Helena Aguedo Marujo

Cameron: [00:00:00] Flow unleashed. Unleashed, unleashed. What if I told you that peace isn't just about the absence of conflict, but something much more powerful? Imagine walking through a city where people feel safe, connected, and purposeful. Parks are full of laughter, and communities thrive, and even strangers exchange smiles.
This isn't just luck. It's the result of something called positive peace.
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Dr. Cameron Norsworthy, scientist and high performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and [00:01:00] practice of human performance.
We often think of peace as merely the absence of war, but positive peace. A term coined by the Institute for Economics and Peace goes further. It's about building the conditions that allow societies to flourish. It includes strong institutions, economic opportunities, a culture of trust and education. In short, it's the foundation of long-term prosperity and happiness.
Think of positive pieces, the immune system of a society. It doesn't just prevent conflict, it builds resilience, fosters wellbeing, and creates the conditions for people to truly thrive. Think of cities designed with green spaces, [00:02:00] policies that encourage social trust, or workplaces that promote meaning and purpose.
Studies show that nations with higher levels of positive piece also ranked highest in global happiness indexes. And this isn't a coincidence, it's a pattern. Costa Rica, for example, has no military in reinvest, in education and sustainability, consistently ranking as one of their world's happiest countries.
Bhutan measures gross national happiness instead of GDP, ensuring policies focus on wellbeing. Scandinavian countries emphasize social trust, work-life balance, and inclusivity, creating thriving happy populations. It is clear that when communities invest in positive peace. Reducing corruption, ensuring economic stability and promoting equality.
You see a direct impact on happiness, mental health, and overall quality of life. We move from the practice of [00:03:00] private happiness to the idea of public happiness flow unleashed, unleashed. Today we have the privilege of speaking with Helena Oda Majo, a leading voice in positive psychology, public happiness and peace studies.
She is an associate professor at the University of Lisbon and serves as the chairperson of the UNESCO Chair on Education for Global Peace Sustainability. Helena is the founder and scientific coordinator of the MAP Program and an integrated researcher at the Center for Administration and Public Policy.
Beyond academia. She serves on the advisory board of the International Positive Psychology Association and has dedicated her career to researching and promoting positive community interventions, relational goods, public happiness, positive organizations, and positive peace. With hundreds of scientific publications, Helene's contributions to the field have been widely [00:04:00] recognized and nominated for prestigious awards, including three peace awards.
Helene's work is shaping the way we think about wellbeing, peace, public happiness, and social transformation
flow. Unleashed.
Cameron: Unleashed. Welcome to the show, Helena.
Helena: Thank you so much for the invitation. What a pleasure.
Cameron: Pleasure having you. Much of your work ignites social and political transformation for the good of all.
What do you feel either scientifically or practically or both has been your biggest contribution in this area or to society?
Helena: Thank you for a tap kickoff. Uh, well, my past for, since the beginning of my long career has been how to use my scientific area, which [00:05:00] is psychology, to be able to help and bring some kind of empowerment to the more vulnerable.
My area in specific inside psychology has been psychotherapy since the beginning, and it was really strange for me that my role would be to help people know what were their problems. Or their vulnerabilities, or, which is a lot what the clinical approach does. It's somehow to help people that are in pain or in psychological suffering to identify their problems, their weaknesses.
So for many, many, many years I've tried with my unfortunately late husband to [00:06:00] figure out, uh, if the, there was any other ways to be part of people's lives so that we actually help them nail their strength and to their capacities, in particular when they were living in poverty conditions or being excluded by society.
So the first big model that we found inside our field was solution oriented approach inside psychotherapy, which made sense to us because it's, it's a model to that use this language to help people figure out what they are already doing to deal with their problems and their circumstances. But we do not go through them.
We go to their lives and their circumstances trying [00:07:00] to figure out with them, which are the specialist of their own lives. We are the solutions already put in place that are helping somehow or bring them closer to their possibilities or better lives that they're trying to get to. Then we figure out the appreciative inquiry was also another approach because we wanted a systemic point of view that for many years, in circumstances where life is really tough, including working with populations in areas that food, the time were the poorest areas in Europe, which were in the Aris Islands, Portuguese, Aris Islands.
And it began making sense to people and actually slowly and hands in hands bringing positive changes and transformations in their lives in ways that [00:08:00] they really were the, the owners of that, those changes, of those transformations. So it is bringing something that is an common, which is a positive approach, an appreciative solution oriented approach.
To people and communities in particular, not as much as individuals, but you know, in a, in a pretty systemic collective way to create conditions through dialogue, to encounters with people from different levels of the social ladder or very different cultural religious stance to get together and through this positive lens, figure out where they are, where they want to go.
Always using language as the main tool to change our lives for the better.
Cameron: And for those that [00:09:00] haven't, don't know or haven't heard of positive psychotherapy, how would it differ from normal psychotherapy?
Helena: Well, traditionally, and for good reason, psychology was really interested in solving people's problems.
In particular from the point of view of psychopathology to identify deficits and well for a community where the experience is already so painful because you don't have access to, uh, the most basic human rights. You know, getting there to tell them if they are haa or violent or depressed or whatever is what is more common from the point of view of psych psychotherapy.
It's, it's to address it through the medical model. So to identify pathology, psychopathologies. And how does this help? [00:10:00] In what way? Uh, having a diagnose for, or being medicated for anxiety or, uh, depression, which is very common in the communities. We, uh, there are, you know, these, uh, situations of not having enough to eat, not having a life with dignity, not having access to health or to education or to a job or, so the, the difference is what are you looking at would actually, uh, I would say even on ontology regarding the persons that are already excluded by society to be hold in a way that is through a co-creation of a better future.
So the approach tends to be [00:11:00] individual and intra individual tends to be through pathology and sometimes even tends to be not with them. So for instance, in, in my field of work, that is the essence of what I do, which is positive psychology and addressing this idea of what is, what is wellbeing for all is not common at all to work with populations with these conditions.
So it is even criticized this a piece of science because it somehow can be reproducing the values of the, the neoliberal economic model that we have. It is reinforcing individual perspectives. It is reinforcing. The idea that we solve the world's [00:12:00] problems through individual circumstances or adding wellbeing to, uh, each one of us.
And then there will be, and I, I don't quite believe in that. I think that the, the relational realm and the community and possibility of being together, working on the society we need to, or want or dream to be on is way beyond an individual self-centered, inter subjective perspective. It does not even addresses what is happening in the world.
How is it addressing, uh, the conditions of the, uh, war or how is it addressing violence, structural violence in our society, or poverty or sustainability, uh, issues or ecological [00:13:00] ones or, uh, equality among the genders or, so the quest for me is more addressing the big issues through community interventions.
And again, that is not what is typical or common by the vote,
Cameron: I guess that argument you've put across in terms of. We need to look at the social and relational aspects of what's happening as opposed to the individualistic aspects is relevant not just to positive psychology or positive psychotherapy, but also to psychology in general and
Helena: mm-hmm.
Cameron: A lot of other disciplines.
Helena: Absolutely. I, I fully agree. I fully agree, and it's a kind of another layer that we need to address more and more facing with this global problems that we have as societies. It is, of course, important to take into consideration our [00:14:00] individual wellbeing. It's not to put it aside, but what science also shows is that we get there better when we are in quality relationship.
So what, what are we doing to attain this objective? We do know that, but then we do nothing about it or. Much about this capacity for relationality in a way that is dignifying each other's lives, in each other's perspectives, points of views, visions, ways, and values. So the, your point is extremely important.
It has been like this in general, in psychology to begin with. But you know, if we go to economy or to other sciences, which actually are now part of the movement of positive psychology. So because it's way beyond, uh, psychology now we have [00:15:00] sociology working on these economists and philosophers and, uh, people from the, uh, health sciences and education and so on.
So they are, and political science are also interested on how to bring these, uh, um. Data and theories in ways that influence public policies. And I've been working more and more in the recent years with governments and so the ones who make decisions in the local, but also in the global, more collective, uh, government of countries.
And, uh, they are also now trying to figure out how they can use data and empirical information to bring this to people's lives and to the decisions they make regarding policies.
Cameron: Is that the wellbeing economy group
Helena: [00:16:00] also among many others, but else? Yes. From groups of economists who are working on the economics of happiness through the perspective of, uh, relational goods.
Which is a concept that is coming from sociology, from psychology, from economy. So there are different groups of people and we are gathering together because there's also no other way, although we, we do it in a inter scientific and non-scientific perspective, we will never be able to find the best paths ahead.
'cause the complexity is so big that only if we get together through many approaches to science and different methodologies, uh, that we can continue to try to figure out exactly how to create the [00:17:00] future we want.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. There's a great film purpose that came out about wellbeing economy, uh, group of governments trying to come together to put wellbeing as a, as a marker instead of GDP or as well as, sorry, not instead of, and the struggles governments have had in terms of taking on wellbeing metrics and just prioritizing that over the, the many other metrics that that come front and center.
And I think some people that may be listening might be going, don't we need to start with the individual? Like, we get happy people, then we get happy communities. And I think one of the great things about positive psychological research is it's shown us that really an individual's relational needs is probably one of the, the biggest markers of individual wellbeing.
Mm-hmm. And if those relational, systemic connections, interactions, those, [00:18:00] those sort of social and systemic factors aren't in place, then those. Relational needs for that individual can't be met. And even if someone feels like they have it, if they look out their doorstep and see the wider community and pain suffering, then that has a direct impact to that wellbeing as well.
So it's, as you were talking about earlier, it's very complex and a web that is intricately woven and one that needs to be considered when we are doing interventions and it needs to be considered when we're talking to someone one-on-one, but also when we're, we're looking at developing a future that we want to develop.
Hmm. How, how has your community interventions gone?
Helena: The things that we've been doing are based also in the idea of promoting the third pillar of the modernity, which was somehow forgotten, which is fraternity. [00:19:00] So we had liberty and equality, and we've been working on those. There's a lot to, to do, but, but the, uh, amount of people around the world working, uh, to optimize fraternity is very small, I would say.
So what we tried to is to go to communities and invite people that, uh, probably to not even connect in their current daily basis, either because they are from different social groups or religious or economic groups, or to put them together around methodologies like the World Cafe using appreciative inquiry.
So always having positive questions and positive objectives and horizons to work on. And. [00:20:00] Just to put them in the conditions of dialoguing and listen to each other in a compass empathic way around what makes sense to them or what are their dreams for the common future. And usually we have food, which is an aggregator, it's a leveler, which puts people in a position of having something in common that is good and make us even feel well together, which is eating together in a informal, kind of informal way, but at the same time talking about.
Having conversations and encounters around important deep topics. So we try to see, we are the [00:21:00] community leaders, for instance, but also the ones who don't have a voice in that community where we are silenced 'cause of their age or because of the color of their skin or their religious or their social position or, um, and we try to put them together with the ones who have power in the community or, uh, make decisions for the commons or always working on topics that have to do with the common good.
So for instance, we use a methodologies called public auditions. It was created by the only woman we had as a, a leader in our country for a couple of years, and she worked for United Nations and she have, is. Broadening, uh, perspectives about how to heal together and how to address the more heavy topics of [00:22:00] our common living.
And so we listen to people. We create these moments where they have a possibility to know each other in a positive way and figure out they have a lot in common. And we do do that in a way that is objective, in the sense that everything that comes from those encounters, from those conversations is they're gathered to inform public policies or the ones, or to bring to the ones who make decisions for their lives.
So it's specific, it's local, it depends on the community, where we are and their needs. But the basis is always to organize moments where people feel safe, emotionally and feel positive, where [00:23:00] we bring hope as a, a resource to understand where we want to go together. At the same time, we use research to help us know how to do it.
For instance, we, we are researching on systemic compassion or organizational compassion. How do we deal with the suffering in a way that elevates people and bring the deepest and sometimes more difficult experiences into place? So. We address poverty or we address violence. Or, uh, recently, for instance, we had a community that asked us to leads, uh, an intervention because there's a, a lot of immigrants from Asia that are arriving to Portugal to work sometimes [00:24:00] in the worst conditions.
Um, and that community, which up north of Lisbon, began being not very inclusive. There were stories, you know, told to children or to the older people in that community that were, uh, critical and judgemental about this new persons that are arriving in mass. And so they just invited us to go there and facilitate the first meeting in the community where there were.
Religious leaders from different religions. We had immigrants representing their own experience of inclusion or non ilu inclusive experiences. We had people from very different cohort ages, and we just got together around 60 [00:25:00] people that were invited. You know, the police, the fire workers, the the entrepreneurs that, the ones who are bringing these people to work in the fields.
And we just got together for few hours around food and ative conversation to promote the experiences they are already doing, that are working to bring peace into the community. And then we try to end these moments with weeds, objectives. Stories of things that are already working that we want to optimize.
And also decisions of who's going to do what from that moment on to continue this path. In this case, it was to promote peace in the community and inclusion in a group of people that [00:26:00] is changing in a way that was unpredictable couple of years ago. How well are we inviting them into our community lives so that they feel that they are really being, um, acknowledged in their own values and respected as human beings, and how well are we working on their human rights and so on.
So this is just a recent, very recent experience and it was absolutely amazing to listen to the stories of things that are. And how we could optimize them. So we had immigrants sharing stories of being helped by people in moments where they were suffering for some reason. You know, someone, an anonymous who came to support him and to give time and [00:27:00] conditions to make them feel or loved.
And so this idea of eternity that make us feel proud of our humanity, of how we will, we connect with each other and sometimes we are surprised with, uh, how people use poetry for instance, or stories or humor or creativity and the most poor conditions to educate their kids to bring hope into their lives.
So it's also. To be aware of what are already the solutions that were put on by the communities and how we can support them so that they become, uh, a way of living or a better way of living together.
Cameron: Hmm. And what are some of the positive consequences [00:28:00] of these interventions? I've heard you talk about awareness.
I've heard you talk about the hope and creating connections and relationships in which we can foster a more autonomous sense of prosperity and wellbeing within communities that are looking to integrate and or disadvantaged or so forth. What are the positives you're seeing with these interventions?
Helena: Well, first of all, is this. Um, identification, um, and this awareness, um, from people who sometimes lost hope, that they are already doing a lot of things that are, uh, part of the possibilities moving together. So, um, it's incredible, but it's, we [00:29:00] sometimes just don't see because we were not taught or guided to be able to see what is already doing well for our lives or supporting our ways of, uh, of working, of relating of living.
I'll give you an example. There was, uh, a project of, uh, corporation Project with Mo Mozambique. We, it, it's an area in Mozambique where the, unfortunately, the consequences of our ecological crisis really hits this region. So they have terrible storms there that are re recurrent. And so every year they expect the worst and they know that probably their houses will be destroyed and schools and because of these terrible weather conditions that are a consequence of our [00:30:00] climate CRI crisis as the research shows.
And we were asked to intervene to enhance their resilience. And when we began to work with the schools and teachers, and it was mainly through schools that were, the project was put into place. They were the most resilient people I've ever met. So, what was the point? I felt terrible, you know, coming from Europe to tell people in Africa in that has this horrible repetitions of events that destroy their lives to tell them and teach them how to be more resilient.
So what actually we have done in the end was to help them see how incredibly resilient resilience they already are. And so for [00:31:00] me, one of the most important, uh, consequences is to help people see what they already are doing. That is incredible. And they are, when that's what we look for, that's what we wanna see.
That's, it's what we talk about. It's what we make relevant. Then it's there. Secondly is how and probable conversations among people that sometimes are even cross cross their paths or their lives, although they live in the same communities, is how we recognize our common humanity. And we have the same dreams and we want the same things, and we envision the same future when, for instance, we work on researching on hope, which is another project that we have, we are part of The [00:32:00] Hope Barometer Project with was created by more than 10 years ago by an argentian researcher, an academic who lives in Switzerland for 30 years, and he felt that we don't talk enough about hope.
And that there are all kinds of barometers around negative stuff. So it, it, it began this project, which now has, uh, countries from South Africa to Lebanon, to Spain, or South American, well, India and so on. So when we study Hope, and I am the leader of the project here in Portugal, we people tend to have high hopes regarding their individual futures, but no hopes at all regarding the possibility, have we together to move on the best possible future.
So this is [00:33:00] repetitive in the last years, uh, when we ask about a common future, vision of a common future, when we give them, uh, scenarios for 2050, for instance, in Portugal, in Switzerland, or even in. South Africa countries around 75% of the population tell us that what they anticipate, uh, to that is that we are moving towards the worst possible scenario.
So more pandemics, more wars, destroyed planets, less inclusion, more poverty. People without being able to realize their own strengths, less community. But when we ask them what they want, what they envision for the common future, they all have the same dream. It's so clear what we want as individual. We want to be part of communities and feel that we belong.
We want to help those [00:34:00] communities. We are hope to live in peace and have mental and physical health. We want to include people. We want to protect the planet. The vision of the good is the same, but then we do not hope that we can get there together. So every time that we gather a community to talk about hopes and dreams and always based on what is already happening that they want to reproduce or replicate people feel closer to the possibility of hope for a common future.
Because of course we, if we look about, you know, around the biggest problems we have in the world at this point, what we feel is so small to be able to deal with a climate crisis or the [00:35:00] wars there are, you know, totally crazy. If we think about everything that is happening in Gaza or Cran or Lebanon or Congo or we just feel there's nothing we can do.
We just feel hopeless. When we get together in our communities, it can be in our small neighborhood, but when we do something together, we just uplift this feeling that is possible. This is the second big consequence or second slash third, which is common humanity. We want the same things, and when we get together with someone, we, we even have a different way of, or, or a different God or a different way of praying, or a different skin color, and we, we, we face each other's eyes and we tell our stories and we discovered that we have [00:36:00] so much in common, and that then in Anderson's hope will for me, these three things are probably the most clear consequences.
Consequences that I see happening. And the fourth one is people want to do more. They feel elevated and they, they want to be better human beings. When they hear the stories of others that are already being so amazing, loving for their families or groups or, and again, science begs it up. So there is, with these emotions, elevators, when we listen to stories of people doing good for the sake of all, we do know that our body responds response, uh, phys physiologically.
We have a response when we hear these positive [00:37:00] stories and then we have a, a cognitive one, which is, oh my God, I want to be at the level of that humanity. It really makes people feel that they want to do more. And they, and they are part of, of the, of the solution. They can be part of the solution. They can do something instead of just feeling totally, sometimes even desperate and isolated and so small when they think about the whole complexity.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, just hearing you talk then I had all those feelings and physiological feelings of myself wanting to do more and, and feeling inspired and hope rising. And it was a really nice reminder, um, you know, power. Thank you for that. Of just listening to stories. And I think often we, we want to help, right?
The, the, if, if we're in a privileged enough [00:38:00] position mm-hmm. We, we want to help and we donate or we give whatever, and, and often we forget about the communities next door to us who are suffering and we give to. A place in Africa or we give to a, somewhere where the heartstrings might be sold to us a little bit easier.
You know, being, being in Africa myself, I know that often the help that is received is not actually helping people on the ground. I remember walking into a factory and it being completely empty and I'm, I'm going, you've got a whole factory with facilities and opportunity and there's lots of people looking for jobs.
Why? And they're like, well, we get enough clothes here in, in Rwanda, we don't need to make any clothes. Wow. And I can't create a business and I can't, no one wants to work because they just go to the local aid STA station and get some free clothes. And so I can't train people and I can't give people work [00:39:00] opportunities 'cause I can't sell clothes.
You know? And there's often this sort of desire to do good for other communities. In a, perhaps a more material or financial. Mm-hmm. More external way, rather than perhaps looking at what are they doing well and how does it work in their community and what's making them happy at the moment, and how can they be prosperous without the kind of the growth that we might be accustomed to in the kind of capitalist west.
And earlier you talked about education, and I've always seen education as that solution, right? In terms of, you know, if we are gonna help other communities that aren't our own, can we pass down our wisdom or our thoughts for them to take or reject?
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Some of your research, you raise an argument for education to promote that, that public happiness and support the UN's sustainable development goals three, four, and 16. I think it is what promising. Education interventions or practices or research [00:41:00] projects have you been engaged in that you think can help?
Yeah, increase positive peace in other communities, but also perhaps the second question, how can we learn from that and integrated into our own local communities that might be a bit more privileged already.
Helena: Hmm. Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing two important topics into the conversation. One is, of course, education.
The other is positive piece for me. The way to address wellbeing has been through the public happiness concept, which you also just brought, which is, it's based in, in concept from the Romans where the idea of abundance for all was present. And in the 18th century there was a group of battalion, uh, economists to begin.
Bringing or to life again, the, the Roman concept of [00:42:00] Publica public happiness. And they suggested that from the economics point of view, we needed to have, create conditions for people to leave dignified lives from the material point of view. And so to be sure that we all had the minimum conditions to live financially safe.
But then they also consider that we needed two more approaches as to that one was to create, uh, positive institutions in a way that those systems bring the best in us. So where we want to be virtuous and to share our viness. And the third one was, how do we do it? And what is this idea of, uh, public, [00:43:00] uh, happiness, which means also that for me to be happy, I only should be happy if the ones close to me, near me or around me are also happy.
So the idea that happiness needs to be also spread equally, which is, as we do know, not the case at all in the world currently. So these three areas and, um, or dimensions help this root the processes that we are using in education or in the education system, which is how can we rethink what is happening in education in a way that.
We bring Viness to the center of the, the bait and life, everyday life inside schools from the youngest to the [00:44:00] university realms. And how does we do that in a way that we promote civic engagement from the youngest generation on. And this has implied for us to promote the relational goods, the non-instrumental relationships, which is, uh, chilling experience.
Because today, as I see it, education became very instrumental. So it's not as much about bringing and optimizing knowledge in a way that we face world's problems, but it is about. Me individually getting my diploma to eventually have a good life in the end, a good job and good material conditions to have a good life.
So [00:45:00] the first challenge is how to de instrumentalize education and bring into the essence of the, the process, a way of, uh, first relating in a profound and engaging way, which also means that we need to change the methods, the, the, which is center in individual success, which is centered in, in the what happens in the small class.
And to bring it first to a sense of community. So how are we helping. The each school to assure that everyone feels part of the community. We just did a research on happiness, uh, in education in Portugal, students and [00:46:00] teachers wellbeing. And the most important, terrible associated with wellbeing was feeling part of a community which reproduces a lot of research from the nav, uh, in Oxford in organizational worlds to it.
So the, the first thing has been how do we go, how do we go back to be sure that we are a community and that everyone feels that they belong and when to be able to do this? We, uh, have to continue to work on relational issues. On language, on even the way that knowledge is passed on to the new generations and on the kind of leaders that the teachers are, what kind of values are they passing on?
What are they promoting [00:47:00] inside this? So there are amazing things happening. For instance, we had a project with the UNESCO India group, which was called Happiness, sorry. Um, kindness Matters. And we involved, uh, varying children from preschool to secondary school and university to think about what is kindness, how, what are we doing when we are kind to others?
Um, I. What are the stories of kindness in our schools? What are we already doing to bring a passion and empathy and inclusion? And so this, this way, we usually begin with adults to be sure that teachers and all the staffs that work in school are in conditions to then bring this common good [00:48:00] perspective to the school.
So we train teachers, we give them manuals on how to bring that to their schools, but the first thing is to get together, to think out loud and to again, identify what is happening that we want to continue and what other dreams that we have for the future ahead.
Cameron: So often what. When I work with schools, they often have the intention to be community engaged and if not an intention to build and educate community citizens.
And with some schools they go kind of a step further and look at creating global citizens, but they're often just feel like they don't have the time. There's too many things to do. And, and so it is often not the intention that isn't there, but the know-how or the way forward or the example that [00:49:00] sheds the light that they can then present to people.
And yeah, I'm often amazed how, how brilliant the students are about coming up with solutions and ideas when given the power and autonomy to come up with ideas and potentially implement something very important.
Helena: Very well put. Thank you so much. It it is. 'cause we haven't been talking about challenges which are very present in all these projects from trying to invite people.
From the community for a conversation, a dialogue about difficult, uh, uh, topics where there are a lot of conflict with perspective or dualism or for instance, and we already had situations where people just refuse to get together, or many, many, many teachers saying that. I, I can't think beyond teaching the context of my geography or math or wherever is that I teach because [00:50:00] the administrative or bureaucratic work too heavy or mark to me.
So, of course the, the challenges are incredible, but, and it's not, not easy at all to bring these transformations, which sometimes are really against the odds against the tide. Everyone, you know, so absorbed sometimes with. Their own situations, suffering problems, or that having space to think for what is common and how am I contributing to the collective project is, is really spare Sometimes it's not even present at all.
So it's it. It also implies that we have to be very patient with one another. We have to engage leadership to begin [00:51:00] this concepts, to put them in practice in their own way of working and then see how they can bring it to the public policies decisions. So it is something that I should add, which is to be sure that the ones who make decisions that then impact.
The time, the motivation, the, the intentions as you were saying of the workers really makes a difference and how much freedom they feel they have. And time to be able to think larger, to have bigger horizons that go beyond just teaching their own subjects. And so that's why it needs to be a global conversation from the local point of view.
And unless we broaden this, what are we doing? Question, [00:52:00] what are we doing every day in our schools? What, what kind of persons are we actually training? Anxious people, worried about their own individual results. I, I just give you an example in the beginning of this semester. In the first class with students which are ending their bachelor's degrees, I always invite them to do collective dynamics.
So they have to interact, which is not common unfortunately. And in the first invitation, in the first class of the semester, I had one student having a panic attack just because I invited them to in pair talk about topics that where they had to bring something about their own interest or, and when I asked them to change peers, so the dynamic involved them to talk with different people in the [00:53:00] room, she began hyperventilating and she couldn't deal with it.
She had to leave the room. And in the same day, I had another class teaching the same topic, and I asked for the same dynamic and I had. One student saying in tears saying, uh, I'm not included in this group. And no one wanted to, uh, make pairs with her. So she was totally isolated in, in class during the dynamic.
So just to give you, uh, very recent example of my own at university level on how these relational issues and the, when will we invite people to relate in a profound way and where they actually have to interact and bring their own beings in a secure way. They, they just bring the stories of conflict or non or, or not, [00:54:00] not feeling included or feeling so anxious to talk with someone that they never took to it for three years during a bachelor's degree in the same class.
So it's just an example of challenges and what is happening, at least from my very humble experience and how this also keeps telling me, telling us that we need to do something different in the way we are relating with one another. So we need authenticity to bring forward this who we are to debate our most tragic experiences.
I also have an experience at university recently, we are just invited students to bring stories of something that really impact their lives and they could choose if it was a positive or a negative, uh, thing. [00:55:00] And suddenly I had 18-year-old students. Bringing stories of how devastated they were because one day last year, my father told me when I ended my classes for the day to go immediately home because the, my grand, uh, father was not feeling well.
And I spent two hours playing football. And when I arrived my grandfather father's house, he was lying in the door in the floor 'cause we had a stroke and he never recovered. And I can't forgive myself because I was, I played two hours of football instead of going home. And then another student came and brought the story of how his stepfather, who died with mouth cancer one day when he was already sick, she wanted to go out with her friends in a Friday.
And he said no. And [00:56:00] she looked at him and said, I wish you die. And now she couldn't forgive herself for just using that expression. And so the stories went on and on like this in a group of, I don't know, 34, 35 students. And it was at the same time, devastating for the pain. They were, these were normal, regular bachelor students.
Okay. And at the same time, how amazing it was that we could create in that system a place where they felt secure enough to bring their suffering so that we could move on and help them feel that they also did amazing things for the ones they love. And how can they bring those stories, not as something that are heavy in their lives.
And. [00:57:00] Make them feel horrible human beings, but how they can be proud of themselves because of everything else they will do with their lives. So it's just examples of also how the challenges are present and how we navigate them using the science that tell us that the quality of relationships really matter and that we are longing in ways that are so deep to have to relate with others in ways that we are seen, that we matter, that we can bring our individual pain so that then we move on to something that is collective, that is beyond our self-centered issues.
Does it make sense?
Cameron: Absolutely. Just that one example. Some of that can happen individually through individual. Counseling or coaching or, or psychotherapy. But the power of the group being able, if the, the [00:58:00] structure's there, if the security is there, if the importance on the relational aspects of things are there, there can be an amazing positive effect on people sharing and realizing that their pain is also helpful for others if they can I identify and so forth.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So really nice full circle. I think for our, our conversation that's come in,
coming to the end of the podcast, you normally ask people two questions. One, a book or film that has had an enormous impact on you.
Helena: I would advise a book that recently has been important to me, um, from Rob Hopkins, UK, specialist on ecological issues. He wrote a book, it's called What If. And it brings data on how our levels of imagination are [00:59:00] decreasing in the last decade.
Collectively, we are less, IM imaginative, less able to dream possibilities, even to be crazy about things that can happen that really now seem impossible. And it brings all these stories of things that are already happening around the world that show how important it is to continue to imagine, to dream even, and probable things, which also have been helping, uh, humanity to move on, uh, which is, you know, our capacity to try to envision something that seems weird now but can, but is aligned with our values at the same time.
So it's an example for me of something of a book that it's intertwines well science with action [01:00:00] and possibilities, with things that are already present around the world, that are happening and that are amazing, and how people can really be inventive together and create beautiful, amazing things.
Cameron: Great suggestion.
Time to flip the mic.
Helena: How can we get better together?
Cameron: Good question. How can we get better together? I think just you saying that statement is. In and of itself, the answer often we're thinking about how can I get better? Certainly myself, I'm often, how can I optimize my human performance? You know, how can I feel better?
How can I be better? And often always priority,
Helena: which is fine. Yeah. Please continue doing that.
Cameron: Yeah, no, but that's important. But [01:01:00] also, you know, equalized with the question of how can we be better, you know, whether that's my small family unit or whether that's my school community or whether whatever that is, like, you know, often we're, we're stuck in hedonic pursuits, right?
Or we're stuck in kind of the nuclei family on the streets, or we're stuck in that kind of, we're separating and, and a lot of people feel disconnected in the world. A lot of people feel fractured in this world. And, and a lot of it is because of our own doing, of not asking the question of the we or the, the better together.
And I think just seeing everything. Having a relational stance and everything is systemically interwoven, and there is that relational spiders web constantly there, whether we're putting our attention on it or not. I, I think is the foundation of the answer to that question. And then hopefully having just more conversations, like you said, when you hear [01:02:00] people thinking bigger, when you hear people thinking about the wider goals, the wider benefits, the wider communities, a physiological desire to do the same, you know, and so having more and more conversations be that locally at a dinner party, on the train, you know, in a taxi cab when you, when you least expect it, having, bringing up new topics for conversation.
And hopefully people can continue this conversation in a, mm-hmm. In a thread of their own,
Helena: because social provision is there in those small steps. Conversations and sometimes even in silence, but in a way that you look at the other and you recognize each other as part of this common humanity. Fantastic.
Flow unleashed.
Cameron: Unleashed
this chat with Helena Powered Home. The message that public happiness can be a [01:03:00] path to peace. True wellbeing isn't just personal, it must be collective. We need to move beyond individual happiness and focus on systemic change, ensuring dignity, rights, and opportunities for all, especially the most vulnerable.
By fostering conditions for public happiness, we can pave the way for lasting peace. Secondly, change happens when hope meets action. Whether through education, regenerative community projects, or social movements, we see time and time again that when people come together, transformation can follow Connection between people, communities, and nations is at the heart of positive change.
Thirdly, the future depends on how boldly we embrace our shared humanity. Science alone won't save us, but a commitment to [01:04:00] relational goods, ethical leadership, and participatory action just might. This is an invitation to rethink our roles, perhaps see ourselves as leaders in humanity and work toward a more relational world together.
If you want to find out more about Helena, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot. Until the next time, thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.