1.3 WHOLEBEING

How it all started: since euforia was created in 2007, it has always been a place where people are welcomed as who they are, without judgement. We celebrate the diversity, oddities, qualities and imperfections of each human that touches euforia.

After a super intense start up phase as employees (2009-2011), one of the co-founders, Yoko, ended up in a severe burn-out. One day, she simply could not get out of bed anymore. It was a shock to her and her partner in crime Jerónimo that something as beautiful as euforia could create such suffering. Without ever speaking of it, each vowed to him/herself that this would never happen again at euforia. Over the next years, little by little, euforia built up knowledge, practices and processes to ensure wellbeing is a theme known and lived by all. We held some stress management workshops, reviewed the management system to offer more support and guidance to the employees, had various workshops on uncovering our different personality types/traits, to grow knowledge of ourselves and others, openly addressed cases when people were not doing well, to offer understanding and support. In 2015, Jeronimo was selected to take part in an innovative inner development programme with The Wellbeing Project. Through his own path towards greater wellbeing, he influenced his collegues and euforia.

In 2016, wellbeing of euforians was our number 1 annual objective, a priority above everything else. A number of workshops, activities and processes were prototyped, the ones that are still being used can be found in the next chapter.

One big realization from that year was that the term wellbeing could create pressure on people to feel obliged to feel "well" and that not feeling well was somehow failing the organisation. So in 2017 we switched from wellbeing to wholebeing, which integrates wellbeing and badbeing. The aim of our wholebeing frame since then is to promote wellbeing while providing support for badbeing, for me us and the world.

At the same time, Yoko was asked to join the Ecosystem network of The Wellbeing project and discovered through discussions with many other organizations that the practices and processes put into place at euforia are extremely forward thinking, innovative and a rarity in the changemaker sector. A case study is currently being written by The Wellbeing Project on our wellbeing practices. We'll add it when it's done.

What is wellbeing you might ask? Well, it's intrisically personal so each human probably has his/her own defintion of it... Feel free to create your own! For inspiration, here is how Matthieu Ricard defines it

"Wellbeing is (...) a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment, a state that pervades and underlies all emotional states and all the joys and sorrows that can come one's way."