The Pleasant Life, the Engaged Life, and the Meaningful Life: What about the Balanced Life?

In "The Pleasant Life, the Engage Life, and the Meaningful Life: What about the Balanced Life?" it is immediately made clear that the authors, Joseph Sirgy and Jiyun Wu, strongly disagree with the ideal about authentic happiness put forth by Martin Seligman. They feel that although Seligman does touch on valid topics in his popular book title Authentic Happiness, he has neglected to include a huge part of the subjective well-being that stems happiness: balance. While one might have adequate pleasure, enlightened desire, and objective meaning, Sirgy and Wu assert that one may still be void of well being; satisfaction limits require a balance of life domains for this well being. In order to support these claims, the article is broken down into two key parts: a series of 3 postulates, and a series of 3 hypothesis.

Postulate one essentially says that balance in an individual's life correlates to higher levels of subjective well-being. This implies that they must divide their time, effort, and enthusiasm between multiple life domains. This postulate is supported by several examples, one of which refers to a woman named Carol: "Carol put all her energy in caring for her children." As a result, 100% of her well being was staked on her family's harmony. When things went wrong, the effect on Carol was detrimental; she had "over-invested herself in the family domain".

Postulate two says that every life domain has a satisfaction limit, and thus subjective well-being must be made up of the balance of many domains. Essentially what is meant by this is that once a life domain has been maxed out, it can no longer make any contributions to an individuals overall well-being. The easiest way to visualize this is by filling up an inflatable pool with many different buckets of water. The buckets are all different sizes and each of them can only be used once. In this analogy, the buckets are the life domains and the inflatable pool is well being. So let us say that your bucket representing work life is 5 gallons in size. Even if you have ten gallons of water (happiness from work) to put in the bucket, 5 gallons will over flow and you will only be able to add 5 gallons to the pool (your well being). In order to fill the pool, one must have the specific water that fills many of these buckets.

Postulate three deals with the idea of basic needs (those needs that are necessary for survival) and growth needs (those needs that are necessary for development). This postulate says that subjective well being is contingent on a balance between both of the needs; an individual must meet both their survival needs and growth needs to be happy. The article makes reference to the East Asian notion of the Ying Yang. This divided circle represents the "balance between fulfillment of physical (lower-order needs) and spiritual needs (higher-order ones)".

The second key point in this article is the collection of the three hypothesis. They are essentially postulates one, two, and three combined to draw hypothetical conclusions. Hypothesis one says, "People experiencing moderate levels of satisfaction from multiple life domains are likely to report higher levels of subjective well being." This one is pretty self-explanatory. Hypothesis two essentially says that by focusing one's life on multiple domains, one can fulfill a wide variety of developmental needs. The last hypothesis in a way combines the previous two: "People experiencing satisfaction of a wide range of human developmental needs are likely to experience higher levels of subjective well being." And thus, the theory of a balanced life is brought full circle.

The feelings that this article evoked were those of relief. This balanced life that Sirgy and Wu describe is something that I have always strove for; therefore it was comforting for a reputable article to outline it in such detail. The most influential and educational part of this piece for me was the happiness pie example, proposed by Firsch. It is a technique where one divides his overall happiness up into pieces of a pie, with ultimate goal of showing the participant whether or not their pie is balanced. A healthy pie is one where pieces are of relatively equal size; where happiness stems equally from work, recreation, learning, creativity etc. An unhealthy pie is where "one or two life domains" dominate. As a result of this article, I will continue my daily pursuit of a balanced life in order to ensure subjective well being.

In terms of the big picture, this article ties right in with the title of the course: "Constructing a Good Life for Human Flourishing" and the connection is two fold. Let us look at the first half of the title: Constructing a Good Life. The term construction, although never explicitly used by Sirgy and Wu in the article, is in the essence of their message. The whole point of what this article was trying to say was that we need to CONSTRUCT a life of balance. Several examples follow. We should construct a happiness pie that has sections of equal size. We should construct a balanced life with knowledge of each domain's satisfaction limit. We should construct a life where our needs are in harmony. Now let us look at the second half of the courses title: Human Flourishing. This part is pretty straight forward. In my opinion, the term "subjective well being" used by Sirgy and Wu is a synonym for human flourishing. And thus in my opinion, the course title translates to "Constructing a Balanced Life for Subjective Well Being".

This article has a clear cut application in life, but it is important to note that the ideas expressed cannot simply be willed; they must be worked for. Achieving balance in life is a difficult process that is characterized by trial and error, as well as triumphs and defeats. The only draw back to this article in terms of application to one's life is that there was no physical study done; everything mentioned is hypothetical (still, it is all strongly supported with fact). Accordingly, the authors encourage "happiness researchers to subject all of the theoretical propositions to rigorous, empirical tests." We are all essentially happiness researchers, and the going through such "rigorous, empirical tests" may be an arduous task.

Despite these set backs, striving for balance in your life is a worthy pursuit. I think the best way for me, or someone else, to go about this would be through deep introspection. In doing so, one could identify the life domains that are too dominant or too subordinate and then try to even them out. As I stated before, the happiness pie might be the most valuable technique for going about this, however, the most important thing to keep in mind are satisfaction limits. Even if excelling at a sport or at work bring you lots of happiness, there is only so much these life domains can bring to your overall well being. Personally, I intend to keep all of these things in mind as I continue to strive for balance in my life. Hopefully, subjective well being, or in the words of our course "human flourishing, will be achieved.

Questions-

The example of a working mom is given early on in the article. It says she maintains a sixty hour work week while also continuing healthy relationships with both her husband and child. How is such a feat achieved with limited time and resources?

Is balance the only key to happiness, or do Seligman's notions hold true?

I'm a little confused on the balance of needs? Is that something that comes natural or has to be worked for?