This is an ABC podcast.

About 20 years ago, the field of psychology changed. It expanded. Until then, it was focused on all the things that can go wrong in people.

Problems, you know, particularly mental health problems, and how to treat and prevent them.

But if you wanted to know what went right, what made people flourish, live well and function

at their best, you were out of luck.

Then, psychology researchers started investigating these exact topics.

In the process, kick-starting a whole new stream of psychological study called positive psychology.

That's important because even if we've had a mental health problem,

and it's incredibly important to get good treatment or preventive strategies,

but even if we've had a problem, we don't want to just not have any more symptoms.

We actually want our lives to go well. That's where positive psychology comes in.

But what does it mean to flourish and live well? How can we do that? And has the pandemic made it harder? Spoiler,

the answer is yes, but there is still lots we can do. You're listening to All in the Mind.

I'm Sana Khadar. Today, the building blocks of well-being and living a good life.

The first thing to know about well-being is that it's not the same as simply being happy

or experiencing pleasure.

So happiness and pleasure can be very short-lived.

Also, we can get happiness or pleasure from things that may not be very good for us in the

longer term, you know, alcohol or

drugs or buying stuff that we think is going to make us happy.

So well-being or flourishing is something that's more sustainable, something deeper.

Dr Felicia Huppert is an emeritus professor of psychology at Cambridge University and honorary professor at Sydney University.

...