Flourish FM Episode#9: Pathways to Visible Well-being and Executing Strengths-Based Parenting
In this episode we talked to Professor Lea Waters about the pathways towards well-being and why ‘strengths-based parenting’ is important.
Lea is Founding Director of and Inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology (now the Centre for Wellbeing Science), University of Melbourne. Lea holds affiliate positions at Cambridge University and the University of Michigan and serves on the Scientific Board at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Lea is the Past President of the International Positive Psychology Association, serves on the Council of Happiness and Education for the World Happiness Council, is the Patron of Flourishing Education Japan and Ambassador for the Positive Education Schools Association. She is a registered psychologist and a full member of the Australian Psychological Society.
Key convo points are:
- Lea’s tripartite account of flourishing as feeling good, functioning well and doing good.
- The connection Lea draws between her account of flourishing and positive psychology - the scientific study of the conditions and processes leading to human flourishing.
- Lea’s ‘SEARCH’ framework on the six pathways to well-being: Strengths, Emotional management, Attention & Awareness, Relationships, Coping, and Habits & goals.
- Lea’s view that flourishing is the aim of education, and her research on how improving well-being in education supports the fulfillment of students’ learning.
- Lea’s argument that to build well-being, we need to make well-being more visible, in similar ways to how we try to make thinking visible.
- The age at which humans gain a sense of purpose in life.
- What strengths-based parenting is and why parents should consider employing it.