Dedications

want to broaden where I go and not just speak to psychologists or positive psychologists about this kind
of stuff, but speak to people from a whole range of backgrounds and approaches.
An interdisciplinary lens?
Absolutely! I think that that is where the real value is. Because positive psychology has been so popular,
lots of different fields have grabbed it. It would be really easy to be defensive and say, “You’re not
psychologists,” or “You’re not academics,” or “You’re not really qualified to do this”. But some of the
best interventions I’ve seen, like Band4Hope (www.band4hope.com), people have not come from that
background, they have come from, “We want to get out into the world and make a difference and we
are going to do that through trade or aid,” and they have explored different ways of doing it with
absolutely no background in the wellbeing science or literature. So I think we will miss something if we
don’t look and talk more broadly.
I guess I could say exactly the same with what I’ve learnt through developing the International Journal
of Wellbeing, and it being interdisciplinary. I’ve learnt so much about economics and sociology and
public policy’s views on wellbeing, all these things. It seems to me a lot of people are doing very
similar stuff but with a different language at the moment.
Absolutely.
Now I’ve got a great question for you. Imagine you have been given $100,000 to put towards a
positive psychology project – could be anything – what would it be?
This culture of “busy” – how do we turn that around? We just seem to have such a strong culture of
productivity and busyness and we wear it like a badge of honour, and I think there is something about
rest and rejuvenation… How do we live consistently well across our lifespan? Maybe this might be to
do with my stage of life where I’m over being “busy” and ready for something different. I know you’re
researching this at present. The other piece is the values research. I don’t think there is enough quality
research in that space, so it would be lovely to invest something in there. The final piece is that I’m
interested in the “doing” – the application – so if I had $100,000, it’s probably going to be an applied
piece. Actually, we just got given $3,000,000 to invest in exactly these things, so I’m already doing what
I absolutely love to do.
111