In this brand guidelines series of blog posts, we introduce the core principles of our philosophy. Today we will look at feelings we aim to inspire through our work, feelings we intend to resist and feeling we wish to cultivate in the way we deliver our services and interact with our stakeholders.
Feelings we inspire:
- Hopeful – in positive psychology in resilience studies optimism plays a crucial role in recovery from bad mental health, as well as in pro-active care for good mental health,
- Joyful – joy is one the VIA Character Strengths, but this gentle, positive feeling can be quite fleeting, especially during harder times. However, we think it is precious and can lift us from very dark places, help the process of letting go of complicated thought processes towards more positive thinking,
- Powerful – empowerment is at the core of our approach to digital wellbeing – we strongly support active participation in digital wellbeing process, so we hope to inspire assertive and informed choices concerning digital technologies,
- Peaceful – peaceful attitude allows for open channels of communication, while strong or extreme feelings and reactions can limit our options – we hope to inspire a growth mindset through openness and peaceful communication.
Feelings we resist:
- Passive – this feeling is dangerous, sad but also political – we do not want to feel disempowered and without the freedom of choice, so we hope to create safe spaces for growth, activity and opportunities,
- Sad – there are many reasons to why we feel depressed, lonely or inferior – all of them are completely normal reactions to the world around us, however at Voxel Hub we hope to create uplifting, safe conversations where people feel connected, equal and worthy,
- Mad – anger is also a sign of many other strong feelings, but when exhibited, it can be disorientating and hard to read, so we hope to create conditions for people to feel adequate and understood,
- Scared – fear takes us back to fight or flight response which can be binary and unhelpful, however by creating accepting, inclusive, welcoming space we hope to create a safe environment for healing and growth.
Feelings we cultivate:
- Kindness – kindness leads to good individual and collective mental health, in person-centred approach empathy is one of the core conditions of growth and productive working relationship,
- Respect – unconditional positive regard is also a core condition of the person-centred approach but also a great way of avoiding falling into our personal biases and working in a distorted version of reality,
- Honesty – congruence is also a core condition in a person-centred approach, so no matter how difficult it is to speak the truth, if it’s spoken for the good of the client and to build a more trusted relationship with us, we will aim to do so,
- Safety – if our clients have to focus on keeping themselves safe, they won’t be able to do the work needed for good digital wellbeing, ensuring a safe, nurturing environment for their and our needs is crucial to our success.
As we were putting together our brand guidelines, we were initially following the industry templates and standards so focussing on keywords, terminology. However, it became difficult to capture the way we wish to operate. We had to go back to the drawing board and start fresh. We asked ourselves the core question borrowed from counselling practice: how do we want to interact with our clients – how do we want them to feel? Instead of specific verbal articulation of our ways, we have decided to look at the feelings we want to feel and inspire, but also the emotions we hope our clients will manage to avoid when working with us. In the end, when we looked at all lists, it became pretty apparent that our grouping resembled the positive and negative feelings listed in the categorization of emotions. We hope to use this list as a reminder to care for our clients and aim for positive experiences but never forget the contextual, individual, balanced experience. In the world of digital wellbeing focussed on predominantly negative discussions, we still think this approach is needed.
Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash
