Many of us move through our life journey searching for home, for that which will make us whole, fulfill us. What if every iteration of our journey is home, is enough, fulfilling us? How would we show up differently, if we were home in every space and moment, knowing that nothing is lost and everything connects?

Marisela B. Gomez MS, MPH, PHD, MD is public health scholar activist, physician and mindfulness practitioner. Of Afro-Latina ancestry, she/they lives in Baltimore involved in building cooperative communities at the intersections of mindfulness, housing justice, and solidarity economies. Author of Healing our Way Home and Race, Class, Power and Organizing in East Baltimore, she has written numerous book chapters, popular and scholarly publications. She blogged on the intersection of spirituality and justice at Huff Post and on the intersection of community rebuilding, wisdom justice and health at this website.

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How can we get happiness right in a world that has got it wrong?

We’re told that achieving our own success will make us happy, but we’re being misled. Authentic happiness isn’t about chasing after some unrealistic, perfect life – it comes from letting go of outer expectations and helping each other to live happier lives.

At this live event, bestselling author Stephanie Harrison will share her uplifting new approach to happiness. Building on extensive research, she’ll explore some of the most common happiness-related challenges, from confidence and self-compassion through to relationships and purpose.

Stephanie will help us get beyond the unhelpful stories we’re told about happiness and the simplistic cliches of self-help messaging. She’ll remind us that we don’t have to be “perfect” or “successful” and, above all, we don’t have to do it all alone.

Taking part in this event will leave you with simple, but powerful, new ideas to help you feel happier, cultivate gratitude, help others and find a greater sense of meaning in your life - even in uncertain and challenging times.

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Promoting Psychological Safety and Voice in Work Groups with Nicole Abi-Esber, The London School of Economics and Political Science. The Adderley Positive Research Incubator has enabled 250 researchers in the broad domain of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) to share early research ideas. Designed to foster a developmental environment characterized by positive regard, generative insights, and new collaborative possibilities, incubators encourage both high-quality research and scholarly growth.

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The webinar will focus on a new book, From Conflict to Convergence: Coming Together to Solve Tough Problems, by Mariah Levison and Robert Fersh. This story-driven book is based largely on the authors’ direct experience of more than two decades each working to address intractable issues of public concern at the national, state and local levels. 

The webinar is intended to inspire and equip participants to become effective collaborative problem-solvers in their personal, professional, community, and public lives. A key focus of the webinar will be the mindsets that not only make us more likely to collaborate rather than clash over our disagreements, but also make us more successful in doing so. The webinar will also reinforce the value of preparing our own “inner selves” for success in collaborative problem-solving. This starts with finding ways to be as centered as possible, focused on listening well, and having the capacity not to be overly reactive to people and ideas we find disagreeable.

Learning objectives:

- Understanding the potential of collaborative problem-solving to address tough issues in a manner that provides mutual gains while building lasting relationships of trust.

- Understanding the fundamentals of how to problem-solve collaboratively on a wide range of issues and conflicts participants encounter in their private and public lives.

- Gaining an understanding of how collaborative problem-solving, if taken to scale, can contribute to healing divides and creating a less contentious society.

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Could kindness by the key to better work?

Kindness isn't a fluffy nice-to-have. It's a powerful force for good that makes everything better - from our daily choices to our friendships, organisations and wider culture.

At this special event, author and entrepreneur Graham Allcott will share how you can make kindness the foundation for a more rewarding life at work and beyond. He'll explain how kindness and empathy are 21st century superpowers and how we can transform our workplaces to encourage them.

Kindness may not make headlines, but it turns out to be vital. It builds trust and psychological safety, bringing big benefits for our creativity, decision-making and more. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience and business research, Graham will share how we can build more positive work cultures, including the 'Eight Principles of Kindfulness at Work', plus how to bust myths and convince cynical colleagues.

This event will help you be more "kindful" yourself and make a stronger case for prioritising kindness. This is the dose of warmth and sanity we need right now. You'll learn practical advice to reshape your daily life - so you and those around you can really thrive.

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Navigating change is one of the hardest tasks that leaders face. How can discovery produce ahas  and insights to meet the challenge of effectively leading during a time of unprecedented change? 

 Join Karen Golden-Biddle, author of  The Untapped Power of Discovery: How to Create Change that Inspires a Better Future, to learn about her compelling framework and actionable strategies that will help you champion discovery for change in work and life. Through science and storytelling, Karen will explain how to leverage opportunities once unseen, open the door to temporary not knowing, and launch new solutions that reimagine unsettled situations. Learn how you and your organization can experience remarkable benefits from catalyzing discovery.

Hosted by Monica Worline, Faculty Director, Center for Positive Organizations

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Worldwide, democracy and political leadership is at a crossroads. Faced with rises like climate change, inequality, and war, some nations are turning towards autocratic, populist politicians who reach for easy and divisive answers to complex challenges. What we need is something very different. We need leaders who can govern for the whole of humanity, not just their nation or party, who have the courage and wisdom to tackle systemic problems, and the resilience to do so despite the opposition of vested interests. So, how do we cultivate that leadership? How do we sustain it in systems that are corrupting? And how do we work to ensure it's attractive to voters? Join us for this important discussion, in celebration of World Values Day!

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What is human flourishing, or the "fullness of life," and what factors promote it? How do the answers vary across cultures? These questions are animating the work of the Global Flourishing Study, a longitudinal survey of over 200,000 people in 22 countries, as well as the effort to establish a Global Community of Practice for Flourishing. This talk will introduce these initiatives and discuss what the construct of flourishing adds to more familiar constructs like wellness, happiness or well-being. We will explore the significance of research on brain health for this emerging global conversation with Matthew T. Lee, PhD – Professor, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University; Director, Flourishing Network, Harvard University

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Psychologist Dr. David Yeager studies the processes shaping adolescent development, especially how factors of social cognition and physiology interact with each other to create positive or negative trajectories for youth. His research seeks to influence these psychological processes, so as to improve developmental and educational outcomes for youth. He is a professor at UT Austin.

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“How can mindfulness help me if I’m under pressure to stab someone to join a gang?” Mindful Peak Performance (MPP) was founded to answer this stark question and find ways to make mindfulness more accessible to disadvantaged young people.   

Six years on, MPP has pioneered an award-winning approach to combining mindfulness with boxing that has been successfully delivered with a range of communities, including young people at risk gang of involvement, young and adult carers, ethnic minority groups and the LGBTQ+ community.  

MPP, alongside the grassroots foundation, has also made mindfulness more accessible in elite sports and business through team away-days, 1:1 coaching and courses that fuse high performance with mental wellbeing. 

In this talk, the founder of MPP, Luke Doherty, will share the origins of the organisation, how its approach was co-created with at-risk youth in some of London’s most deprived areas, and adapted for elite athletes and corporate leaders and teams. Luke will share key learnings around the importance of mindfulness, meeting people where they are and presenting mindfulness in ways that are relatable and relevant to their lives, work and socio-economic context while keeping the core essence alive.

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How can love and compassion bridge what divides us?

If this question is on your mind and heart this election season, join us on September 21 for a free, virtual event with inspiring Buddhist, mindfulness, and civic leaders sharing their teachings on how we can move our divided country forward with love and compassion towards the true democracy we all know is possible — for this election, and beyond.

Let’s put love at the center of our civic life — join us! Together, we’ll be lifting our spirits while raising crucial funds for All Voting Is Local, which works to protect the freedom to vote for all, and DJs at the Polls, which places DJs in densely populated urban areas with large numbers of underrepresented voters to celebrate citizens who come to the polls.

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This talk will explore the evolution of self-compassion in healthcare over the past decade, highlighting the growing evidence base and its crucial role in addressing burnout among healthcare professionals. As we celebrate CMC's 10th anniversary, this session will showcase insights from CMC faculty's national projects and research, including Dr. Germer's upcoming book, “Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout” and Dr. Gardiner's experiences with Self-Compassion for Healthcare Communities. This talk aims to inspire a deeper understanding of self-compassion as a vital tool for personal and professional resilience in healthcare.

Learning Objectives

• Define self-compassion and explain its relevance in the context of healthcare and behavioral health practice. 

• Analyze the evolution of self-compassion practice over the past decade and their impact on healthcare professionals. 

• Evaluate the role of self-compassion in promoting mental and emotional well-being among healthcare professionals.

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Dr. David R. Hamilton is a former R&D scientist and now author of 12 books, including ‘The Joy of Actually Giving a F*ck (July 2024)’ and ‘The Five Side Effects of Kindness’. He is a magazine columnist, regular podcast guest, and a regular speaker in both the public and corporate sector, having delivered talks for Google, 3M, NHS, Bank of England, and many others. He is also the honorary scientific advisor for the charity, 52-Lives, which helps people in need through public acts of kindness.

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To celebrate the 250th Adderley Positive Research Incubator, the Center for Positive Organizations is delighted to host a unique session open to anyone interested in the field of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). This milestone event invites us to “look back to look forward,” renewing the perspectives from a few past presenters who will revisit what is distinctive about a positive lens and re-narrate some signature moves that illuminate generative processes in organizations and organizing. We hope that participating in this session will invite scholars to (re)envision threats with a sense of possibility; (re)ground our research assumptions in what is best in the human condition; (re)anchor our work in humanistic management and human virtues; and (re)activate human resourcefulness in the face of widespread suffering, despair, uncertainty, and distress. Please join us to be (re)inspired by core research developed in the field of POS across the past 20 years and to be challenged to (re)imagine research that illuminates a future worth living.

Hosted by:
Monica Worline, PhD, serves as Lead Faculty for How to Build Compassionate Organizations: Awakening Compassion at Work, as well as our Compassionate Leadership Teacher Training. She is one of the leading voices bringing compassionate practices into organizations, having co-authored the foundational book Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power that Elevates People and Organizations.

Jane Dutton, University of Michigan
Jordan Nye, University of Michigan

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Join author Anu Gupta and Garrison Institute’s CBR Director Christa Tinari for this conversation around imagining a world without bias—and the methodologies by which we can dream it into reality.

The session will feature meditation, somatic exercises, and a lively discussion, followed by an interactive Q&A session. Anu will explore what it means for us to “break bias” in our own communities.

“Imagine how you would feel in a world without bias, where all human beings can truly be just as they are and unleash their full potential. We’re not asking what you think about it, or whether you believe it’s possible, but how you feel.” – Anu Gupta in his book Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From and the Science Backed Method to Unravel Them, with Foreword from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Please join us as we explore this unique opportunity to spend time with the author and a gain insight into the themes of his work.

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Hope For Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness

Jamil Zaki, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University, Author of Hope for Cynics

Cynicism is an understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, it is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that people fail to realize how kind, generous, and open-minded others really are. Cynical thinking deepens social problems: when we expect the worst in people, we often bring it out of them. We don’t have to remain stuck in this cynicism trap.

Join Jamil Zaki, author of  Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, in a fireside chat with Ethan Kross to learn the secret for beating back cynicism: hopeful skepticism—thinking critically about people and our problems, while simultaneously acknowledging our power. Through science and storytelling, Jamil will share how hopeful skepticism can strengthen relationships, schools, businesses, and social movements. This philosophy isn’t about naïve optimism; it’s about magnifying the good in people while remaining critical. Hopeful skepticism honors humanity’s strengths while confronting our weaknesses head-on.

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What can we learn from the science of happiness?

We'd all like to live a happier and more fulfilling life, but it's hard to know where to start. Fortunately research shows that we don't need to wait for things to be perfect or the world around us to change, there are practical things we can do right now.

At this special event, you can join renowned expert and author Professor Arthur Brooks to learn how to build a happier life, no matter how challenging your circumstances. Combining his decades of experience studying happiness, he'll share tips to help you manage your emotions, turn difficulties into opportunities for growth, improve your relationships and find a deeper sense of satisfaction and inner peace.

This is your chance to discover the latest cutting-edge science in an understandable way that you can put straight into practice. Arthur will help you grow your happiness skills and inspire you to share these with others around you too.

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Why expanding our moral circles is key to a better future with James Kirby, Matti Wilks and Charlie Crimston

The challenges facing humanity cannot be solved by one group or nation alone. They require cooperation and collaboration across borders, cultures, and societies. But to do that, we need to expand our moral horizons. We need leaders who govern for the whole of humanity, not just their tribe. We need communities that can support everyone in need, not just those who are deemed deserving. And we need everyone to act with an understanding of the impact we can have on lives thousands of miles away from our own. Is this possible? New research into moral circles and how they can be expanded suggests it is.

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