Foreword
Over the years, when I was teaching positive psychology, my students would often remark “I really love the ideas and concepts and I really see the potential, but it is all a bit overwhelming.” I can understand their point. Positive psychology is a broad field that involves a wide range of topics, including mindfulness, strengths, self-compassion, resilience, just to mention a few.
Thus, at a certain point, I was asking myself: What if we could provide students, helping professionals, clients, and other people who aim to incorporate positive psychology into their daily life with a profound, yet easy to understand framework for explaining and practising positive psychology?
What if we could help both experts and non-experts grasp the principles of positive psychology and offer a way to look at themselves and others in a holistic way that would incorporate emotions, values, challenges, strengths, and more?
What I learned through practising psychology is that the key to well-being is the way people look at themselves. At the core of well-being lies the relationship that people have with themselves. I believe it is all about relating to the self. Sadly, many people still look at themselves from a very limited perspective. The lens through which they view themselves is often weak and limited. A lens that highlights conditions for being good enough and flaws to be corrected. Perhaps the most difficult part of being a helping professional is being confronted with so many beautiful human beings who fail to see their own beauty and potential.
One of the most important reasons for developing the sailboat metaphor was to offer people a different, more holistic “lens” to look at themselves. The sailboat metaphor addresses the full spectrum of human functioning. It highlights both the factors that reduce our well-being as well as those that allow us to flourish and grow. Looking at ourselves through the lens of the sailboat metaphor instantly broadens our view. It shifts our attention from what is wrong with us, to the resources in ourselves and in our environment.
More than anything, I hope that this metaphor will help you and the people around you realise that we are all captains of our boat and that we are equipped with necessary resources to make our journey worth travelling.
Hugo Alberts
Please download the Workbook, you will need to use this throughout the masterclass – we encourage you to print it out and to complete the exercises along the way.