Quest for a pathway to human’s good life in the Chinese cultural context

ABSTRACT

It is stated that people’s need to live a good life is the key task of the whole nation in China. This paper proposed a pathway to human’s good life in the Chinese culture context. The access to the goal should be in the human’s spirituality. According to Existential Positive Psychology originated in the west and Yangming Theory of Mind in the east, individuals may find or create their meaning in life (meaning therapy) by flexibly adopting PURE strategies (a process of Purpose, Understanding, Responsible action, and Enjoyment or Evaluation), ABCDE strategies (a process of Acceptance, Belief, Commitment, Discovery, and Evaluation or Enjoyment) and another integrative strategies. The meaning-centered therapy includes cognitive approaches, narrative approaches, and acceptance & commitment therapy, etc. Also, it mainly bases on meaning management theory and the dual-systems model. Finally, with the ability of self-transcendence or people’s spirituality, along with conscience and responsibility, people are responsible for everything in their life consciously and transcend self and circumstance to achieve good life at last. And the implications for Chinese community’s mental health service are discussed in the background of current social reality of China.

KEYWORDS:

• Good life
• pathway
• meaning therapy
• self-transcendence
• conscience existential positive psychology
• yangming theory of mind

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (310-AC9103-19-201006).

Notes on contributors

Rongwei Zhang

Rongwei Zhang is an associate professor of psychology in Department of Public Administration, at Party School of CPC Fujian Provincial Committee, and Fujian Institute of Public Administration. And he is a school psychologist at Fujian Polytechnic of Information Technology, Fuzhou, China. Also, he is a post-doctor on mature happiness, meaning in life and meaning therapy at Meaning-Centered Counselling Institute, Inc., Toronto, Canada. In terms of research, he is interested in well-being, meaning therapy as well as meaning in life, along with its role in an individual’s mental health and positive development.