Staying A Float

Dr Denise Quinlan, director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, introduces our series on achieving better mental wellbeing

When asked why we should bother learning about wellbeing, I often use the analogy of swimmers wearing buoyancy vests, or divers wearing weight belts. Buoyant, high-wellbeing people, find it relatively easy to stay on the surface, bouncing back quickly when something pulls them under for a while. Those of us with weight belts, on the other hand, have to make an effort to stay at the surface. We can sink under the weight of additional challenges. This is where wellbeing and resilience strategies come in. The people with weight belts can strap on a pair of flippers and kick back up to the surface.

The challenge is that we cannot always tell from the outside who is wearing the weight belt or the buoyancy vest. What’s more we never know what lies ahead: life doesn’t discriminate and sends challenges our way regardless of who we are. A very buoyant person can be handed a heavy weight with the loss of someone they love, a sudden diagnosis, a relationship break up or redundancy, and find themselves weighed down by this new challenge. So it makes sense to equip everyone with flippers – the knowledge of wellbeing strategies they can use in their own lives.