Y11W46WR The three pillars of thriving

Synthesis
The writing prompt

Construct your own working picture of what makes a life thrive, drawing on the convergent findings across traditions and the research, and tested against what you think you actually want from your life.

1Retrieval check

Q1.What does Seligman’s PERMA model propose?

  • AA single measure of happiness
  • BPositive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment — the components of human flourishing
  • CA religious doctrine
  • DA clinical diagnostic tool

Q2.What three universal psychological needs does Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan) identify?

  • AFood, shelter, status
  • BAutonomy, competence, relatedness — separable from material conditions above basic security
  • CSleep, diet, exercise
  • DWealth, fame, love
Show answer key

Q1 → B. Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment — the components of human flourishing.PERMA converges in interesting ways with Self-Determination Theory and cross-tradition accounts of flourishing.

Q2 → B. Autonomy, competence, relatedness — separable from material conditions above basic security.The cross-cultural convergence — Aristotelian eudaimonia, Buddhist right-action, modern positive psychology — is striking.

2Prompt deconstruction

Command verb
CONSTRUCT your own working picture — the Y11 closer synthesis
Must reference
Seligman’s PERMA, Self-Determination Theory, and at least one tradition (Aristotelian / Buddhist / Stoic / Christian)
Must draw on
at least two earlier Y11 articles beyond this one
Close with
a working thesis you could hold knowing you’ll revise it

3Pick nudge

Which threads will you combine into your picture of a thriving life?

Thread 1 — PERMA or SDT
Pick one component (engagement? relatedness? meaning?) that most earns its place in your picture
Thread 2 — a tradition
One cross-tradition account (Aristotelian eudaimonia, Stoic practice, Buddhist right-action) that sharpens it
Thread 3 — earlier Y11 article
An article from relationships, money, character, or meaning that grounds your picture in research

4Planner — weave the threads

Threads I’m pulling in
Three strands, each named specifically.
Where they converge
The overlapping picture of flourishing they produce.
Where research leaves genuine choices
The questions that are yours to answer, not settled by evidence.
My working picture
Two sentences — what thriving is, for you, on this reading.
What I’ll attend to in Y12
Specific, observable focus — given the picture.

5Sentence stems

  • Three strands from the year converge on ___.
  • From [earlier article], I am taking ___; from [this one], ___; from [another], ___.
  • These fit together when you treat ___ as the frame and ___ as the mechanism.
  • Where they tension is ___, and the honest resolution is ___.
  • My working picture is ___.
  • What this implies for the next ___ of my life is ___.

6Exemplar paragraph (not about this article)

(1) Three strands from the year converge on a picture of thriving I can actually hold. From Seligman’s PERMA I take the claim that engagement (absorption in activities that use your capacities) and meaning (connection to something beyond yourself) are separable components that both matter. (2) From Self-Determination Theory I take the claim that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are universal needs, above basic security. (3) From the relationships articles earlier in the year (particularly the proximity and repair research), I take the claim that sustained close relationships are built through small repeated moves — not dramatic ones. (4) These fit together when you treat thriving as a structural condition: enough autonomy to make your own choices, enough competence to experience yourself as capable, enough relatedness to be known by specific people over time, and enough engagement-and-meaning to answer ‘why am I doing this’. Where research leaves genuine choices is in how you weight these — and the Stoic tradition’s answer (that virtue-in-practice is the central component) is one picture; the Aristotelian answer (that the components are irreducibly plural) is another; either is defensible. (5) My working picture is that thriving is a composite I can build through specific small design choices in Y12, not a state I can wait for. (6) What I will attend to in Y12 is relatedness — because it’s the component I have been treating as automatic, and the component earlier articles suggest decays quietly without deliberate upkeep.

What this paragraph does, move by move

  1. Names three threads with specific claims.
  2. Shows the picture they produce together.
  3. Acknowledges the part the research cannot settle.
  4. Names two defensible weightings.
  5. States the working thesis in two sentences.
  6. Closes with a specific, observable Y12 focus.