February 2023 - The Wellbeing Project

BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 4 BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 4

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

11am ET / 5pm CET

Join us for the fourth episode of “Bringing it Home.” In this thought-provoking installment, we dive deep into the valuable insights gained from our enlightening conversation with Chris Underhill. Discover the significance of diversity and eldership as we explore the transformative power of embracing our interconnectedness rather than perpetuating division.

We explore how diversity enriches our lives, fosters empathy, and creates a vibrant tapestry of interconnectedness. Moreover, we delve into the importance of eldership, recognizing the wisdom and guidance that older individuals bring to our lives. Through heartfelt discussions and personal anecdotes, we reflect on the notion that we all need each other, dismantling the barriers that hinder true connection.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONVERSATION

Meet Our Hosts Meet Our Hosts

BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 3 BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 3

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

11am ET / 5pm CET

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONVERSATION

Meet Our Hosts Meet Our Hosts

BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 2 BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 2

Hosted by Sharon Salzberg & Reggie Hubbard

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Sharon Salzberg, NY Times bestselling author and central figure in the field of meditation, and renowned activist, strategist and organizer, Reggie Hubbard, will host a monthly webinar for us to share, learn and better understand our relationship with elders.

Sharon's Bio

Reggie's Bio

BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 1 BRINGING IT HOME – EPISODE 1

Hosted by Sharon Salzberg & Reggie Hubbard

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Sharon's Bio

Reggie's Bio

Mirabai Bush

Mirabai is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and served as Executive Director until 2008. Under her direction, The Center introduced contemplative practices into education, law, business, environment leadership, the military, technology companies, and activism.

She has been teaching workshops and courses on meditation and contemplative practice in life and work for many years. She co-developed the curriculum for Search Inside Yourself for Google, the first program in mindfulness-based emotional intelligence; it has been attended by tens of thousands of Google employees. A founding board member of the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization, she directed the Seva Guatemala Project, supporting sustainable agriculture and integrated community development.

She is the author, with Ram Dass, of Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying and Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service. She is co-author with Daniel Barbezat of Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning and editor of Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live.

She is Chairperson of Love Serve Remember Foundation and has been a board member of Lions Roar, Omega Institute, Seva Foundation, Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, Military Fitness Institute, and the Dalai Lama Fellows. She is an advisor to Mindful.

Her spiritual studies include meditation in Bodh Gaya, India, with Shri S.N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra; bhakti yoga with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; and studies with Tibetan lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kyabje Gehlek Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others. She studied aikido with Kanai Sensei and has practiced Iyengar and Sivananda yoga.

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: RECIPES FOR WELLBEING COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: RECIPES FOR WELLBEING

wellbeing-recipes-for-wellbeing-spotlight

Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Recipes for Wellbeing was set up as a not-for-profit association with the intention of shifting the culture of changemaking from one that leads to burnout to one that includes a focus on wholebeing.

207-theory-of-change-for-wellbeing_square-550x550

Can you share the intention behind creating Recipes for Wellbeing and what communities the Recipes for Wellbeing serve?

Recipes for Wellbeing first emerged in 2016 as a spontaneous collaboration between changemakers interested in exploring practices to cultivate their wellbeing. Two years later, three of these changemakers – Alessia Cervone, Greta Rossi, and Tariq Al-Olaimy – decided to set up a not-for-profit association with the intention of shifting the culture of changemaking from one that leads to burnout to one that includes a focus on wholebeing and enables changemakers and their teams to thrive and to create positive change in the world. The communities we serve are changemaker communities.

Changemakers are those acting for a purpose that serves other people and the planet. They often sacrifice their wellbeing to change the world. Changemakers are driven by an intrinsic motivation to improve the lives of others and to be stewards of our planet. They choose purpose over pay-checks – The Possibilists 2021 Report.

We believe that their changemaking work should no longer come at the expense of their wellbeing. If you wonder whether this is an issue at all, we invite you to check out the results of The Possibilists in-depth study on changemakers, which highlight that “59% of young changemakers have experienced some degree of burnout since they started work on their initiatives” (The Possibilists 2021 Report, P17). What’s more, “66% of young changemakers cannot compensate themselves at all or can only pay themselves a small token amount” (P13), “59% say they are juggling various responsibilities and are stretched too thin” (P12).

MIND, BODY, SOUL & HEART MIND, BODY, SOUL & HEART

Recipes for Wellbeing focuses on four categories: Mind, Body, Heart, and Soul – can you share the intention behind focusing on these aspects and their role in deepening our understanding of wellbeing?

We know there are both internal and external conditions influencing our wellbeing. For instance, The Possibilists study in 2021 revealed how young changemakers “do not perceive their broader (national) contexts as being particularly supportive of their work and efforts to grow their initiatives” (P19). In particular, systemic inequalities (64%), the state of the economy in their home country (62%), and the financial opportunities in their country (61%) were the issues most cited as negatively affecting their work (P19).

At Recipes for Wellbeing, we focus mainly on the internal conditions to transform them into leverage points to change external conditions. We have identified the following four internal wholebeing dimensions: Mind, Body, Soul & Heart.

Mind: Wholebeing for the mind concerns the well-functioning of our minds so that we can cope with stressful situations and work fruitfully, whilst also realising our creative potential to make a contribution to the world. It is not about an absence of mental disorder or ill-health, but about acknowledging and accepting all thoughts.

Body: Wholebeing for the body is about cultivating a kind relationship with our body and supporting its well-functioning by developing healthy eating habits, engaging in regular physical activity, and avoiding preventable diseases. It is not about an absence of physical disorder or illness, but about embracing and appreciating our body as it is.

Heart: Wholebeing for the heart is about fostering compassionate, balanced, and supportive relationships with ourselves, other people, and the world to cope with the emotional burden of our changemaking work. It is not about an absence of difficult feelings or emotions, but about experiencing and integrating the full range of human emotions.

Soul: Wholebeing for the soul is about discovering and nurturing a strong connection with our unique and deepest identity, as well as with the larger consciousness that animates the cosmos and everything in it. For some, wholebeing for the soul is deeply connected with religious affiliation, whereas for others it is about surrendering to the flow of the universe.

However, we do not stop there.

In fact, in the past couple of years, we started to look at the intersection between wellbeing and specific systems and topics, ranging from community wellbeing to digital wellbeing and gender & wellbeing.

INDIVIDUAL, COMMUNITY & NATUREINDIVIDUAL, COMMUNITY & NATURE

Finally, it is important to stress that we do not focus on individual wellbeing alone (like many other wellbeing initiatives do), but we look at the intersection of three interconnected and interdependent ecologies:

Individual: Wholebeing comes from a deepening centre, a clarity about who we are, what we need, and what is required for us to survive and thrive in our environment. As individuals we only exist in community, and we are also Nature.
Community: Wholebeing comes from expanding our circle of compassion to accept and embrace that we are not isolated from others and that when our community thrives, we can thrive too. Our human communities only exist in community with the more than human world.
Nature: Wholebeing comes from re-discovering and re-kindling a more harmonious relationship with the human world, and a reconnection back to the Earth community of which human communities are an intrinsic part of.

Can you share more about your recently launched recipes?

One of the main wellbeing offers we have for changemakers is our Online Wellbeing Commons – a freely accessible library with over 210 “wellbeing recipes”. These are activities for individuals and teams to cultivate wellbeing across the various dimensions, systems, and ecologies. This library has benefitted from numerous donations from wellbeing experts and practitioners all over the world, and in the past few weeks, we have added over 40 new recipes (marked by the “new” badge next to them).

Among the new recipes, you can find a variety of wellbeing practices, from activities related to burnout such as “4 tips to avoid WFH burnout” to tips for financial wellbeing with “Healthy money habits”; from ways to support LGBTQIA2S+ folks with “LGBTQIA2S+ allies in the workplace” to tips for the perfectionists amongst us with “Coping with unhealthy perfectionism”; and from creative activities to process emotions such as “Catharsis through clay” to practices to be more mindful parents such as “The parenting plate”. Not to mention our newest category, already featuring seven activities for community wellbeing.

If you would like to donate a wellbeing recipe, please reach out to the team at Recipes for Wellbeing at info@recipesforwellbeing.org.

Ecosystem Network Members Ecosystem Network Members

The Ecosystem Network is a global network of organizations that are leaders in the social entrepreneurship or social change field brought together to:

Share knowledge and insights;
Create a space for discussion around learnings and best practices;
Support the creation of a community of practitioners in the field;
Create a space for organizations to share knowledge and have discussions with peers in the field across the world; and
Affect the social entrepreneurship and social change ecosystem on a larger scale by creating a space of trust for the community to discuss how the topics of wellbeing and social change can be incorporated into the ecosystem overall.

ADAM MOLYNEUX-BERRY

AMEL MURPHY

ANA JANOŠEV

ANTHONY WILLIAMS

BILAL GHALIB

BRUNO VERCKEN

CHARNAE SANDERS

CHRISTINA PURRER

DITRI ZANDSTRA

GABY ARENAS DE MENESES

GARY SHEARER

Alicia Framis’ work for the Wellbeing Summit for Social Change is a re-imagining of a paraglider’s clothing and apparatus for a filmed flight by Horacio Llorens, an aerial legend, five-time World Champion and Infinity Tumbling Guinness World Record holder.

GRETA ROSSI

JOANA BREIDENBACH

JONAS DINGER

KYLA CARLSEN

LUIS MANUEL PINTO

MARTIN KIRCHNER

Michelle is currently the global VP of Purpose and Communities at Betterfly and a member of The Ecosystem Network at The Wellbeing Project.

MICHELLE AREVALO-CARPENTER

VANESSA STEVENS

Salzburg Global Seminar

Salzburg,
Austria.

Salzburg Global Seminar is an independent non-profit organization founded in 1947 with a mission to challenge current and future leaders to shape a better world.

Together with our world-spanning network of 40,000 Fellows, we have been at the forefront of global movements for change for 75 years, with significant impact on individuals, institutions, and systems.

Whether at our home of Schloss Leopoldskron, online, or in locations around the world, our programs inclusive, interdisciplinary, international and intergenerational, and are designed to provide a global lab for innovation and transformation.

We convene cohorts of passionate changemakers across diverse fields and backgrounds. We develop and curate networks that support collaboration, share innovations with new audiences, and expand our impact by working with partners around the globe.

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