The Flourish Model was created in response to the fact that countries across the world were increasingly talking about measuring wellbeing, but that none of the existing frameworks recognised the importance of optimising the environmental conditions for human flourishing, which included the huge importance of early childhood development. They also tended to lack an appreciation that individual human wellbeing across the lifespan was always intimately connected to the wellbeing of others, and to the health and wellbeing of the wider ecosystem, and that human beings had both inner and outer lives that needed to be nurtured and balanced. In this respect, there was an 'ecological self' that existed as part of a dynamic system and that was always seeking wholeness.