Wellbeing Explained

Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello

This is the weekly podcast all about the stories behind the studies of the happiness and wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 23. This is an exciting example of us learning about efforts to improve wellbeing coming from other fields than psychology - this time from architecture and the built environment. 

Today we welcome Dr Jenna Mikus, who uses her education and years of experience in engineering, architecture, and design to curate environments and experiences for flourishing, and her PhD was focused on understanding how to design for Eudaimonic wellbeing in the built environment.

In her PhD research, Dr Mikus sought to gain this understanding by co-designing with older adults, within the context of their home environment.  Her research resulted in a Eudaemonic Design framework with design guidelines that will characterise Eudaemonia-supportive environments for older adults which of course can be instructive for other demographics.

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Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello

This is the weekly podcast, sharing the stories behind the studies of the wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 27. This week we go back to Italy, back to Milan in fact, to chat with Associate Professor Marta Bassi. Marta is FLOW researcher at the University of Milano, Her research interests primarily focus on optimal experience and its role in psychological selection. She has conducted research concerning individuals’ quality of experience in areas such as education, leisure and health. She is a founding member of the Italian Society of Positive Psychology (SIPP) and of the European Flow Researcher’s Network (EFRN).

As you will hear, Marta is already a favourite on Researching Happy, being the President of the European Network of Positive Psychology, and therefore host of the upcoming European Conference 2024, therefore responsible for inviting Professor Corey Keyes as a keynote in Austria… fingers crossed I can make it there too… 

Find out more about the conference here: https://ecpp2024.com/

I really enjoyed this conversation with Marta, learning all about her work researching Flow in a wide diversity of contexts, and I really admired the working relationships she has had with her colleagues, particularly as you will hear, Fausto Massimini and Antonella Delle Fave. People who know about Flow will probably be familiar with Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, but it was really interesting to learn about the connection Mihály had with the Milan team. 

Enjoy this episode, share it with someone who would like to learn more about flow, and stay in touch with us on social media and spotify! 

Just a heads up, I’m planning to take a few weeks off in December, and come back bigger and better in 2024 for Season 2 of Researching Happy. If you have ideas of what you think that could or should look like, hit me up on linked in. Enjoy and welcome Marta! 

Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello

This is the weekly podcast, sharing the stories behind the studies of the wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 26. This week we host Steve Peralta, the Co-Founder and Chief Wellbeing Officer of Unmind, an impressive workplace wellbeing company with offices in New York, London, and Sydney. https://unmind.com/

This was a great conversation, talking about how the workplace wellbeing scene has changed over the years, how Unmind empower employees and organisations to shift culture towards mental health and wellbeing, their Whole Person, Whole Organisation approach, and something very interesting called the performance paradox. 

Steve has been a great person to meet and know over the last few years and I really enjoyed catching up once again. 

Stay in touch with us on Linked In, Twitter, Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Subscribing and rating the show makes a huge difference. 

Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello

This is the weekly podcast all about the stories behind the studies of the happiness and wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 25. Coaching is massive these days, if you heard my wrap up from the IPPA conference you’d have heard me say that the conference felt like 60% coaches at the conference…  and I had a fantastic conversation with Existential Coach Yannick Jacob.  

Yannick is a Positive Psychologist (MSc), Coach Trainer & Supervisor (DIP) and Mediator (SPCP Dispute Resolution).  Yannick is part of the teaching faculties at Cambridge University's Master’s in Coaching Program, Animas Centre for Coaching, the International Centre for Coaching Supervision and The School of Life, and he delivers talks and keynotes at conferences internationally.

Basically, in this episode I asked every question about coaching that I could think of, and Yannick smashed them all out of the park. It was a lot of fun - I walked away from this conversation wanting a coach and wanting to be a coach. 

Stay in touch with us on Linked In, Twitter, Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Subscribing and rating the show makes a huge difference. 

Find out more about Yannick here: https://www.coachingandmediation.net/

Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello. This is the weekly podcast all about the stories behind the studies of the happiness and wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 24. This week we have someone who came highly recommended to the show, Paul Tupou-Vea. Paul is the Director of Clifftop Wellbeing and the former President of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology. 

Paul has years of experience in the promotion of wellbeing in schools, and works to meet the diverse wellbeing needs and challenges of learners, teachers, leaders and the community around the school. And that is the best part of the conversation - Paul really brings something that is often missing in wellbeing practice - Connection - or seeing the bigger picture. 

Science has a pesky habit of atomising the human experience, meaning breaking down our experiences into their most basic parts, which is useful for research but stops working when we try and apply that knowledge into a complex setting like a school. 

Paul walks us through Māori and Tongan models of wellbeing, and we get into this issue that comes up again and again: Times when science ‘discovers’ some wellbeing practice that traditional or indigenous communities have known for centuries. 

Find out more:

Paul’s work at Clifftop Wellbeing: https://clifftopwellbeing.co.nz/

Te Whare Tapa Whā model of wellbeing: https://mentalhealth.org.nz/te-whare-tapa-wha 

Fonua Model of wellbeing: https://www.actionpoint.org.nz/pacific_health_models

Stay in touch with us on Linked In, Twitter, Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Subscribing and rating the show makes a huge difference. 

My name is Dr Matthew Iasiello, welcome to Researching Happy

This is the podcast all about the stories behind the studies of the happiness and wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 22. We are very fortunate to have Professor Karina Jorritsma with us this week, Professor at Curtin university and leader of Thrive at Work which is a world-first well-being initiative centred on designing work that helps employees, organisations and industry to thrive.

Karina walks us through the origins of her work, the foundation of Thrive at Work, and steps through the Implementation Framework to take action in the workplace for wellbeing. As you will hear, this work is among the best in the world, and I highly recommend checking out their website which has lots of useful frameworks and tools to help workplaces and practitioners improve the quality of their work. 

https://www.thriveatwork.org.au/

Stay in touch with us on Linked In, Twitter, Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Subscribing and rating the show makes a huge difference. 

This is the podcast all about the stories behind the studies of the happiness and wellbeing research world. Support the show at: researchinghappy.locals.com

This is episode 20 - a mini milestone - and really happy with the progress so far! It’s been an honour to chat with so many respected researchers all of whom are doing amazing things in the world. Thanks for all of the support for the show, feedback, and ideas - as I’ve said every episode - please keep it coming! 

Dr Jon Beale is a researcher, coach and educator whose research focuses on human flourishing, particularly in the workplace and education, and the science of learning. He's a Research Affiliate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, a Peak Performance Coach for the Flow Research Collective, and co-host of Flourish FM: a podcast for the good life. He's previously held research posts at the University of Oxford and Eton College. He's co-editor of four books, including The Future of Education, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He's published 30 research articles and book chapters in leading academic journals, book publishers and media outlets, including The New York Times.

Find out more at: https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/people/jonathan-beale and https://www.flowresearchcollective.com/team-members/dr-jonathan-beale.

If anyone watched the first episode of this podcast, I said I wanted to learn more about the issue of scientism - as defined by Jonathan as the "the pernicious manifestations of an excessive belief in the power of science". I was reading a book by Seraphim Rose just last night came across this passage: the unreflective scientific specialist sees no need need for any other kind of knowledge, occupied with the demands of his or her speciality, and has, perhaps, neither time nor inclination for “abstract” questions to inquire, for example, the basic presuppositions of that speciality. 

As we discuss, this issue of scientism can affect wellbeing research, a field that has so much input from alternative ways of knowing than just the scientific method. Now, Jonathan has done much more work than his focus on Scientism, and while we did focus on that, we also chat his other work on the future of Education, coaching, and wellbeing research. 

SUPPORT THE SHOW: researchinghappy.locals.com 

This week Matt chats with Annalise Roache, Co-President of the NZ Association of Positive Psychology and a PhD Candidate at AUT Auckland. We walk through Annalise’s PhD work, focused on Lay Perspectives of wellbeing - put simply - Annalise asked over 1000 New Zealanders what wellbeing means to them. 

After an intense process of thematic analysis, Annalise constructed a model of two interwoven aspects of wellbeing, The Elements and The Golden threads, each working together yet unique and influential in their own right. 

GIVE YOUR FEEDBACK on Annalise’s work here: https://annaliseroache.com/research-publications/283-2/ 

Hear Annalise present this work at the IPPA World Congress in the last 20 minutes of the episode. 

SUPPORT the show: researchinghappy.locals.com

This week I am joined by Professor Paul Wong, Professor Emeritus of Trent University and Trinity Western University. 

At 86 years young, he has published eight books and 300+ journal articles and chapters; he is one of the most cited psychologists in areas related to existential positive psychology. 

This was a great conversation, and raises lots of interesting questions, top of the list is the role of a transcendent creator or God in happiness, compared with other humanistic ideals like science and reason… This is not something I know a lot about so if anyone has any suggestions for future guests please let me know!