Beneficial Actualisation Model 2.0

Overview

Beneficial Actualisation is an ongoing and adaptive wellbeing and vitality developmental process where Beneficial Coherency, Systems Thinking and Vital Engagement 2.0 connect with and then activate three interdependent wellbeing science theories, Beneficial Literacy, Benefit Mindset and Beneficial Action.  The process advances and aligns ways knowing, being and doing: co-creating, regenerating, transforming and then sustaining contextual sources of personal, societal and ecological wellbeing and vitality over time.  Beneficial Actualisation’s intended outcome is to shift a person’s, a group’s, a community’s or a society’s focused attention towards a Salutogenic Orientation, the study of resources and assets for health leading to positive health, and optimal wellbeing and health pathways.

Six Conditions of Beneficial Actualisation: https://www.thecoast.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Six-Conditions-of-Beneficial-Actualisation.pdf 

https://www.thecoast.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Beneficial-Actualisation-2.0-model.png

https://www.thecoast.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Shifting-Life-Spaces-Toward-Social-Equilibrium-2.0.pdf  
 

Beneficial Actualisation is the result of an informal four year systemic inquiry, participation in Theory U (ULab 1X and GAIA Journey) and a co-design and trial process with UN Youth (Vic), and other collaborations with Wellbeing Science teams and researchers.

Beneficial Actualisation’s central wavelike symbol was conceptualised from a lived experience with mental ill-health, a love of the ocean, and observing the ripple effects and cycles in nature. The model draws core principles, values and practices from multiple ways of knowing, areas of knowledge and emerging Wellbeing Science theories and concepts including: Well Coherent, Vital Engagement 2.0, Benefit Mindset, Beneficial Action, Beneficial Literacy, Wellbeing Literacy, Systems Change in Health Promotion and Regenerative Development and Design. 

The initial engagement framework (Waves of Wellbeings / WoW) that inspired BAM was developed as a youth-led, youth-run series of facilitated session (1.5 hour) conducted online over a 10-12 week period in 2020 and 2021. The result of these trials serves as a guide of the framework’s potential to build the capacity (change makers) of the youth facilitators and participants, and the framework’s ability to produce and implement wellbeing prototypes.

The general intention of BAM and the WoW engagement framework is to illuminate and activate - engage, connect and align with the central Wellbeing Science’s beneficial ways of being, doing and knowing - Benefit Mindset, Beneficial Action and Beneficial Literacy at both an individual and collective level. 

Ultimately the goal of BAM is to build the capacity of the system to uncover intervention points for positive change, leverage points that generate beneficial ripple effects. The smallest of daily things: our thoughts, our actions, our language – about and for wellbeing and vitality for all, may offer a viable starting point for further inquiry. A point that leads to improving the odds of broadening and deepening our senses of belonging and thriving, becoming and flourishing. Over time, we will uncover leverage points for wellbeing and vitality for all, ripple effects that create lasting change that reach far and wide to benefit Me & We, Place & Planet.

David L Wright -Waves of Wellbeings, Team Lead. dlw@thecoast.com.au

Explanatory notes and definitions

Wellbeing and vitality concepts working together to improve the odds of Belonging and Thriving, Becoming and Flourishing.

Beneficial Coherency is an enduring though dynamic sense of broadening and deepening the scale and quality of relationships within and between: (1) Consciousness - awaken caring, focused attention, and open awareness; (2) Interconnectedness - Self and self, Self and others, and Self and nature; (3) Adaptiveness - an open mind, an open heart, and an open will; and (4) Generalised Beneficial Actualisation Resources – sources of contextual personal, societal and ecological wellbeing and vitality. (Wright, 2021) 

Vital Engagement 2.0  is a four-part model of engagement that is characterised by character strengths use, feelings of intense absorption and interest (flow state), a sense of energy (subjective vitality), and a broader sense of purpose and meaning (meaning in life). Vital Engagement: Four-Part Model  (Ignjatovic, 2020)

Benefit Mindset is concerned with the life-long process of learning how we can be the transformation and realise our unique potential in a way that serves the wellbeing of all. Benefit Mindset (Buchanan & Kern, 2017) 

Beneficial Action is about prosocially and altruistically motivated behaviour that uses consequential (scientific) knowledge to increase freedom within the global population. Beneficial Action (Toumbourou, 2016) 

Beneficial Literacy is the capability to comprehend and compose beneficial language, across contexts, with the intentionality (desire, belief, intention, skill and awareness) of using such language for the mutual benefit of self, others and nature. (Wright 2021, adapted from Wellbeing  Literacy (Oades et al,  2021)

Horizontal Development or informative development is incrementally adding new skills, knowledge, and intelligences within our current view of ourselves and the world (Kegan, 1982). It is learning which, over time, enables us to grow, progress, and improve.

Vertical Development or transformative development is transforming our view of reality so we can see our lives and the world with new eyes. (Kegan, 1982). It is learning which as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe describes “opens up a new organ of perception within us,”. 

Leverage Points The smallest of daily things: our thoughts, our actions, our language - about and for wellbeing and vitality for all, offers a viable starting point for further inquiry. It’s adapted from Stodd’s - leadership in the smallest of things: our mindset, our words and our actions, in every single day, and Benefit Mindset’s Everyday Leadership – to promote wellbeing on both an individual and collective level.  Smallest of Daily Things

Developmental Aims help us to hold an internal pattern through time so that we are able to maintain an appropriate state of being and a quality of thinking, regardless of circumstances. Beneficial Actualisation three development aims are adapted from Regenerative Development and Design, Ethics of Care, Theory U, Doughnut Economics and the Contemplative Inquiry work of Siegel and Zajonc. Awaken Caring about and for self, others and nature. Focused Attention into safe, just and regenerative collective action. 

Open Awareness to co-creating our highest future possibility.

Wellbeing a dynamic beneficial state of being and doing.

Vitality  fluctuating energies that aid functioning.