Episode 77 - Emiliya
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Mel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Permission to be Human, the podcast. I'm your host Mel Findlater mother, coach, and curator of Permission to be Human, the company and community. If you're a mom, know a mom, or want to be a mom, and you crave getting out in the world to make a difference, then you're in the right place. This is a space for moms like you to connect with yourself, your purpose, and your big audacious dreams.
Because when you feel your best, you can better you, your family, and the wider world. Let's do this.
So excited to share with you our guest today, I've been waiting a while to have the courage to ask her.
We have Emiliya Zhivotovskaya
here with us today and she is freaking amazing. She went from a challenging life with lots of loss through to [00:01:00] becoming a kids party planner. And then deciding to get her master's in applied positive psychology. And startup the most incredible company called The Flourishing Center, which is where I learned all about applied positive psychology. And she basically brought this knowledge, this research of how humans flourish. Out of just the research world and to the rest of us who want to know what to do with it. How can we better our wellbeing and how can we become our best selves and how can we be the change makers that help other people do it too. So Emiliya is one to listen to today and I am so excited to bring her to you.
Now here's what Emiliya says about herself.
Emiliya is a passionate speaker wellness expert and founder of the flourishing center, where she's on a mission to teach people the science of thriving. She blends, positive psychology, mind, body medicine, and a bit of magic to help others overcome [00:02:00] challenges and live their best lives. Her big audacious dream?
To ignite a global movement that gives everyone the tools they need to build resilience, joy and wellbeing. This is not one to be missed folks, stick around.
Emiliya: Okay. Hi. Hi, Emiliya hello, Mel. So good to be here with you.
Mel: I am so excited to have you here. I know you offered a while back and I've always been a little like, Oh, I'm going to do that someday. And it's finally that day. And I know you have so much knowledge that you, you know, tidbits of which I've been honored to learn through your majoring programs but also just.
It's so nice to chat.
Emiliya: So good to chat with you too. And congratulations on this awesome podcast.
Mel: Thank you. So tell us for those of you, for those of the listeners who do not know you, who is [00:03:00] Emiliya?
Emiliya: Emiliya is a positive psychology practitioner and expert of positive psychology and mind body medicine.
And I do training programs in certifying practitioners. Practitioners and positive psychology and coaching and speaking and consulting. And I'm a lover of life and I, someone who's just here to be a positive change agent to help make the world a better place.
Mel: Amazing. Yep. That describes so much of you.
And we ran into each other because I somehow fell upon your positive psychology course which we shortened to CAP, Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology back when it was 2020. It was like the year of, of chaos in, in [00:04:00] all of our lives. And I'm so, so thankful to have fallen into that. And honestly, it, it shifted me from a very difficult place to a much better place.
So I'm very, very thankful for getting to take him part in that. And then the coaching program alongside it, it was, yeah, it was lovely.
Emiliya: Yeah. So glad that it's able to support you and, and be there at the right time and the right place. Yeah, the crazy times.
Mel: I know, right? And yeah, despite the crazy times, exactly.
And, you know, we could, I was just saying to you beforehand, we could talk about so many things, honestly, we, there's so much knowledge to, to bring out a few and so many stories. But the thing that really, I guess where we could start is maybe what is positive psychology? I messaged, I mentioned it quite frequently on the podcast.
But for so many, myself included, yeah. When I found the course, I was like, what, like, what is this, right? What is [00:05:00] this thing called positive? Does it just mean we're all like happy go lucky all the time or yeah. So maybe you could give your definition.
Emiliya: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny cause when people think of positive psychology, they often just think like, Positive.
They're like, I like that. I think it sounds good. And then they think like, it must mean like just being positive or being a positive person. And so, so often I am a positive person. I spent a lot of my time just teaching people what positive psychology is and isn't, and a lot of it has to do with branding that when the person who created this field, and it's a scientific field and study that came out in 1998, And where traditional psychology had focused on helping people fix, heal, treat, and move out of the negative aspects of their life to get them back to baseline where they could [00:06:00] function and go back to being who they are.
Being able to treat things like depression or anxiety or psychosis and neurosis, positive psychology got started as a scientific study based on the idea that just because a person isn't depressed, doesn't mean necessarily that they are happy and positive psychology was intended as the scientific study of the positive meaning rather than just going to neutral, going north of neutral, rather than only studying What isn't working in people's lives and how do we heal and help them recover from that positive psychology is about trying to help understand and use the scientific method to uncover the north of neutral aspects of our human condition. So a lot of what people don't understand about positive psychology is it's not one about being positive.
Whatever that means. Oftentimes that's, that's like a, you know, people are like, yeah, be positive or, you know. Thinking positive. It's really a very sophisticated [00:07:00] exploration of what is north of neutral means. So it includes everything from helping people understand how to work with negative emotions, not get rid of them, but how to work with them, how to be resilient, how to be fulfilled, how to live a life of wellbeing, and how do we actually create that in our lives?
And so it's a science that got started in 1998. I've been involved with the field since 2006 when I first came to. I do a master's degree in positive psychology. I was really lucky and got to be a part of the second graduating class and studied with the founder of the field of positive psychology and my life's work has been devoted to straddle this world of research and what scientists Uncover about these different pieces of the human experience around how the mind works and how the body works and turn [00:08:00] that into application.
So how do we actually take the science and put it into action? And I'll just give you a quick example. Like, I was just reading a research study on rumination. This yesterday and looking at the mediating factor between having stressful events and the likelihood that adolescents and adults will experience anxiety and depression.
And the mediator was the role of rumination. And so while it doesn't take, you know, rocket science to say that, of course, when you hear it, it go, yeah, of course it makes sense that having a stressful event and then ruminating about it would be the thing that makes a person. stressed or depressed or anxious or any of those.
But something about the science helps us take a much deeper approach to understanding it and working with it. And so that's what I do is I help people take the skills and tools that have been identified by researchers, and then turn that into what does it mean to practice positive psychology [00:09:00] and actually Use the science to create exercises and interventions and coach and teach people these skills and these tools.
Mel: Amazing. There's, there's so, so much there. And I love that you were there right from the beginning of this like journey in the world around positive psychology. Right. And as you say this, So what, what appealed to me about it was the science part that, you know, we talk about this. I've been supporting people in their lives for quite a long time, but I never had that thing backing it up.
I felt like I was always making it up. Right. And, uositive psychology gives us that space to go, actually, there's a science here. There's research around this and things like ruminating, as you say, can actually have this negative effect or correlation on. What happens and how we feel and how we act and, and such.
And it's important to know that because then we can be like, Oh, we can have these interventions. Maybe you could talk a little bit [00:10:00] about, that and like, what are, what are the like positive interventions then, and how does that work in, in life?
Emiliya: In general, positive interventions or specifically to rumination.
You can take that either way if you'd like. Yeah, we could, we could do both. Yeah, why not do this? Because some of you are going, yeah, rumination some of you go, meaning the people listening might go, Oh, yeah, rumination. Like, I do quite a bit of that. So first, like, what is a positive intervention?
Unfortunately, it's like, Not the best words to describe what it actually is because it comes all of this work in positive psychology comes from the field of research and traditional psychology, which has used the word intervention to describe an exercise. But usually you intervene when something is wrong, but we still have inherited this word of positive psychology interventions, which are defined as research based activities for increasing and [00:11:00] enhancing.
quality of the human condition. And oftentimes what makes it a positive intervention is that it has qualities and the intention of enhancing a person's happiness and well being. But when you use research based interventions, they often have been tested in some way where people have done experiments where they'll have a randomized control group that might be assigned to An exercise that is and another group that will be doing a intervention that we are hypothesizing might increase a person's well being and then we're just able to say, what impact does it make?
And I'm sure that you and everybody listening on the line have this like never ending list of all the things we could do to increase our happiness and well being and all of the self care. And it's like, of all the things I could do, what might work best for me? And so positive interventions are, are exercises and oftentimes.
That's the ones that have been tested that have been shown to give us a boost to our happiness and well being. And there [00:12:00] are a handful of ones that have been tested that Are kind of like the consistent ones that we go to. So, for example, asking people to express gratitude and all the various forms, whether it be writing a gratitude letter, making a gratitude list, paying a gratitude visit to someone reminiscing about people who have done good things for you that you feel grateful for is a well known intervention.
But what the cool thing about positive psychology research is it can also give us like a nuanced approach to understanding not just, oh, yes, gratitude works, but also why does it work? And is it dose specific, meaning are, can you overdo the gratitude? Is there like the right dosage of what you should be aiming for in terms of expressing gratitude?
So a little fun fact about gratitude is sometimes it can actually be more effective. done once a week rather than daily. So gratitude is a well known positive intervention. Setting goals are well known positive intervention. [00:13:00] Practicing and acts of kindness for other people are well known positive psychology intervention.
And and, and when it goes to rumination, some of the interventions around rumination can be really interesting if you actually look at how scientists define what rumination is. And there's, there's four qualities that I think are really unique to rumination. One is that it's repetitive thinking.
The other one is it's a passive focus. So oftentimes it happens like not consciously. It's just a rumination happens if like, once you start thinking to yourself, okay, I'm going to sit and ruminate about this. You're no longer in rumination. You're doing a completely different practice. So it's repetitive.
It's passive. And it is usually associated with some form of trying to problem solve or engaging and problem solving. Meaning the [00:14:00] mind thinks that it's going to get some sort of benefit. So it's like a loop that's open. And so, and then the other factor is that there's usually like an A trigger or an activating event that's making it happen.
So one of the simplest aspects of how to intervene with rumination is actually to change some of those pieces. So to ask yourself, like, am I actually problem solving in this process? Like, is thinking about it something I can problem solve about? And if the answer is no, then we have to shift gears and practice forgiveness and letting it go.
Okay. Making it an active practice. So just going from my mind is thinking about things to, okay, let me actually take control of this process so that it's not passive. It becomes active. Like, okay, brain, you want to replay the situation over and over again? Let's write it out, you know, so that I'm no longer thinking about it.
And interrupting the repetitive process. So I will be [00:15:00] just being able to catch yourself and say, okay, this is a loop that I'm caught in, and I'm not going to keep repeating that process. So those are some ideas in terms of you know, how to go about it.
Mel: Brilliant. I think those are such great examples because, you know, ruminating is something we, we do.
We all do it, right? And some more than others. And I think in the, the world right now where there is a lot of anxiety hanging about you know, definitely in my family's life, we've had a lot of that. And, you know, since COVID, especially it is, you know, It is. It is very present in so many people's lives.
And I think in our listeners lives, you know, as, as mothers who are responsible for other human beings and their livelihood, it can definitely come in there. So, you know, ruminating about the fact that you know, your, your drop off at school wasn't as, as you were hoping or whatever it might be can have that negative effect.
So I think these examples are perfect, [00:16:00] right? It's so often we don't, I don't think until this course, I didn't even know what rumination was actually, right? It's just a thing that naturally happens kind of in our brains as you say. So that's fantastic. For you to share that. Thank you. And I'm curious of how.
Like, how did positive psychology come about in your life? What's that story?
Emiliya: Thank you for asking. Gosh positive psychology came along into my life with quite a bit of resistance initially, to be honest. It's kind of funny when you think about the good old story of like the hero's journey or The monomyth and that in it, it's this, there's this point where like the hero goes like, absolutely not.
I'm not doing that. And it wasn't until recently that I realized I actually did that with positive psychology. And so the way I came into this work formally was I went right from my undergraduate degree where I studied [00:17:00] psychology, art, business and philosophy. And I was very much a recovering type a Capricorn.
I had my whole career mapped out around what I was going to do and where I was going to go. And I had already had this really great career. I started working when I was 14 years old as a professional kids party entertainer, and I was doing birthday parties and weddings and bar mitzvahs and celebrations for a living.
I had this awesome job where I basically got paid to have fun. And got paid to show up and play and create really great experiences for people. So I had had this work and I found out that people actually had careers as, people actually had careers as life coaches and motivational speakers. And when I learned this, I was like, Oh yeah, that's what I'm here to do.
Yeah. But I was like, who's going to take a 21 year old life coach seriously. I was like 19 or 20 at the time. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to get us, I'm going to get [00:18:00] a PhD. I'm going to become a psychologist. And I'd already studied psychology as an undergrad. And I knew that I didn't. Like traditional psychology in the sense that the abnormal psychology side of like trying to diagnose disease and disorder.
All I knew is that the more, the more of them I learned, the more issues I thought I had. But I was convinced that I needed a psychology doctorate. And so I was looking up all of the places where I could go get a PsyD or a PhD and fast track it. And I thought I was going to become a sneaky psychologist.
And sneak happiness and well being in the back door because I had been reading self help and pop psychology and I love the study of the mind and human behavior, which psychology was all about. And so I just thought, you know, I'm going to go this, this route to study psychology. I just won't let them know that.
I actually am really interested in like the positive, like the, I didn't know it was called positive psychology back [00:19:00] then, but the, the wellbeing side of the human experience. And then I had a friend named show Albert, who sends me over this link to this master's degree at the university of Pennsylvania.
And he was like, I know it's too late for you to do this program. This year was the first year they were coming out. You're still, you're still in college. You're graduating this year, but next year, you know, you should do this program. I totally like thank you so much But i'm getting a phd not a master's and then and then it comes around again He's like, okay applications are due soon.
Like you got to get into this program. I was like, no, thank you I'm getting a phd and i'm not going for a master's I have my whole plan And then finally, like third time's a charm. There was somebody who was involved in a course. I knew that had gone through the program and he was like, well, at least meet, meet this guy for coffee and just ask him about the program.
And it was like, Whoa, all the things that I am interested in. This field actually studies. And again, at that [00:20:00] point, there was only one master's degree and a second one in the works in this field. So it was like, if you want to study this, this is your, your one chance. So I was, I was a bit reluctant at first.
It took about three times to finally come around. But before that, all of that also came from just a series of. Lost actually that I had experienced over the course of my life. I my family had experienced a traumatic loss of my brother who passed away when I was a teenager. He was a young adult drowned in an accident, actually and a lot of balance battles with my mom's health and well being and my dad's as well.
And all of that brought me into a place of being really interested in studying. Resilience and studying well being had a long cancer battle journey with my mother and realized that didn't really know much about how to take care of a person how to eat well, how to [00:21:00] move well, and how to prevent cancer and the role of stress on the body.
So I became really passionate about. Studying that and also understanding the mind body connection, because I had a deep intuitive sense that a lot of my mother's illness was not maybe not caused by, but definitely tied to this trauma. And I wasn't being spoken about one of the doctors that she went to see, and it was dozens and dozens of.
Doctors and, you know, multi digit surgeries and procedures and it was like, I knew that there was something to this mind body connection for her as well. And so I wanted to study these things and and basically bring them to the world. And that was how I wound up in the field of positive psychology and went from who's going to take a 20 year old life coach seriously to I'm going to use the science to help me help people.
And you know, here I am about to turn [00:22:00] 40. So it's almost two decades later and yeah, just putting the science into practice every day.
Mel: Brilliant. Yeah, that's, you know, that's such a beautiful story, Emiliya, like this, this ability to take some really hard challenges in your life and, and, and kind of have some curiosity around and use that curiosity to kind of propel yourself into the next.
Phase, right? And to say, actually, like, let's go see what else we can learn. What is this mind body connection? What is this, this, what else can we be, right? Instead of the diagnosing and all the things, you know, so your ability to move from one to the other is, is really, really admirable. And it brings the words that come to mind, which you've taught me, is post traumatic growth.
And I'm, and I'm curious, curious of, Whether those are the words you would use for that or not, I suppose, and how [00:23:00] maybe you can describe like what that is.
Emiliya: Yeah, absolutely. So, the word post traumatic growth is again, a field of exploration within positive psychology where we hear a lot about the concept of post traumatic stress disorder.
For PTSD and researchers that study post traumatic growth identify that most people or many people don't just experience trauma when they going, they may encounter stressful situations, but most people are actually resilient. And then a handful of people also grow directly as a result of this trauma.
So this is people who don't just bounce back to where they were before they bounce back better. Which happens to also be one of the names of the, one of the certification programs that we run and a training program that teaches you to teach other people how to bounce back better. And so I definitely would put myself in the category [00:24:00] of post traumatic growth in that my, my growth and purpose in many ways got informed directly.
From the trauma meaning that when my brother passed away, I kind of one intuited that this would be a turning point in my life. And honestly, I, I just did what I saw in television. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid. I had I joke that I taught myself to speak English because my family immigrated to America when I was five from the Ukraine.
And so I. learned the language by watching a lot of television. Like nobody taught me English. I just sat and watched and figured it out. So back then I watched a lot of TV. I watch very little of it now. And, and I kind of thought, well, here's this, this terrible thing that happened to my family. And I saw myself getting caught up in the, like, why me, why us, you know, why my parents, I think the, [00:25:00] the most.
Devastating thing that can happen to a person is the loss of a child. And I saw that and I saw my parents struggle and I intuited, even at that age, that That how I would make sense of the situation mattered and that all the movies I would watch is sort of like, okay, Emiliya, this is the point in the movie where the character makes a choice, you know, are they going to, are they going to be broken by this situation?
You know, I kind of felt like I could just be miserable and like, make, you know, think about all the things that aren't working in my life. It would turn to drugs, turn to numbing, turn to all those things alcohol, or I could use it to become a better person. And so I just kind of, I can't even remember like where I was the day that I made the decision.
I was like sitting on my bed and had my brother's photo. And I was like, I'm going to do what he couldn't do. I'm going to like bring, I mean, I kind of thought of it as like, I'm going to. Bring [00:26:00] the best aspects of him into my life. And the biggest one was like, my brother was a great student. He loved to read.
He was like, you know, and I was like the little kid, the younger sister, who was like, I'm not going to be as smart as my brother. So let's not even bother because I'm afraid to like be found out for not being smart enough. But that's really what some of the aspects of post traumatic stress disorder, I'm sorry, post traumatic growth Are about, which is about storytelling and the meaning that you assign to it.
So of course, we don't set out on a, I'm going to become, you know, I'm going to grow from this trauma. But we can see it afterwards. And this is where the research is really cool because We can also take a look at the ingredients of like, how do you know a person is experiencing PTG, and we could use that understanding of the ingredients to actually make them interventions or active ways that we could try to embark on greater PTG, [00:27:00] and there's like five, five aspects of PTG.
One is that a person. Goes through this experience, but then feels like they have a greater appreciation of life Oftentimes a sense of changed priorities. So what's important to the person as often? Changed which I definitely had like I went from okay like Here I am, I'm a kid, but suddenly an awareness that don't take anything for granted.
Don't take your parents for granted. Don't take don't take your friends for granted. All of this can be taken from us at any moment. And so it was like a greater appreciation for life. Definitely a sense of change priorities where suddenly I was like, I want to, I want to become a better student. I want to complain less in many ways.
It was like, I felt like my parents had been through enough. And I no longer was like, I was, you know, Kind of building up to being an entitled teenager. And it was like, no, no, no, like, don't put your parents through this. You know, they've been through enough. [00:28:00] Another one is warmer and more intimate relationships with other people.
So there was definitely a sense of like reaching out to support for my friends, reaching out to guidance counselors and as a, as a youth. So oftentimes that is there a greater sense of personal strength. Oftentimes when people go through things like this, they. They kind of, they tap a resource that they didn't even know was possible within them.
You just pick yourself up and you do just put one foot in front of the other in front of the other. Then a sense of new possibilities and also a sense of spiritual development which definitely also happened to come into my life at the same time. So looking back on it, it can say it's no accident.
That I grew into a place of being resilient and growing as a result of this trauma. And what's cool is that we can look at those aspects and say, okay, if you're someone who has been resilient, you've gone to the other side of a traumatic life event, how can you cultivate a greater sense of [00:29:00] appreciation?
How can you deepen, double down? And those relationships and those intimate ties, how can you recognize the strengths that you have? How can you think about what's possible or what your goals are and what you want to create? And then the spiritual piece is that, you know, connect to something bigger than yourself, whatever that might be.
And so we can use those as ingredients to post traumatic growth, but we can also treat them as maybe interventions, like direct ways of, of activating it.
Mel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's so much there. I mean, it makes me think of, you know, there's, there's a lot of people in the world that are going, they have some hard stuff happening or that has happened.
And you know,
I've heard, I've heard some talk about resilience, especially, and how we often use that word in a way that's like, Oh, I'm so like, [00:30:00] you're so resilient. That's so amazing. And then I, I actually hear the opposite of like, I'm so beat, I'm so tired of being told I'm resilient. Like that, that comes out a lot. Because actually I just need these things to stop happening.
And I think what you're sharing there is that, you know, there are things that are going to be really hard. I can't imagine that was an easy time, even if it was post traumatic growth, right? I imagine it was the hardest time ever. But what I'm hearing from you is that even in those moments where we're, we feel like we're at our last straw, there's, there's a few things that we can, small things that we can do, like the ones you've mentioned there, to, you know, to, to keep going and to get that kind of growth starting to happen alongside the trauma that's there as well.
I don't know if that lands.
Emiliya: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the piece surrounds [00:31:00] like being exhausted from hearing people say you're so resilient. I so get that. I think that You know, definitely the way that I experienced it is it used to like create this like split screen moment in me, where on the one hand I would be very appreciative and very grateful because you know, people are just trying to like, they're paying you a compliment because they don't know what else to say.
Or they really do feel this, like they're in awe of the strength that you have or the resilience that you've, you've demonstrated. But the reason I know it made me cringe and other people that I speak to is because most of the time you're thinking to yourself, what other option did I have? Like in my mind, it was like, what else do I do?
You just, you just pick yourself up and you keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I, but it's like, it is interesting because some people do choose another option that could also be available as well. You know that, that declining or doing worse or not showing up for your life or your [00:32:00] responsibilities.
Is something that some people do do. But when, when it's just sort of you, you feel like, well, what else was I going to do? It does. It can almost feel a little cringe worthy inside. And being able to, again, if you're that was just some of it is to also recognize that it's not. It's not just who you are.
It's also what you're doing. And so when they're wanting to reflect that back to you just being able to, to appreciate that they're seeing a strength within you. And if you're someone who's seeing someone go through it being able to say something like you're so resilient, but also maybe to be specific about what are they doing that they're appreciating, because it kind of makes you cringe as though someone is like, Making this evaluation around who you are, but instead of it, it's like, it's actually what you're doing.
And so, recognizing that it's, it's what I said was that it's not a character trait.
But that's, yeah, like being able to say, like, I just want the stress to stop. [00:33:00] And it's the, like, you know, they say AFCO, like another freaking growth opportunity. Like how many of these can you, can you take? And there is research that shows that, that a moderate amount of adversity makes you stronger, but an excessive amount.
Is also, you know, it's not good. It's a distress. It's when we move from like stress that can be useful that activates you that gets you engaged to a sort of stress that is not good. And so it is important for people to also honor that there are limitations that it's not just like keep encountering stressful situations and just keep that in mind.
Line them up, like, you know, batters up. I'm just going to keep hitting them away to have some compassion that we all have our limits and we all have our breaking points and that then that's normal. And that's human too. And sometimes when you get these messages and people treat you as though you're super human and kind of make you cringe inside, you're like, yeah, just me doing me.
Yeah,
Mel: yeah, exactly. That [00:34:00] really speaks to, to the situations that I have in my mind and, and you're right, you know, there's just, there's a limit to all of us and permission to be human, like the name of this podcast, right? Permission to, to say, like, actually, this is just, I don't know if I can do another growth moment here.
I'm, I'm done, right? And then deciding, you know, what support to get to go through that. And the other thing that you spoke of that really Kind of peaked my ears a little bit is you were speaking about one of the things that you can do to support yourself in those moments is to really try to find a space of possibility or set a goal or like what kind of things look forward to something essentially.
And the reason that that speaks to me is because this podcast is for moms who have big audacious dreams. And, and I'm often kind of. wondering to myself and out loud often on the podcast of like, if we see that possibility, how can we have big dreams if we're [00:35:00] also like in survival mode, right? Which is kind of the space that you're talking to there, right?
Like something really difficult is happening. And one of the things that we can do to get ourselves out of it is to think about possibility. I just, I, I'm just speaking that I'm curious what your, your thoughts are.
Emiliya: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Cause I think that Sometimes yeah, being able to think about positive possibilities, it's like, like taking your eyes to the horizon, you know, it's like stress makes us like narrow and focus and research shows that, you know, when we're in pain, whether it be physical pain or emotional pain, the biological response is for thousands of years when we experienced emotions like fear or anger, part of what they did was they, they focused our attention so that we could protect ourselves and that narrowing and focusing response of stressful situations is just very natural.
And [00:36:00] but it makes it hard to. Raise your eyes and look at the horizon. We tend to just sort of like do whatever is immediately in front of us. Some people say I'm good in a crisis because it's like you don't overthink. You just do the thing that's in front of you. So it can actually be hard to plan or to imagine when you're in those places.
And so absolutely too. Think about how engaging and possibilities thinking would be really useful for getting us into those more broadened spaces. But sometimes it's also important to know that that might actually be really hard to do in those moments because of the nature of how emotions impact us.
And so sometimes this is why mindfulness practice can be so helpful. Because I'm like if you can, if you can take on the practice of just tuning into not what has happened in the past or not what's going to happen in the future, but what's actually happening here right now, I think of it as like passing through [00:37:00] neutral and driving a manual vehicle where you kind of have to like pass through neutral in order to gear shift into another gear.
And so that can help get you out of this, like difficult, narrowed state and pass through neutral so that you can go to possibilities thinking. So you can lift your eyes to the horizon and think past just what's immediately in front of you. So mindfulness can be a really great practice there as well.
Mel: Mm hmm.
Yeah, that's a great metaphor actually this concept of passing through the neutral to get to the other point because you know, without necessarily talking about all the bits and pieces of our brain we are, if we're in our emotional state then our thinking brain isn't really ready to it. think about rainbows and how we can climb them, right?
Like, or whatever the possibility might be that we're looking at. So yeah, thank you for speaking to that. Right, we are, I could, probably we could go on [00:38:00] for ages and ages because I have so many questions, but. I'm going to, I'm going to resist that urge right now and go to, tell us a little bit about the Flourishing Center and because I think, you know, the, the people listening to this, they have big audacious dreams and often are in that change maker kind of mindset, which is what really appealed to me when I came to your program, Emiliya, the fact that that, that word was used a lot.
I'm like, yeah, I want to go make a difference somehow, not only in my own life, but also out in the wider world and in my family. So, I'm curious how the Flourishing Center falls into that and yeah, tell us about it. Yeah.
Emiliya: Our registered trademark is training the change agents of the world. And, I grew up as a Care Bear kid.
I really loved the Care Bear cartoon. It was definitely one of my influences in learning how to speak [00:39:00] English. And and I kind of think of it as, as the organization that builds kind of does. But a little bit like what the Care Bears did where they're difficult problems out there in the world and those of you who are not familiar with Care Bears is this cartoon for my I don't know the 90s where bears would have their each have their own unique gift, their own unique light that they shined in the world and they would have these colors and shapes that would be on their belly on their bellies.
Which is kind of interesting from an Eastern tradition. The solar plexus is also like where our our strength is, our power center, our like identity and our creative power is in that solar plexus chakra. And so these Care Bears would, would either do and influence the things that they were up against with their own Care Bear gifts.
Or occasionally they would come together and they would unite and they would all shine their light together and they would kind of make this rainbow. [00:40:00] Together of all the different colors of all the neat things. And that's when they did what they did when they were up against the bad guys, like the really big villain that they needed to care bear unite.
So it's kind of a little bit like it's kind of a little bit like that. So since 2012, we've specialized in running a certification program that gives people a foundation over the course of nine months into almost everything that science has proven around what it means to be. Happy, healthy, resilient, and like, live a flourishing life.
And so that program is our CAP program, which you're a graduate of now, as well as our other advanced programs. And that's kind of where everything starts for us. And so we've trained over close to 2000 practitioners in over 53 countries over the past 12 years. We actually have a program coming up in October.
The first week of October, we have our next set of programs that, that open up. And this is [00:41:00] really where I say, like, it's like our care bear training. We give people the understanding of the tools of positive psychology and then help them make them their own, help them identify whether you are someone who's already in a profession where you are working with people whether you're a coach or a therapist or, you know, A trainer or a tutor or a doctor, yoga teacher, or or you're in a place where you want to step into a career where you're either coaching or teaching or consulting using positive psychology, or you're just in a place of transition.
We have a personal and professional development program where you get this foundation of positive psychology and are able to apply the science yourself and learn how to use it with other people. Or we also then can off. We also then have advanced tracks after you go through our foundations program. So if you are someone who wants to learn how to be a professional coach and [00:42:00] become accredited and credentialed as a coach, you can go through our program.
We have a fast track through the International Coaching Federation to help that. We have programs that are sort of Packaged positive psychology where we help people accelerate the process of becoming a teacher or speaker by going through any of our advanced programs where you don't have to reinvent the wheel will train you on how to be a resilience trainer will train you on how to run groups and teach this work.
And then we have a consulting certification program as well, where this is for people who are interested in working with organizations and use positive psychology in a structured way there. So that's what we've built with the Flourishing Center. There's so many other things. We've got a daily wellness program that anybody can hop in at any time where we're, it's like a gym for putting positive psychology into practice and all sorts of other learning opportunities that we do in a couple of.
Days. It'll be World Gratitude Day. We do a lot with leveraging [00:43:00] technology, and we've got a text message Graticoach, where you can get a personalized coach that will text message you every day. It's not AI. It's an actual human being. We'll text you and prompt you with stuff. Some gratitude tools. So we do a lot of different things that straddle this like personal actual application, like positive psychology is a practice.
I have to practice it every day and to practice breathing every day. I have to do these things and then a deep dive professional training. And then shout out to another company that I started more recently, about seven years ago had co founded the center for positive education. And that's a program that is for school teachers or parents or anybody that works with children that wants to learn positive psychology, but specifically to teach it to children.
So that's the Center for Positive Education. And we run a certification program there as well. That's really wonderful. That kind of essentially gives the tools that I wish were being taught [00:44:00] when I was a child. And definitely as I prepare to be a mom one day hope that we'll be taught in classes to where my children will go.
So those are some of the different things that we're up to.
Mel: Amazing. And I know that only like touches the surface of the, the, the many, many amazing things that you are doing to make this world even better. I'm, I'm very much in awe and, and love all of it. As you know, I've been, I did the CAP program, but I've also done, I don't even know how many advanced programs that you just mentioned as well.
And Emiliya is also one of the, you are one of the, like, you are an amazing coach, by the way. Like, not only do you train us to be it. You know, above the basic level of coach, but also, you know, just watching you be able to do that is, is pretty incredible. I know in like literally five or 10 minute sessions that we did in practice in the year, like got me in tears because you got me just like, let's not keep surface level.
Let's, let's go and get [00:45:00] to the real deal here. Which. You know, sounds horrible, but, but it actually is exactly what, what is needed in that moment. So, excellent. Well, I love, I love that you have come here. Please do like anybody listening, go find out if you're intrigued at all, just go find out, like you said, you have like a daily kind of practice program, like, Just, I highly recommend checking out all of what the Flourishing Centre is doing, whether that's a bigger program or you know, just coming in and, and having a space to, to listen in to what people are doing and how this works.
Do a little practice. I love that you say, you know, positive psychology is a practice. This isn't something that we just know how to do and even when we know how to do it, if we don't practice it, it doesn't do its job, right? So. So let's let's go out and do that. And on this podcast, we'll continue to share so many of the tools and techniques and kind of thoughts and [00:46:00] science that you've shared with me throughout time.
So, all my gratitude to you for sharing those with me so I can share them with everybody else.
Emiliya: Thank you so much, Mel. Thanks for having me and congratulations on all the awesome work you're doing in the world. Thank
Mel: you. And if people want to find you, just, you know, What's the best place do you think for them to
Emiliya: go? Definitely the flourishing center dot com. You can take a look at all the different things we've got going on there.
The little chat button in the lower right hand corner goes to me or my awesome assistant Shannon. And yeah, happy to be in touch or you can email me directly. Emiliya at the flourishing center dot com.
Mel: Perfect. Okay. Thanks so much, Emiliya
Emiliya: thanks now.
Mel: You know when you have that dream or that idea and you hold it really tight and you don't really want to share it with anyone until you have it [00:47:00] just right? Until you are absolutely assured that it is exactly what you want it to be. But you also know, deep down inside, that it is unlikely to get perfect, it is unlikely to get to exactly where you want it to be, unless you share it with others.
It's when we share it with other people that we get the energy and the momentum. It is when we get feedback. It is when we start to Iterate. We need to get it out of our bodies and into the world in some sort of way, and talking to someone who will cheer you on is exactly the first step.
That is it, folks. This has been Mel Findlater on Permission to Be Human, the podcast, and I am so glad that you have joined us here today and hope that you have taken away some tidbits that will help you go away, connect with your big audacious [00:48:00] dream, and make that massive impact in the world that you are dying to make.
If you liked today's episode, please, please, please like it, share it. Think of one person. Think of one person that you think would also like it and send it on over to them. Let's get this out there and more moms feeling like themselves. Inspired, dreaming big, and out there being them. Please do head on over to find me on Facebook with permission to be human or Instagram or you can even Off me an email and say hello.
Have permission to be human, always, at gmail. com. Say hello and let me know that you listened. What did you like about it? I would love to hear. If you didn't like it, I don't really want to know. Ha ha, just kidding, you can share that if you want. I would love to know, however, who you are. Let's [00:49:00] connect.
Let's find out what you want more of. I want to hear from you and I want to make it what would be useful to you. As always, remember that you have permission to dream big, permission to feel big, and permission to be you. You have complete and full permission to be human.
For real, you do.
