"Live Better" Psychoeducation Series

Link to classes: www.contextualscience.org

The intention of the “Live Better Series” is to provide life perspectives and life enhancement skills to encourage and support people in living vital and meaningful lives.

The “Live Better Series” examines and explores what Dr. Salvatore R. Maddi found to be three essential  life attitudes in developing stress hardiness-resiliency:

1. Commitment Attitude: strive to be engaged rather than isolated
2. Control Attitude: be engaged in influencing outcomes, rather than lapse into passivity and powerlessness
3. Challenge Attitude: view stressful situations as opportunities to learn and grow and live one’s values

In cultivating these three resiliency fostering attitudes, the
psychoeducation series is based on the core principles of Dr. Steven C. Hayes’ Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:

1. Acceptance of what is
2. Identifying and then choosing and committing to personally meaningful values
3. Taking action on living a life based on one’s identified core values

Complimentary to the core principles of ACT, the series integrates the three essential elements of Dr. Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, a therapy based on the fundamental human desire to live a meaningful life:

1. Creative Values: identifying and manifesting one’s talents and gifts to contribute to life
2. Experiential Values: actively engaging with those elements of life that inspire and nurture one’s spirit
3. Attitudinal Values: adopt a self-transcendent attitude: responding with grace, courage, and wisdom in the face of inescapable suffering

Tom Lavin MFT, LCADC, ACATA, the recipient of the 2014 IMPACT AWARD of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, is the primary instructor.

Co-presenters for the series include Drs. Steven C. Hayes, Kelly Wilson, Victoria Follette, and Nicole Pavlatos.

Worksheets that accompany each class are available here.