Gioia–Pensive Who Would You Be?I’d be Ghandi, I’d be Martin Luther King, Jr.,I’d be Me! If you could be like anyone, who would you be and why? We used to pose this question on the inpatient units, just as a conversational warm up with patients. Some answers were predictable-Oprah, Jesus, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, or Princess Diana. Some people wanted …
Gioia–Be You When we work with caregivers and therapists, we often find that when they bring up meaning in life as an aspect of happiness that their eyes really light up. Just last month, as we spoke to the staff of Maryland’s Child Advocacy Center, we knew we were seeing deeply committed people whose character strengths included kindness, compassion and …
Rebecca–Love of People “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” Roy Disney Seems pretty straightforward–we assume we know what our values are, right?! But when we propose this activity in our workshops and groups, it often draws a blank at first. This may be partly because too many of us our values are so inherent to …
Rebecca–Light in the Darkness Gioia and I were talking about ways to manage burn out and got intrigued by the evocative nature of that descriptor–burn out. The expression evokes all sorts of visual images: a flame sputtering and then extinguishing, a light bulb crackling on and off and finally going dark, the embers of a once glowing fire fading under …
Rebecca–Rising Sun When we work with people in substance abuse recovery, we focus on identifying positive emotions they’d want to experience if their recovery from addiction goes as well as it possibly could. Using this “fake it ’til you make it” approach allows people the opportunity to imagine, and act “as if”, their ideal life was a reality. In this …
Rebecca–Doodling Notes from Lecture Art is intimidating. Although children usually make art spontaneously, most of us stopped doing art in our early teens. Unless you identify with being an Artist with a capital “A,” art may be something that you relegate to your talented sister, your artsy friend who is naturally creative and has an eye for color and design, …
Rebecca–Feeling Generous Gioia found a new word the other day: Ubuntu. Apparently Ubuntu is a Zulu term for compassion and humanity, or human kindness. It means, literally, “human-ness.” She had been looking for a way to describe what she and Rebecca witnessed recently when they were giving a keynote in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. They had been honored to participate in …
Ubuntu–The Universal Bond that Connects Us All Click to Read Post »
Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Rulin’s This time of year always calls for lists, all kinds of lists—“Best of..”, “Worst of …”, “Things for which you’re grateful”, “What you accomplished in 2014”, “Resolutions for the upcoming year”, etc…. We’ve been thinking about lists here at CWW partly because we’re preparing for a couple of “Vision Journaling” workshops and making lists is …
Rebecca–My Lovely Peeps “I believe that unconditional love will have the final word ” Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s been a challenging year if you listen to the news recaps. Ebola. Gaza. Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines. ISIS. Robin Williams. Girls here and abroad abducted and raped. Rockets crashing. Ferguson. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of “severe, pervasive and irreversible” …
Gioia–Altoid Shrine Think about three things that have gone well thus far in your day. Find a piece of paper and write them down. If the list gets longer as you’re writing, go ahead and add more When we start our workshops with this simple exercise, what we usually hear are comment such as “I got to work without running …
Join our mailing list for monthly newsletter with resources
© 2020 Creative Wellbeing Workshops