The Foundations of Flourishing: Joseph Ciarrochi

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The Foundations of Flourishing

Joseph Ciarrochi
University of Wollongong, Australia
Todd B. Kashdan
George Mason University, USA
Russ Harris
Private Practice, Melbourne, Australia
re humans innately good and compassionate (Rousseau,

1783/1979) or are they nasty and brutish (Hobbes, 1651/2009).
This question has troubled philosophers for centuries, and
when we look at the history of humankind, there is no simple answer.
You can find great acts of love and kindness in our past, but also intense
hatred and cruelty. We had the renaissance, but we also had the dark
ages. We invented penicillin but we also invented nerve gas. We built
churches, cathedrals, and hospitals, but we also built atom bombs and
concentration camps. For every historical figure who has struggled for
equality and compassion (Martin Luther King), we can find one who has
fought equally hard for discrimination and cruelty (Adolf Hitler).
Humans are capable of anything.
So the question should not be about the basic nature of humanity.
Rather, the key question is, Can we create a world where the best side of
humanity finds expression? Positive psychology and Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy (ACT) share a common answer: Yes.
Both perspectives focus on human strengths and aim to promote human

flourishing. They often have overlapping technologies, particularly in
the area of goal setting, psychological strengths, mindfulness, and the
clarification of what matters most (values and meaning in life). They
both seek to make positive change at multiple levels, from individuals to
relationships to organizations and cultures. They both have experienced
an explosion of research in the last 15 years. And they both appeal to a
wide range of people, including those working in clinical, social, educational, and business disciplines.
Yet despite these similarities, ACT and positive psychology have
hardly referenced each other. In this book, we propose that these two
areas are related and unification will lead to faster, more profound and
enduring improvements to the human condition. The chapters in this
book will illustrate how this integration can take place, with a focus on
concrete ways to empower and change what practitioners do.
What Is Acceptance and

Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique and creative
approach to behavior change that alters the very ground rules of most
Western psychotherapy. It is a mindfulness-based, values-oriented behavioral therapy that has many parallels to Buddhism, yet is not religious in
any way. It is a modern scientific approach, a contextual behavioral
therapy that is firmly based on the principles of applied behavioral analysis, and there are now over 60 randomized controlled trials to support its
effectiveness.
ACT gets its name from one of its core messages: accept what is out
of your personal control, and commit to action that improves and
enriches your life. The aim of ACT is, quite simply, to maximize human
potential for a rich, full, and meaningful life. ACT (which is pronounced
as the word act, not as the initials A.C.T.) does this by a) teaching you
mindfulness skills to deal with your painful thoughts and feelings effectivelyin such a way that they have much less impact and influence
over you; and b) helping you to clarify your core values and use that
knowledge to guide, inspire, and motivate committed action.
Mindfulness is a hot topic in Western psychology right now

increasingly recognized as a powerful intervention for everything from
work stress to depression, to increasing emotional intelligence, to enhancing performance. Mindfulness basically means paying attention with
openness, curiosity, and flexibility. In a state of mindfulness, difficult
thoughts and feelings have much less impact and influence over behaviorso mindfulness is likely to be useful for everything from full-blown
psychiatric illness to enhancing athletic or business performance.
ACT breaks mindfulness skills down into 3 categories:
1. defusion: distancing from, and letting go of, unhelpful thoughts,
beliefs, and memories
2. acceptance: making room for painful feelings, urges, and sensations, and allowing them to come and go without a struggle
3. contact with the present moment: engaging fully with your hereand-now experience, with an attitude of openness and curiosity
In many models of coaching and therapy, mindfulness is taught primarily via meditation. However, in ACT, meditation is seen as only one
way among hundreds of ways to learn these skillsand this is a good
thing because most people are not willing to meditate! ACT gives you a
vast range of tools to learn mindfulness skillsmany of which require
only a few minutes to master. In ACT, mindfulness serves two main purposes: to overcome psychological barriers that get in the way of acting on
your core values and to help you engage fully in the experience when you
are acting on your values.
Thus the outcome ACT aims for is mindful, values-guided action. In
technical terms, this is known as psychological flexibility, an ability
that ACT sees as the very foundation of a rich, full, and meaningful life.
What Is Positive Psychology?

Instead of being viewed as a movement or a paradigm shift, positive psychology is best viewed as a mobilization of attention and financial
resources to previously ignored topics (Duckworth, Steen, & Seligman,
2005). For decades, psychology has emphasized the reduction of distress
and disorder. While this emphasis has led to efficacious treatments for a
variety of psychological problems, the primary reasons for living have
been ignored. Nobody lives to be merely free of distress and disorder, and
the positive is not merely the absence of distress and disorder. There are
other ingredients to a life well lived, and these ingredients have been the
focus of positive psychology research and practice.
When first introduced to the world, Seligman and Csiksentmihalyi
(2000) mapped out the terrain covered by positive psychology. The field
of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued experiences:
well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present). At the
personal level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love
and vocation, courage, interpersonal competence, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, and wisdom. At the
group level, it is about the civic virtues and institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism,
civility, tolerance, and work ethic.
The working assumption of positive psychology is that the positive,
healthy aspects of life are not simply the bipolar opposite of distress and
disorder. This theme arises again in a special issue of the Review of
General Psychology dedicated to positive psychology, where the editors
claim that psychology has been effective at learning how to bring people
up from negative eight to zero, but not as good at understanding how
people rise from zero to positive eight (Gable & Haidt, 2005, p. 103).
That is, the primary aim is to address and cultivate positive experiences,
strengths and virtues, and the requirements for positive relationships and
institutions.
In this description, positive psychology seems to push too far to the
other extreme, focusing only on the positive, with a caveat that of course,
pain and suffering are important as well. It is only in the last few years
that researchers have advocated for the need to move beyond the superficial connection between the positive and negative dimensions of
the human psyche (Sheldon, Kashdan, & Steger, 2011b). For instance, if
you are attempting to teach children to be compassionate, you simply
cannot ignore the negative, because it is built into the fiber of empathy,
and perspective taking. Prominent positive psychologists often discourage a focus on weaknesses (because this is less efficient and profitable);
(Buckingham & Clifton, 2001) and reinforce the notion that when it

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