September Community Update!
Hello Community!
I hope you all are well. The trees are just starting to turn here. I’m glad to be entering the autumn season.
The most important recent post is Remembering Tazzie. Please review when you can.
Two quick updates on my end.
New Member Dashboard - the new and improved member dashboard should be launching in the next couple of weeks. Our goal is to make it so that you can toggle back and forth between the old and the new. The key innovation is the growth feed, which will be the center part of the dashboard. This will bring you a feed of items that include relevant forum posts, growth path steps, site announcements and more. The idea is to organize all of the relevant information into a central feed so there is less having to go around the site to discover things that might be helpful. We will be rolling out a new listener dashboard too, but that is several weeks out.
Flourishing - we will also be rolling out a new emphasis on flourishing. Here is an overview from Wikipedia:
Flourishing is "when people experience positive emotions, positive psychological functioning and positive social functioning, most of the time,"[web 1] living "within an optimal range of human functioning."[1] It is a descriptor and measure of positive mental health and overall life well-being,[1][2] and includes multiple components and concepts, such as cultivating strengths, subjective well-being, "goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience."[1] Flourishing is the opposite of both pathology and languishing, which are described as living a life that feels hollow and empty. It is a central concept in positive psychology, developed by Corey Keyes and Barbara Fredrickson.
The field of mental health has largely focused on disorders or mental illness. For example, I might struggle with depression. Depression is a disorder. And people imagine a sort of continuum from mental illness <----------> mental health. However, the absence of mental illness does not mean the presence of mental health. In my example, I might no longer have depression, but that doesn’t mean that I’m mentally healthy. It just means that I do not experience depression. I might not be sad, have sleep difficulties, or struggle with self-esteem, but that does not mean that I’m living a purposeful and meaningful life. It just means I am no longer struggling with depression.
Flourishing, on the other hand, focuses primarily on mental HEALTH, skills, and strengths. It is about becoming more resilient and living a more meaningful and purposeful life. The Academy leadership development program is largely based on a positive psychology or flourishing approach to mental health. A person might have depression and still be flourishing. Eg., I could have depression, but still be experiencing positive emotions, relationships, and living a meaningful life. Another person might not have depression at all and still experience a sense of languishing (the opposite of flourishing). They do not have depression, but they also are not experiencing a positive or meaningful life.
Our hope and goal is to add a flourishing measure to our tests so we can explore this more. I’d also like to add a number of flourishing growth paths and trainings so that listeners can help members take a more positive psychology approach to life. Stay tuned for more details!
One last reminder - we are shipping a new version of the app just about every week. The newest version cleans up the html tool for posting in the forums. Please update when you can!
Heather
It’s the end of the quarter, and it’s been a productive one!
Each quarter we like to collect community thoughts on ways we can improve 7 Cups. If you have thoughts to share, please take some time to provide constructive feedback and suggestions through our Q4 survey form. We appreciate hearing from you and learning from your experience (Note: we may not be able to action every item we receive but we will do our absolute best! The more clear and solution-oriented feedback you can give us, the better the chances are of your ideas being implemented).
We also kicked off our Leadership Spotlight with the announcement of our first leader: CheeryMango! Please hop into this post to give them a shoutout. The goal of this recognition initiative is to highlight every high level leader so we encourage you to nominate someone you think is doing great work! Here’s the form!
Laiba
In academy news, we made some major structural changes and updates to the content development and marketing program to make it more flexible and easier to complete. Trainees now can choose the duration of their program and are provided more choices when it comes to practical training. You can find the update here. Additionally, we made some updates to GLDD coursework, we removed the appreciation corner, added discussion responses and reduced the weekly required hours. We hope that these changes facilitate the trainees.
On the leadership front, we have on boarded a new academy ambassador @ouicherie. We are excited to see their contributions to CDM and the academy. In academy sub-community news, we started a weekly academy fun initiative where we highlight fun posts from all academy sub-coms and give trainees a chance to relax and have been actively recruiting leaders to provide added support in academy sub-coms.
Obs
From the Group Support front, we launched Group Support Quizzes initiative to achieve better understanding and alignment as a community about group support chat rooms, rules, participation, tips and many other things. We are working on the draft of different quizzes and keep you all posted on its progress and roll out. In another initiative, we started recognizing our top participants in the chatrooms for both member and listener side on a weekly basis. On the Listener Chatroom front, we introduced the Listener Events Team.
On the Verified Listener front, we rolled out a new update to allow mentors to verify their mentees while project leaders can verify their team members. Also, set the processing time to 72 hours to ensure swift processing of all requests to become Verified Listeners through any means. We are hoping that through these changes we will be able to expedite the verification process to better serve our community. Also, onboarded a new mentor leader with the focus on the discussion track of the program.
SoulfullyAButterfly
The content world has been busy in updating pages and creating new content articles. These articles have been submitted by our CDM trainees as well as the Content Volunteer Team, in addition to some writers who helped by working on specific therapy-focused pages. We will be launching specific topic-based pages with new content and presentation very soon!
Starting early October, we are now ready to onboard our next group of writers and editorial assistants in an effort to further expand our Content Volunteer Team - if you would like to join in, please apply here!
Some more upcoming content plans include a growth path focus: new expert growth paths as well as collaboration opportunities to get to work on building these growth paths! To know more about how growth paths are built and what they are all about, watch this video!
Our Lightship Team on social media is working on being more active and under the leadership of @DreamTouch and @ouiCherie we have a growing team of 13 Lightshippers and 3 Lightship Assistants helping us achieve more growth by outreach and positive posts on social media to drive mental health awareness and support.
Our Translation Projects are another opportunity for those who are interested in translating both the 7 Cups website and/or the app: view this post to help with the most active language groups we are looking to cover or apply for a language you are interested in!
EvelyneRose
The Safety Awareness Team has been promoting safety throughout the community. They are working on rolling out safety quizzes and discussions every week. We have just rolled out our 14th Safety Quiz! Looking to joIn? Contact @Power with questions.
The Anonymous Evaluations Team has been working on improving quality and has received thankful msgs from those they’ve helped. Looking to join? Contact @RebekahRoyal or @MidnightRaven999.
The Listener Coaching and Care Teams have been growing! They’ve welcomed several new members and a new co-lead @Chevy81 for LCT! Please contact them or @Mango3 if you want to join :)
We also welcomed two new Ambassadors @RebekahRoyal and @Mango3 to our Quality track!
@GlenM looking forward to another quarter and very excited about the further flourishing work! It is a great time to start getting to explore the concept and perhaps people can use this to make more progress this year and further goals for the next one. In addition, this focus will help us achieve more on PERMA (Positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement) which is awesome.
@SoulfullyAButterfly Yes! PERMA FTW!
@GlenM
Thank you everyone for the amazing updates and keeping us all informed! 😊❤️👍 I feel like this is a really nice touch!
Glen, I enjoyed your additions to this post. 😊❤️ Reminds me of a concept called Frazzle versus Flow and how to get from Frazzle to the moments of Flow.
Thanks for rolling out new ways to appreciate hard working listeners via the forum areas. As for me, this fits right into my wheelhouse. I believe in the power of positive affirmations. Catch us being good. Make a big deal about it, hopefully once it's acknowledged, the positive types of behavior will continue. This is my jam! I see this as something that I do here on this site and for me, maybe that's where I fit into this big place called 7 cups! We all have value, we all have a role to play.
Whomever thought of listeners being able to nominate their teammates for badges was a complete and utter genius in my opinion. No matter how small I may be here on this site, I still have the power to provide powerful and positive affirmations to my teammates and I have the power to call it as I see it and reward the behavior! ❤️
Lastly, thank you to the Community Mods who are highly visible in the LSR now! I must say, these are the people that are bringing the heat and bringing the noise! These are some serious powerhouses here on 7 cups and these are the folks that are keeping the rooms safe, actively engaging with all of us, answering questions, getting the job done. In my opinion, this is the true definition of "mentoring" and the mentoring process is happening in the LSR by the Community Mods and on the daily. Thank you to whomever made the decision to bring us the best and brightest that 7 cups has to offer. Trust, this has not gone unrecognized. I am truly grateful. *hugs* ❤️ to all and stay great my friends! 😊
@sparkygizmo Thank you for recognizing others and lifting them up! Hats off! We need more and more encouragement to get where we are going. That is the fuel. Thanks for bringing the light and the heat!
@GlenM
😊❤️😊
@GlenM
I strongly agree with the use of Flourishing as true north in the compass to guide us.
I congratulate you for giving this new orientation to 7 Cups.
This is most welcome. I wish we, 7 Cups volunteers, were all trained to encourage Members to put a lot of thinking and energy into this.
I highly value this line of thought, from Aristotle (the ultimate good, "εὐδαιμονία") to Positive Psychology, that doesn't see just us as "sick people" to be "cured", but people with great potential to be realized.
Everything can be seen both in negative terms (negative not as derogative, but in contrast with some ideal or norm) or positive terms (what we have of good, and how we can improve and grow from that). Negative definitions focus on what we lack, while positive ones focus on what we have of good, that we can expand.
Many times I felt that the DSM5 categorization doesn't help to get better, but defines us in ways that might lead to "victim mentality". "I am a such and such", etc. And keep us chained to what is wrong with us.
But we are much, much, much more than that. Many Members are obsessed with their "DSM5 condition" and fail to explore their huge potential as human beings.
One way to heal is to expand this positive potential, make it bigger and bigger, so our "sick" part becomes a smaller proportion of ourselves. Our bigger healthy self, good in itself, will also provide us with the energy to deal with our issues.
I always try to convey this idea, particularly to long-term 1-2-1 chat members, but also in the Forums.
While DSM5 concepts must be kept as a reference for adequate techniques and therapy in each specific case, growing our healthy selves to flourish as much as possible in all the fields we choose, must share the first priority in mental health, I think.
For all these reasons, I highly welcome this new focus, I congratulate you for your wisdom and determination to make such a bold move, and I thank you for that, in the name of all the Members that will benefit from such a wise approach.
Once more, thank you so much Glen !
Marcelo
@WelcomeToChat Marcelo, I always enjoy your comments and posts :). I like this point " Many Members are obsessed with their "DSM5 condition" and fail to explore their huge potential as human beings." I agree. We have a lot of potential that we can not quite see. 7 Cups strives to be a place where we see the potential in others so that they can also see it as well. We are getting there day by day and step by step. Thank you for helping us stay on track!
@GlenM
Thank you Glenn for your kind words!
Changing the prevalent paradigm is a great challenge!
It’s not just the mental health professions.
It’s in our nature (maybe because of ancient adaptive advantages), to focus on fixing problems, and lose sight of developing potentialities from all the positive things we have.
I am glad that 7 Cups has taken the challenge to promote this new healthy way of thinking, for the benefit of all its Members, their wellbeing, and the possibility of developing and enjoying their full potential as human beings.
@GlenM
Thank you for the post. Always interesting to read this monthly post to sync our steps.
Reading previous comments warm my heart. People rolling out hands to pull each other's up 💜
The "Flourishing" idea sounds a lot like "ikigai" to me. And looks like a step forward for each individual, from awareness to coping to resolving to flourishing. Did I get it correctly?
Or maybe flourishing should be a part of every step?
@GlenM
Yay everyone!!! Good work and thank you for all you do!!! <3
