Possessing emotional health has nothing to do with how intelligent or attractive or rich you are. In fact it is possible that high achievers are the least likely to be emotionally healthy, of any group.

Many emotionally healthy people have relatively low paid, low status jobs and focus more on their home than their work lives.

Most of us are born emotionally healthy. A baby knows exactly who he or she is. Most toddlers know who they are, and when they feel safe, are spontaneously joyful.

It is usually when children go to school , especially from ages seven to nine, that the challenges to emotional health arise most visibly.

As the pressure to fit in and compare themselves with others builders, it becomes increasingly normal not to be emotionally healthy. Not until late middle age or old age , after a long period of being largely defeated by the challenges, does emotional health begin to return, if at all…

What Emotional Health Is Not

Emotional health is not defined by either mood or sanity. It is a different matter from mental health.

An emotionally healthy person could be depressed or deluded, although this would be rare.

Emotional health is defined by the positives, whereas mental health is largely defined negatively, by the absence of mental illnesses like anxiety, or more extreme problems like mood swings or bipolar disorder.

An American psychologist Robert Keyes did a study of 3000 people. Only 17% of them were “completely mentally healthy”, defined as flourishing and without any signs of mental illness.

Nor should emotional health be conflated with ideas like “life satisfaction” or “well-being”, nor with happiness.

Key Elements of Emotional Health

1. Insightfullness

the ability to understand, by looking to the past, why you might think, feel, and act a certain way.

2. Living In the Present

The ability to have a strong sense of self, to own your own identity and live in the present instead of living “as if” you are you, playing a role.

3. Fluid, two-way relationships

The ability to interact freely and comfortably, with a good sense of tact and an assertive manner, neither dominating nor passive.

4. Authenticity

The ability to live by values you identify with and believe in, rather than values you take on unthinkingly by default, often manifesting itself in your attitude to work and career.

5. Playfulness and vivacity

The ability to approach life with liveliness and joy.

If you are interested in building emotional health, contact us at fatmanur@ippaworld.com