Living Well

Our actions may be impeded…but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.

Marcus Aurelius

These modules explore practical strategies for living well, based on understandings drawn from contemporary psychology and neuroscience. The essence of it is that we live in a mediated world. Our experience is mediated by two things:

What we pay attention to
How we pay attention

By addressing the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ we can increase the ‘degrees of freedom’ in our life. Be very clear: this is not a wild-eyed, Pollyanna-type optimism, but one grounded in the pervasive reality that constrains us. There is humility at its heart, because a fundamental assumption is that there are always more practical and useful ways to construe the world. If we wish to change the balance of contentment and happiness in our lives, we have to change our habits of knowing. Simple enough, but by no means easy, and a job that is never finished.

It all comes down to our perspective-taking. The kind of practical optimism and emotional intelligence we are exploring prepares you to limit unrealistic expectations in favour of a pragmatic and compassion-based mindset.

Module 1, Mindsets and Living Well

Module 1, Mindsets and Living Well, introduces the concept of a mediated reality and a simple but powerful equation is presented: that Reality + Mindset = Experience (R + M = E). Human psychological freedom is constituted by developing real-time awareness of our mindsets and changing them in ways that are more practical and constructive. This module explores a particular mindset, Realistic Optimism, that demonstrably leads to more happiness, wellbeing and success. Participants complete their own optimism -pessimism quiz and we debrief what they mean.

Module 2, Developing Realistic Optimism

Module 2, Developing Realistic Optimism, then provides guidelines to how you go about the process of changing your optimism-pessimism profile in the direction of realistic optimism. We debrief participants’ explorations of their profiles and their real-life issues in which they convert pessimistic overgeneralisations to more constructively optimistic appraisals.

Module 3, Balancing Threat with Compassion

Module 3, Balancing Threat with Compassion, explores another application of the R + M = E equation. In this case it is in terms of a tripartite model of human motivation constituted by a Drive system, a Threat system and a Compassion system. By viewing reality through the compassion system difficult experiences are made less emotionally stressful. A range of practices are suggested to balance our over-activated threat systems. Finally, there is a group reflection on the three modules of Living Well.