Our Values and Mission

Our mission is to help people flourish and live lives full of joy, fulfilment, achievement, adventure and great relationships

Our values and guiding principles

• Flourishing affirms the uniqueness and dignity of every person. Flourishing cultures encourage diversity, equality and the inclusion of all.
• Greater flourishing is possible for everyone. By developing new skills, new perspectives and new attitudes, we become our true selves and live lives of greater emotional richness.
• When organisations invest in helping people flourish more, and in creating greater cultures of flourishing, long term performance improves.
• The flourishing life requires us to work at our relationships, our choices, our strategies for getting what we want from life, the narratives we tell ourselves, our emotions, the way we think about ourselves and life, and the way we do community.
• Believable optimism is essential to the flourishing life. Neither cynicism nor over-optimism helps human flourishing.
• It is essential to the flourishing life that we find ways of staying grounded each day in goodness, beauty (in its broadest sense) and wisdom. These give us the virtues, resilience and energy to face the difficulties and disasters of life.

Flourishing

We have mentioned flourishing many times on this site. Below is our definition of flourishing. There are a few important points to note as you read this. Flourishing is more than happiness. We don’t believe we can be happy all the time – life is too complex and varied. Too much of what determines happiness is out of our control. However, we can flourish all the time. And if we do flourish, we are more likely to be happier more of the time. Flourishing is about focusing on what is in our control and not out of it – things like our perspective, our choices and responses, our skills and our character. When we focus on these areas of life, we begin to shape circumstances more and create a better life for ourselves, even though we may not be able to change many of the circumstances we face or the genes we have been given.

Flourishing is about continuing to engage with and experience life’s joys, triumphs, beauty and adventure as fully as possible, despite all the disappointments, disasters and difficulties that go with life. Flourishing is about working out our beliefs and spirituality through living a life of authentic and generous relationships: with ourselves; with others; with our environment; and, for those who see life through the perspective of faith, with the God of love, goodness and beauty. Flourishing is about purposeful and well chosen work, constant enquiry, curiosity and learning – it is about being expansive in our approach to life. Flourishing is about never losing a sense of wonder. It is about developing a life that is founded on a robust, generous and vibrant identity and the lifelong pursuit of becoming our true selves.

If you take away nothing else from reading our definition, we hope it provides you with a sense that whatever you are experiencing in life at the moment, there is hope for something even deeper, more rich and more fulfilling.