How do you cultivate hope?
Welcome to our November Newsletter. Yesterday Voxel Hub was celebrating its second birthday, and it feels like this baby is slowly approaching the stage of early toddlerhood. In the next 12 months, we will be working softly on articulating the heart of our mission. We will simplify access to our content and write more and reach out to new audiences. We will focus on the core of our identity in relation to other, similar initiatives: the one to one relationship of humans with technology. So thank you for all your kind support so far, and stay tuned for this next stage of our journey.
This month our focus is on a hopeful future. As I am supporting a client in their social media COP26 coverage, I listen to fantastic coverage of brilliant ideas, alliances and real commitments from the event. At the same time, I watch updates from the ground, from young and adult voices who call for even more change right now. And I admire this tension as it moves us forward.
I am still working very hard on decolonising my approach to mental health support, coaching and consultancy. I am incredibly excited to see APA’s honest confession about its contribution to racism and commitment to anti-oppressive practice. They are modelling what we know already: we cannot move forward without an honest look at our past mistakes.
I am hopeful that change is here; we are living it. But we must not sit back and watch. And so, I am actively embedding all those learnings into my personal development – as a leader of Voxel Hub and as a fellow human. I am quietly joining the “Drop the Disorder” movement and learning to apply the Power Threat Meaning Framework to my counselling approach.
This November, our content campaign is about algorithms. Much has been said about Facebook recently (their ads, data use but also their Metaverse approach and investment in Virtual Reality). I think it is fitting to use this opportunity to educate our audiences about the algorithmic present we are living. As it happens, the UK provider of counselling outcome measuring software, NHS IAPT, have just announced their plans to include an AI solution in the package soon. Why is this important? Most AI solutions are trained on the large data sets, and those are sadly biased – as the AI is learning from old-fashioned data. So how are we going to apply this tool smoothly in our practice, and what ethical questions do we need to ask to keep up with this innovation? I hope that are few posts will help our readers gain some basic understanding of those concepts.
Change is happening now. We need to be equipped to make informed choices about the technologies we use and our relationship with tech in general. So this month, I am asking you to reflect on what is helping you cultivate a more active, inclusive, critical, but hopeful approach to the future of our kind in this super-connected world?
I wish you a sunny and hopeful November!
My favourite topic this month
This month my recommendations are my personal inspirations of hope:
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
THIS IS WATER! by David Foster Wallace – short movie
Skater Girl (based on the story of our friend Asha Gond, Director of the Rural Changemakers) – by the way, you can support now them here
If you have a recommendation on this topic, please do let me know!
Resources
What are character strengths and how can we cultivate them? Here are some useful links:
VIA Character Strengths together with a free online assessment
How Character Strengths Help Us Through Trying Times
Tips for Using Each Character Strength in a New Way
340 Ways to Use VIA Character Strengths
Foundations of Positive Psychology Specialisation online course
Positive Psychology online course
I hope the above links are helpful.
Thank you for reading our Newsletter. Talk to us online, check out our blog and let us know what else you would like to see here in the upcoming months.
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay connected.
Sylwia
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash
