What drew you to study the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing?
“My sister first told me about re:cognition’s Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing five years ago.”
She is doing her Doctorate in Wellbeing and shared the Diploma as highly recommended, based on the course’s reputation and the feedback she had heard. My role with Rio Tinto the last three years has been to design and facilitate leader programmes and I have been looking at what the gold standard is in developing leaders at the moment around the world, this Diploma immediately came to mind and was something I wanted to do for my own personal development, to role model to others the ongoing nature of development and also to be able to ripple out into my community of leaders what I was learning myself as I progressed through the Diploma.
How was your experience studying this course?
“I know enough that I should be living the most amazing, inspiring life a person could possibly live.”
I love learning and have been known to fly to Los Angeles to participate in a three-day workshop or to Byron Bay for a five-day programme, and can confidently say the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing is at the top of my list for learning, effectiveness in generating change, and ah-ha moments.
I spend a significant amount of time researching for the leadership programmes we develop and deliver, and so I know a few things. There is a difference between knowing and doing, I have discovered. Throughout the Diploma, there were many moments that built on things I had heard before or come across in research.
What was truly a game-changer for me was how the information was translated into real experiences. The Diploma is designed so you are not just learning concepts, you are actively using the tools and applying them in practice. That is where the aha moments and deeper connections really landed for me, and where real transformation happened. Instead of feeling excited for a day, a week, or a month, it became a clear “aha, this is how knowledge turns into action” and creates lasting positive change.
An example is the Strengths Profile, and starting to appreciate the difference between a learned strength and a realised or unrealised strength, showing how knowing this enables the use of strengths to generate action and momentum. A second example is the intrinsic power of values in creating goals and the difference it makes in successfully achieving them.
How are you spreading positive ripples in your world?
“Since I was a young girl, I was brought up to believe that one person can make a difference; a smile can change a person’s day.”
I am not sure if this has influenced my choices in adulthood, as I have found myself in roles that generally involve helping people. My current role is to create development experiences for leaders that are greater than learning models and concepts, and are felt and transformative.
The information shared in the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing is the latest I know of, because I have extensively researched for the programmes we create. What stands out in this Diploma is the practical element, the practical activities included in the Diploma coursework. In the programmes we create for our leaders, we share that life is made up of moments that matter, moments when you can touch a life and make a difference, be it a smile, recognising someone’s strengths and helping them build on those to achieve better things for themselves, or just being a good human being and caring for each other.
Doing this Diploma, attending the sessions with our inspirational facilitator, hearing people’s stories and getting tools that provided many ah-ha moments and links between what is knowledge and theory to actually doing and implementing positive change in my own day-to-day life has inspired and energised me to think about how to share and pay forward the many, many tools I now have experienced.
The focus on strengths and understanding your own strengths and how they can energise you, and that you can draw on these strengths to pull weaker areas forward, making it a flow experience instead of a struggle of overcoming, it becomes an adventure in building. This is an exciting element of the course that hit home for me, finding the best way forward with a strength focus is so powerful.
In my role, we talk to mindsets a lot and having the latest (and the earliest) research and the incredible impacts that have been replicated from Ellen Langer to Alia Crum, Barbara Fredrickson and Martin Seligman, to name a few, provides depth in what I can share with our leaders, supporting them and their teams.
Thank you to the facilitator and her amazing team at re:cognition. This course has nuanced so many things I had read, I intellectually understood and never really applied or used in practical changes in my life and work; from being able to positively work with my emotions and broaden and build my wellbeing to setting goals that stick as they align with intrinsic values. These valuable tools, insights, and experiences have been transformative for me, and I take great pleasure in sharing them and stories with others to empower them as I have been empowered by this course. Thank you.