As I started on that path, however, it occurred to me fairly quickly that I needed to have some definition of fundamental wellbeing upon which I was rating myself.
I first went back to source. Jeffery Martin defines fundamental wellbeing in a number of ways, including: “a relatively quiet mind, positive or peaceful emotions” and “that things are okay, regardless of life circumstances.”
Then I had a conversation with a friend who took Jeffery’s course last year and “transitioned” to fundamental wellbeing. We talked about this idea of tracking one’s fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis. Her input was pivotal.
She tried to imagine how she might track fundamental wellbeing on a daily basis. She said that these days, no matter what happens “out there” for her, she has a deep and abiding faith that we are all always taken care of. She, similar to Martin, defines fundamental wellbeing as a fundamental okayness with the world.
She said if she were to check in with herself at any given moment during the day, she might not rate her fundamental wellbeing at a 10/10. She recognizes that life contracts and expands and she with it. She doesn’t always feel pure joy and, at times, her life even gets thrown upside down. But through it all, she has that fundamental sense that it’s all as it should be. She trusts the process of life, that life is moving through us, and if we can surrender to it, it goes more smoothly.
As we approach the end of the first month of January, I have noticed my original impulse to track my own fundamental wellbeing every single day is fading as an idea and a practice. I am still checking in, but not every day and not always for a rating.
What is staying with me is that I notice that every time I call to mind the definition of fundamental wellbeing, I feel better. I like to think of fundamental wellbeing as a type of unwavering faith and a surrendering trust, that all is ultimately well.
It helps me sit in a place of fundamental wellbeing and gratitude for all that is well in my world and our world, at the most fundamental level.
How would you define fundamental wellbeing?