We are stronger together, so let’s help each other be stronger. Throughout the last couple of years, the phrase ‘stronger together’ has come up time and time again. It is hard to disagree with. When we work together for the greater good, good things will happen. So how can we help each other to be stronger? And how can we help people around us to understand and use their character strengths when they face adversity, or just to create more fulfilling lives?

Last week I had one of those days. You know the ones when everything seems to go wrong. One thing after another. In the big scheme of things they were just little things - but all the little things combined did enough dipping from my bucket to leave it completely empty. I sometimes think that as women we can spread ourselves a little thin - trying to juggle multiple roles and tasks. It’s little wonder our buckets sometime empty.

But I want to share with you how one little random act of kindness filled my bucket from empty to overflowing in an instant.

“Have you ever read something that’s had a lasting impact on you…and somehow changed you for the better? Many years ago I read an interview about Sarah Burke (pictured) the Canadian freestyle skier who tragically died after an accident in training in 2012. In the interview it described a tradition Sarah had started amongst her friends where at the end of a night out, she would ask the bartender to change a few $20 notes into quarters and dimes...then she would walk home tossing the change along her path saying "think of how happy it will make people to find this in the morning".

In 2015, I was lucky enough to see Susan’s final project at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In this project, Susan had asked 100 strangers between the ages of 7 and 88 a simple question…"Imagine you had the opportunity to time travel and meet yourself at eighty, to sit down and have a cup of tea with your eighty-year old self...You muster the courage and ask her for advice...What does she tell you?"

Mamie Phillips Clark and her husband Kenneth Clarke were the first African Americans to achieve doctorate degrees in psychology. Together, they contributed to the civil rights movement through their psychological research into how young black children viewed themselves. Their famous black doll experiments conducted in the 1940s were brought up as evidence in court cases against segregation in schools.

According to Dr Cynthia Pury, courage is about taking a worthwhile risk. Dr Pury has devoted her career to understanding courage. A clinical psychologist as well as an academic, her ideas about courage are useful in thinking about how we can overcome fears and live a more courageous life.

Most of us believe in being kind to others.  Our parents, grandparents, teachers and family have reinforced this belief as we have grown up…but most people haven’t grown up with the idea that kindness can extend to ourselves. Researcher, Kristen Neff has spearheaded the study and practice of self-compassion. Experiments in self-compassion have highlighted the importance and psychological benefits of being kind to ourselves.  This is especially true when we fail at something. 

Professor Ellen Langer is indeed one of the grandmothers of positive psychology. In her long career, she was curious about different aspects of wellbeing long before positive psychology was a thing. Her experiments in the 1970s and 80s highlighted looked at the process of ageing from a different perspective.

Barbara Fredrickson, why we love her...

We all know that positive feelings like happiness, love and joy are good for us in the moment, but who knew how important they are in the long term until Barbara Fredrickson researched this understudied area?

Sonja Lyubomirsky has the wisdom to realise that science can be communicated to create positive change for a large number of people. In her bestseller The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want she writes, “Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us.”