Positive Psychology Strategies to Help you Thrive
This website is dedicated to the science and personal application of the "greatest hits" of positive psychology and mindfulness practices.
You'll learn how to apply research-based principles to enhance the strengths and virtues that promote human thriving, and to nurture your love for life.
It's the integration of timeless wisdom and modern empirical inquiry; the best of the East and West, personalized to your real life, to help you create your best self.
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The Three Pillars that Support a Life of Flourishing
These resources emphasize foundational themes in positive psychology, particularly topics comprising the "Three Pillars of Human Flourishing": Perspective, People, and Power.
Perspective has to do with our vision and direction in life, a healthy awareness of our thoughts and emotions, and learning to notice and savor the good around us. You'll learn to use purpose and values as a compass to guide your actions, finding satisfaction even in the simple steps you take toward what you value. You'll learn how mindfulness practices can help you see challenging thoughts and emotions in a new light, allowing you to pursue your dreams in spite of fears or self-doubt. This includes cultivating optimism and gratitude, allowing the good in our lives to appreciate.
People refers to a central pillar of human flourishing: positive connections with others. A vast research literature emphasizes that the quality of our social relationships is one of the strongest predictors of both physical and mental health. In these lessons you'll learn how to strengthen your most important relationships, increase your sense of connection with others (and everything around you), and cultivate a deeper sense of security and belongingness.
Power relates to a person's ability to act effectively in their environment. This aspect of flourishing is characterized by engagement, wholeheartedness, and growth. In these lessons you'll learn how to live courageously, manage stress, develop a growth mindset, cultivate habits of growth and health, immerse yourself in valued pursuits, and use goals more effectively as guideposts toward living a rich and meaningful life.
Training Modules
Perspective
Purpose refers to your chosen set of life aims that guides your actions and gives meaning to life. Purpose is both an anchor--securing against life's storms and distractions, and a compass--directing you toward what matters most. A strong sense of purpose is most helpful when it is genuine and authentic; that is, when you've invested the time to define and articulate it for yourself. This module will help you define your own life purpose and feel more confident pursuing your unique path in life.
Think for a moment about what principles guide the choices you make in your life. If you could give these names, what words would they be? Values are words that describe how you want to behave in this moment and throughout your life. They are the essence of what inspires you, what motivates you, and what guides you to act in ways that bring your life meaning. Living in harmony with your values is an essential step in making your life rich and meaningful. In this module you will learn how values and well-being are connected, how to clarify your own values, and what you can do to live according to your values.
Mindfulness is a healthy awareness of thoughts, emotions and experiences that we can apply to everyday circumstances to live a rich and joyful life. Research supports mindfulness practices in working with stress, anxiety, depression, physical pain, insomnia, and other challenges. Most importantly, mindfulness promotes perspective, contributing to a sense of equanimity, ease, and an appreciation for whatever life brings. In this module you’ll learn how to cultivate mindfulness, and how it can support your life of flourishing.
Savoring involves mindful awareness of positive experiences to prolong and amplify their value. Learning to slow down and fully appreciate the depth available in a given experience (present, past, or future) can significantly contribute to a person's well-being. Savoring is a skill that can be cultivated with practice; this module will explore why savoring doesn't come naturally to most of us, how it can contribute to our happiness, and what we can do cultivate this skill.
Gratitude isn't just remembering to say "thank you"; it's an energizing habit of awareness. It's a cultivated orientation to life that promotes your own well-being and benefits everyone around you. This module will help you learn how to make gratitude a habit that enriches your life.
Optimism is not wishful thinking, denying the negative, or forcing a rosy outlook. It is the ability to accept the full spectrum of inner experience and choose the perspective that maximizes well-being. The future is bright for an optimist because they know their actions matter and they have some control over the things that happen in their lives. Despite the brain’s innate tendency to focus on the negative, optimism is a skill that can be learned and cultivated. This module highlights the impressive physical and psychological benefits of optimism and offers several research-based strategies to grow this trait resulting in a more resilient, confident, optimistic you.
People
Supportive relationships are arguably the single most important contributor to a life of joy and meaning. Investing time and effort in strengthening the quality of your relationships may be the most valuable thing you can do to create a life of flourishing. This module examines how good relationships lead to happier and healthier lives, and will provide you with a set of evidence-based resources and strategies for strengthening your most important relationships.
Interconnectedness is a fact of life. Enhancing interconnectedness involves bringing explicit awareness to the inherent connections between all living and nonliving things. This module will help you recognize how your identity is tied to the people, culture and natural world around you, and help you strengthen those relationships to enhance your own well-being.
Compassion is the emotional experience of seeing another's suffering and being moved to try to alleviate that suffering. Compassion is foundational to human connection, and can be profoundly helpful to both the experiencer and those toward whom compassion is directed. In this module you'll learn why compassion is important, what facilitates it and what gets in the way, and what research-based exercises will help you cultivate compassion in your interactions with others.
A community is a group of individuals that are united in some way, shape, or form. Although members may live in close proximity, they may also be scattered among a larger group of individuals. A few examples of how people may unite into a community are people who share professional, societal, or historical contexts or are like-minded in some area of life.
Contribution refers to the act of working towards causes bigger than yourself. Contribution comes in many forms, whether it is directed towards your family, your friends, your community, or more global circles. As you spend time immersing yourself in this module, you will learn what contribution is, why it matters, and how you can incorporate contribution into your own life in unique ways.
Power
Engaged Living is consistently moving in the direction of one’s values, even in the face of obstacles. Despite our best intentions to pursue our goals, roadblocks often arise and derail us. Committing to action, however, is at the heart of engaged living, a central pillar of ‘the full life.’ Learning to embrace vulnerability and cultivate courage is paramount to overcoming challenges and living with wholeheartedness. In this module you’ll learn important skills that promote vitality and confidence as you live purposefully and achieve in alignment with your values.
Personal Growth is about becoming everything you were meant to be. It is understanding that with time and appropriate nourishing, you will experience the natural process of growth and flourishing, like an acorn becoming a magnificent oak tree. This module will teach you how to nourish the seeds of immeasurable potential within yourself. You’ll learn about the principles of neuroplasticity which allow you to build the brain you want. You’ll learn how to develop a growth mindset and how to leverage stress for personal growth. You’ll learn what positive psychology has revealed about effective goal setting and achievement, and the “secrets” for developing healthy habits and changing unhelpful ones. Finally, you’ll learn about the “special sauce” of success—developing a gritty persistence and passion to pursue the things that are most important to you.
Flow experiences are characterized by a merging of attention, action, and awareness. These experiences are meaningful and intrinsically motivating. They generally happen when a person utilizes skills they’ve developed to meet the demands of a complex challenge. Psychological traits, physiological factors, environmental circumstances, and cultural pressures can influence whether an individual experiences flow.¹ Many of these factors are out of a person’s control, but this module will give a brief overview of what you can do to have more flow experiences.
Self-Compassion is extending to yourself the same kindness and care that you would offer to a good friend. Especially during challenging times, our "inner critic" can be pretty harsh and judgmental about perceived shortcomings. This module will help you learn to tame that inner critic and find peace in understanding how challenges can actually increase our sense of connection with others.
Exercise is one of the most effective instant happiness-enhancing activities available to us. Beyond its physical benefits, regular exercise promotes healthy emotional and social functioning in numerous ways. The human body and mind thrive with regular physical activity! This module explains how exercise reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, and increases well-being in many forms. Most importantly, you'll learn how to finally make regular exercise a habit that sticks. See what it's like to live as your "best self" having made exercise a regular habit!
If the word transcendence only has a fuzzy meaning for you, you’re not alone. For many it conjures images of exotic yogi gurus - without day jobs, no doubt - meditating for hours and having mystical out of body experiences that seem unattainable (or undesirable) to the average person. Yet, you may have already experienced transcendent moments without realizing it. Transcendence is in those moments of awe that shift our attention away from ourselves, and make us feel like we are connected to something bigger than ourselves. Here we’ll explore what transcendence means, give some examples, why it’s worth pursuing, and ways you can cultivate and allow transcendent experiences to enrich your life.
Landscape images by Jared Warren Photography