Creating The World We Want To Live In:
How Positive Psychology Can Build a Brighter Future
Bridget Grenville-Cleave, Dóra Guðmundsdóttir, Felicia Huppert, Vanessa King, David Roffey, Sue Roffey, Marten de Vries
This book is about hope and a call to action to make the world the kind of place we want to live in. The authors hope is to provoke conversation, and gently challenge possibly long-held views, beliefs, and ideologies about the way the world works and the people in that world.
Written by eminent researchers and experienced practitioners, the book explores the principles that underpin living well, and gives examples of how this can be achieved not just in our own lives, but across communities and the planet we share. Chapters cover the stages of life from childhood to ageing, the foundations of everyday flourishing, including health and relationships, and finally wellbeing in the wider world, addressing issues such as economics, politics and the environment. Based in the scientific evidence of what works and supported by illustrations of good practice, this book is both ambitious and aspirational.
Creating The World We Want To Live In is designed for a wide audience – anyone seeking to create positive change in the world, their institutions or communities.
This book is for our times and has my wholehearted recommendation. It channels our collective yearning for a better world into evidence-based actions. In weaving together the latest well-being science with accessible stories of hope, it offers a blueprint of what works to create flourishing lives and communities. Let it inspire us all to create a better, fairer, and more sustainable world'. (Barbara Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
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Bridget Grenville-Cleave is a positive psychology consultant and trainer for both public and private sectors in the UK and abroad. She designs and delivers evidence-based training such as the ‘Happiness and Wellbeing at Work Program’ for the UAE Ministry of State for Happiness, as well as school and university happiness curricula for staff and students, and runs online positive psychology courses. Bridget lectures on the International Masters in Applied Positive Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, specialising in positive psychology practice, and is an accredited trainer for the award-winning resilience programme ‘Bounce Back’. She is the author of five positive psychology books. You can follow Bridget online via LinkedIn.
Dóra Guðmundsdóttir is Director of Public Health at the Directorate of Health in Iceland where she leads work on health promoting schools, workplaces and communities. Dóra is a clinical and organisational psychologist with a PhD in public health. She has served as a governmental expert on mental health for the EU and has a special interest in wellbeing measures, wellbeing policies and evidence-based knowledge in policy making and interventions. She is director of the Graduate Diploma programme on Positive Psychology at the University of Iceland, and current president of the European Network for Positive Psychology (ENPP) www.enpp.eu.
Professor Felicia Huppert is a psychologist with a long-standing research interest in the science of well-being and the promotion of human flourishing. Her work brings together approaches from cognitive psychology and neuropsychology with a population perspective derived from epidemiology. Felicia has advised governments and international bodies on the measurement of well-being, and on policies to enhance well-being. She is Honorary Professor with the Body Heart and Mind in Business Research Group, University of Sydney Business School . She spends part of the year in the UK, where she is Founding Director of the Well-being Institute at the University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Psychology.
Vanessa King is a board member at Action for Happiness and plays an active role, speaking nationally and internationally and translating the latest psychological research into practical action to help individuals, organisations and communities enhance their wellbeing and resilience. She is one of a small group people globally to have completed a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under Martin Seligman and many of the other leaders in the field. Follow Vanessa on Twitter: @changespace
David Roffey was a partner in an international management consultancy, where (amongst other things) he advised many post-communist and other governments on how to balance competition with public interests and needs in the reform of communications and media markets. In previous times David has been the General Secretary of the LSE Student Union, a magistrate, a trade union official, a local councillor in a London borough, a board member of the Child Poverty Action Group in the UK, and NSW state chair of Oxfam Australia. David is now based in the UK, and manages Growing Great Schools Worldwide.
Sue Roffey is a psychologist, academic, activist and speaker. She is a prolific author having written many books, chapters and journal papers. Sue holds posts as Honorary Associate Professor at University College, London and at Western Sydney University, and is also affiliated to the Wellbeing Institute at Cambridge University. She is Director of Growing Great Schools Worldwide and is an internationally respected authority on school and student wellbeing. Follow Sue on Twitter: @SueRoffey
Marten de Vries is emeritus professor of Social Psychiatry and director of Mind Venture International (MVI). As a psychiatrist and anthropologist, he studies the experience of mental illness under different sociocultural and traumatic circumstances. MVI works together with target groups to develop media productions aimed at improving mental health and social wellbeing. For this work, he was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.