Publications

Positive Psychology Across the Life Span provides an insight into how we are affected by the different stages of adult development and gives us the opportunity to change through choice rather than leaving change to chance.

The science of positive psychology offers a wealth of research and evidence-based interventions and shares insights into which habits and behaviours contribute to how to live a flourishing life. This book aims to extend that knowledge by introducing and incorporating key aspects of existential and humanistic psychology. It goes beyond theory to look at practical application, with insightful reflective questions. The book will be essential reading for students and practitioners of positive psychology as well as other mental health professionals.

Second-wave positive psychology focusses on the importance of transcending or transforming negative experiences and emotions to achieve durable flourishing. The book offers exciting new concepts and skills in the practice of counselling psychology.

Positive psychology is evolving due to changing times and circumstances. PP2.0 opens new vistas for research and interventions in counselling psychology and positive psychology. Instead of relying only on the positives, it posits the importance of navigating an optimal balance between positives and negatives in each context. It emphasizes the importance of inner peace, balance, and harmony rather than the pursuit of happiness or positive emotions. More importantly, PP2.0 is based on meeting the basic human needs for 1) the need to be liberated from the suffering and human bondage, 2) the hope of achieving a meaningful future, 3) the need to relate to others in a compassionate and authentic way so that people can experience genuine kindness and love, and 4) the deep-seated spiritual need for a sense of oneness with a Higher Power or nature.

In volume 2 the focus is thus on self-leadership awareness, as it impacts all aspects of leadership, regardless the context or environment. Together, we will explore new ways of being and contentious aspects that impact the well-being of humanity and our magnificent planet, such as equality, social justice, planetary awareness, and education. The title holding gems and potency of sharing, awareness, and understanding in the context of leadership and self-leadership, and our creative potential to construct new models of understanding, volume two includes embodiment, the feminine aspect of leadership and self-leadership. Thus the conceptual and experiential fuse and unfold in spirals of manifestation. Practices to activate, stimulate, and strengthen our Awareness Literacy, whether personal or organizational, improve our Leadership and Self-Leadership Awareness Maturity, and to soften the edges of change and navigate transitions with more flair, makes this journal one of a kind

This article will share the preliminary findings from a wider and ongoing interpretative synthesis of narrative identity literature. First, we provide the analogy of Dante’s journey through the “inferno” to contextualize the review. Second, we share interpretations of literature pertaining to how life stories create meaning and suggest polarity might play an important role in forming complex and coherent meanings of life and selfhood. Meaning making in life stories is seen as a dynamic position of equilibrium between polarities in experiences that lead to themes and patterns. We suggest as an example the interplay between self and the world creates a person’s sense of agency, the extent a person believes they create their world or are created by it. Third, we interpret literature pertaining to how meaning creates life stories and suggest some examples of practise that may increase complexity and coherence of the expression and embodiment of meaning. Finally, we consider if it is the balance between these different experiences of meanings that may provide a person with the greatest sense of who they are

The ‘Journey’s Hero’ explores and extends the ‘Hero’s Journey’ beyond Piers Worth’s (2016) contemporary interpretation in order to identify the ‘qualities of character’ that may develop within an individual as they progress through the stages of the Hero’s Journey. Life is fraught with adversity, challenge and suffering therefore it is up to each individual to choose for what they will suffer. If this choice is for a person to realise their own potentiality, then a heroic journey of self-actualisation and self-transcendence is engaged. Life’s journey may shape a person’s ‘stand’ towards suffering. The symbolic mythology of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ makes an important backdrop for understanding how ‘suffering’ might positively shape a person’s character and story, across episodes of transition. Firstly, heroism is explained as everyday acts of authenticity that come from following our own path and bring a person face to face with suffering. Then, the mythic symbolism of the Hero’s Journey is explained in terms of a multiplicity of self. From the analysis of symbolic examples of the Hero’s Journey, a three staged model of breaking-out, breaking-through and breaking-in, is proposed based on the changing interrelationship between different ‘selves’. Finally, the inter-relationship of selves is used to explain different ‘qualities of character’ that may be developing within the Hero at each stage.