Let’s talk about well-being : The power of creating well-being narratives as a tool for driving sustainable transformation

Reflecting on the concept of well-being has been proven to be a crucial activity in sustainability endeavours. In the present society, well-being has been defined and promoted through an economic perspective. Measurements such as GDP and economic growth have been perceived as a determinant of welfare. This has led people to believe that having money and material goods are key to achieve well-being. This consumerist lifestyle has caused people to disconnect from nature and stop considering it as essential in order to have a happy and healthy life with high levels of well-being. By analysing this problem, we realized that if we want to live a sustainable life, we cannot continue viewing well-being through this lens. This problem is shown in the tension between the predominant capitalistic vision of well-being and alternative sustainable well-being theories, such as the well-established Māori framework. As researchers, we were wondering how we can redirect this discourse by placing future sustainability managers within this tension. To explore this, we engage in co-creating well-being narratives with 11 sustainability master students at Uppsala University Campus Gotland. How can the conversations with them around well-being drive a sustainable transformation? We discuss the participants’ thoughts and feelings during the interview process to investigate the influence of well-being conversation on generating a sustainable discourse. We found that joining the two concepts of well-being and sustainability through a narrative approach creates a powerful tool in driving change towards putting the priority back on nature.