A scientific Approach to Emotional Health - interesting contrast to the "attitude is all camp"

A Scientific Measure of Emotional Values
By Dr. Douglas Ramm

A little more than 10 years ago, psychologists who work in American universities began offering advice on how to enhance emotional well-being. Virtually all of these professors maintain that the most reliable method for increasing happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life consists of making changes in the way we look at the world. They believe that cultivating a positive attitude, developing a sense of gratitude and maintaining a sense of optimism are all we can do to achieve and maintain emotional well-being.

Nonsense. Those who attempt to enhance their emotional well-being with this approach will end up sadly disappointed. It will not get them where they want to go.

As a practicing clinical psychologist, I am convinced that emotions are always a matter of how we are affected by the things, people and events we encounter in daily life. Looking at what the ivory tower psychologists were telling the public, I saw clearly that real science was needed to discover which things, interpersonal events and conditions of daily life actually contribute to emotional well-being.

I conducted rigorous, scientific research to discover which of these actually make a difference in our overall emotional well-being. It began with a review of what scores of researchers have discovered over nearly 50 years of research into happiness, contentment and satisfaction with life. This research revealed that there are a number of things that are correlated with subjective reports of emotional well-being, irrespective of the gender, race or ethnicity of the person making that report. Since these have natural, intrinsic or inherent worth, we refer to these things as values.

Next, I designed a method to determine which of these values actually have an impact on whether a person is happy, content and satisfied with life. The results of my research revealed that there are 10 values that actually make a difference in terms of whether and to what degree an individual is able to find and hold onto emotional well-being.

Since the following values are the ones that determine real and lasting emotional well-being, I call them the 10 Core Values:

1. Meaningful material objects are the necessities of life, as well as those tangible entities that contribute to a person's contentment and satisfaction in living.

2. Money is cash, credit, stocks, bonds, coupons, insurance benefits or any other object that can be used as a medium of exchange.

3. Affirmation is the experience of being recognized as an adequate, competent, acceptable, desirable and/or lovable human being.

4. Companionship is the experience we have when we share concerns, interests and activities with people whose company we enjoy.

5. Intimacy occurs in relationships that already involve affirmation and companionship. They are where we can also share thoughts, emotions and experiences that could be embarrassing or lead to ridicule or rejection, but the other person in the relationship continues to remain affirming.

6. Health is the state of physical and mental well-being, which is characterized by the absence of disease, disability and pain.

7. A rewarding occupation is one where we enjoy the tasks involved, are competent at performing those tasks and experience a sense of accomplishment from a job well done.

8. Rewarding recreation is a sense of renewal obtained from an activity pursued for the mere joy or pleasure it provides and which allows us to return to the tasks of living refreshed and renewed.

9. Freedom is the ability to do what we want to do when we want to do it. It includes liberty as well as the ability to think freely, to express our own ideas and to initiate courses of action without the fear that engaging in personally fulfilling behavior will prompt some unjustified verbal or physical aggression in response.

10. Security is physical safety as well as confidence in our ability to obtain or maintain the other nine core values.

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