Art-of-living: Validation of a novel concept to enhance one’s well-being
Art-of-living: Validation of a novel concept to enhance one’s well-being

Summary/Abstract: Background: Positive Psychology (PP) explores the question of how to lead a fulfilled life with the overarching goal of increasing the general population’s wellbeing. Established PP approaches focus on individual characteristics such as personality attitudes and traits. A relatively new focus of well-being research that was inspired by ancient Greek philosophy, art-of-living, additionally focuses on the behavior of individuals with high well-being. Art-of-living is a holistic model of selfcare strategies that address several areas (body, mind, and soul) and can be integrated into everyday life. The current paper will test the convergent and incremental validity of the art-of-living construct and investigate its potential use for PP research. To do so, we assessed the relationship of art-of-living with both well-being and two wellestablished concepts shown to promote well-being: happiness orientation as well as character strengths and virtues. In addition, we examined whether the art-of-living concept has added value in terms of predicting well-being as well as how it relates to other interrelated constructs. In doing so, we assume that art-of-living behaviors function as a mediator between global attitudes, character strengths, and well-being. We conducted an online survey with 636 participants from German speaking countries. Our results suggest that art-of-living is a valuable concept worthy of further attention in PP research.

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