My story…

To be very honest, I am as surprised to find myself here as anyone. However, if you are interested in the story behind our space, I would love to share it with you.

First and foremost, I am a teacher. Although I am no longer working in school classrooms, I am fuelled by a passion to educate. This passion has very organically led me to teaching just one subject area, Positive Psychology - the science of optimal human functioning.

This change in focus came gradually, however, its influence changed my life and my understanding of education and the human experience exponentially.

Within the first ten years of my teaching career, I witnessed an alarming shift in education. I noticed it slowly, however, when I drew my attention towards it I couldn’t help seeing it everywhere. Students and parents were becoming more anxious and withdrawn and teachers and leaders were repeatedly overwhelmed by the consuming demands of their roles. When I looked around, I saw fractures emerging from immense pressure on every part of the system. Teachers and administrators was grinding, passionately doing their best out of a deep care for their work, yet, so many were operating under unwavering pressure. What stood out to me most was that there was no one that seemed to be benefiting. The system was somehow shifting, yet at every layer people were experiencing fatigue, burnout and overwhelm. There was a real problem.

The part I love most about teaching is when I have empowered someone to be brave in their learning - when a student is willing to take a risk because they see themselves as more capable than they previously had. Learning is all about taking risks; growth cannot happen without stepping into our stretch-zone. Risk-taking only occurs in relationships built on trust, and trust does not develop without authentic connection.

Realising this and recognising the growing need for education professionals to provide more than just an education to our students, I decided to study psychology. Through this challenging climate, I wanted to empower students who were disconnecting. I wanted to do it in a way that understood the bigger picture, that could somehow help to be a part of a solution to the larger problem.

Whilst on maternity leave with my first child I began studying a Bachelor of Psychology, with full intention of taking it through to an honors and clinical masters program to understand all I could about the challenges the education system was facing. I wanted to gain a more wholistic understanding of what was causing these changes so I could work with my students and their families in more meaningful ways.

I found transitioning to motherhood with my first daughter to be as easy as you could hope for. However, I could not believe how challenging it was with two under two. At that time in our life, our little family was also preparing to move half-way around the world to Canada to enable my husband to complete a fellowship in Toronto. Without going into unnecessary details, life felt very overwhelming, and I completely burned out. With 8 weeks before our move, I sought help from a beautiful psychologist. With back-to-back weekly sessions, she changed everything. Not only did she provide me the therapy and support needed to move into a healthier state of being, she introduced me to Positive Psychology.

It was in this time that I had a lightbulb moment - to support people in becoming their best, I didn’t need to focus on all of the things going wrong. I didn’t need a clinical lens, I didn’t need to understand the pathology, instead, my time would be better spent studying how to prevent further ill-being by building wellbeing. And even better, there was already a dedicated field of psychological study focused on just this.

Studying Positive Psychology became therapy for me. It taught me about human functioning in ways I never understood. It made me feel empowered and hopeful and gave me strategies to get through the challenges that I had previously become overwhelmed by. It taught me how much power we could have over our lives and how much we could control with our choices. It also gave me the peace and permission to let go of the things that I knew were beyond me.

The more I engaged in the field of Positive Psychology and the more I learnt about the stories of others, I realised that, it wasn’t just the education system that was struggling, the problem was far more pervasive than that. Parents, employers, employees, adolescents, retirees, men, women, families - the list goes on.

I couldn’t believe the immense power that the field possessed and what research had uncovered when it came to transforming a life of surviving into thriving. I found myself constantly flabbergasted wondering, how do more people not know this?! Why is this not common knowledge?!?! This was undoubtedly the missing piece I had been yearning for. Not only in education, but life in general.

Over the next few years, I completed several courses in Positive Psychology. I am certified in delivering Positive Education (where Positive Psychology meets best-practice teaching) to students, parents and educators and licensing and training teachers in receiving their own certification to do the same. I am a certified Applied Positive Psychology Coach which enables me to work with individuals and support them in building their wellbeing in both their professional and personal lives through private, client-centred sessions. And currently, I am completing a Masters in Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne helping me develop the skills to work with organisational change, giving me the capacity to design, deliver, track and assess individualised wellbeing programs in any context.

I have both a bachelor and a master degree in fields of education and hold current teaching registration. I have worked as a classroom teacher, enhancement teacher and assistant principal and have dedicated the last several years of my professional life to the study of Positive Psychology and Positive Education. But most importantly, I passionately believe that the knowledge from this field is transformational. It has the power to change individuals, groups and orgnaisations in profound ways. Personally, it is bringing me to greater wellbeing and I truly believe it can do the same for anyone who is willing to learn and actively engage in its methods.

When I speak about Positive Psychology, I can feel a sense of resistance to it. People are highly in tune to others trying to push an agenda. I understand it. We are in a world where we are constantly bombarded by people selling us ideas and products casually glossing over the complexity of reality, we have to keep our walls up to avoid being manipulated by this messaging. We are wired to be cynical, untrusting and cautious, particularly when things are on our radar as “too good to be true”. We know from experience, that these things usually are.

So, I feel it when I engage with others. There is a sense of, great for you, I am really happy that you have found something that you are so passionate about, but it isn’t the same for me. My issues are bigger than that, my struggles are more, and I don’t have the personality style that lends me to benefits from changes like this. I deeply understand and respect this sentiment. Whilst positive psychology has something for everyone, we are all running our own race and it is important that individuals come to this work out of nothing more than a personal motivation to move forward.

Fundamentally, I believe that the general resistance to this space occurs because people are experiencing “wellbeing fatigue”. New shifts and pressures in our world have broken open stigma around mental health, bringing it to the forefront of decisions in businesses, organisations, families and our relationships with others. However, it is often addressed with a one-size-fits-all, tokenistic, band-aid approach to tick a box that does little to address the systemic changes needed to positively impact mental wellness. An afternoon of yoga, an extra cupcake at morning tea or a covered play-ground duty does little to support people who are feeling overwhelmed, overloaded and on the precipice of burnout. I believe these well-meaning, yet naïve attempts at supporting wellbeing are having a damaging impact, providing surface level solutions and trivialising the extent of the problem. Most critically however, it makes people resentful of “wellbeing initiatives” and discredits the value of legitimately building wellbeing and the incredible work that exists in this space.

There is a saying that I learnt from one of my mentors, “if you drag them to it, you drag them through it”. This is very true for the world of wellbeing. Taking care of our mental health is a lot like our physical health. We know the value of movement, exercise, nutrition and quality sleep, yet we also have to make the choice to value those things for ourselves. Being forced into a healthy eating/exercise/sleep regime by external pressures will do little to creating long-term lifestyle changes. The same goes for our mental health. Just like with exercise and nutrition, different approaches work for different people at different times. It can take years to find practices that “fit” and are intrinsically motivating enough to turn into habits. We don’t need a prescriptive program or a recipe, we need a menu of offerings, a toolbox of strategies that we can draw from depending on what we need at different times. And just like exercise, I can speak to you about wellbeing science for days, you can read all of the books, do all of the courses and pour huge resources into this space. However, if it does not become an active practice, you will not see the benefits. Knowing about the benefits of exercise and watching other people work out in a gym does not make you fitter and stronger, and the same goes for building wellbeing. To get the results, you have to do the work.

So, I am not here to have you be a part of something that you are not interested in. But I am here if needed. 

In a million years I never expected to be creating this business, engaging in this work or writing my story and putting it out in this format.

This all stems from my deep love of people and my desire to be a part of the solution. I have always been incredibly emotional and highly empathetic. I used to be embarrassed and ashamed of my tendency to over-feel everything; now, I know it is my greatest strength.

This work was born from a love of schools. I love the teachers and leaders that I have worked with and struggled alongside and I love the little people that bravely show up to these spaces every day. I love parents who are embracing their imperfections and doing their best for their kids in authentic ways and I have deep love and support for the parents who feel like they are failing, trying to hold themselves to the impossible standards that this world is placing on them. I hope that one day, they can be empowered to see beyond the lens of judgement, comparison, pressure and criticism that we are all plagued by, and that the science of wellbeing can provide them with the permission to ease the tension and celebrate all that they are, rather than what they believe they should be.

My dream is to one day be able to help support the needs of any individual, group or organisation who comes to me, no matter what age or stage of life. I believe that through this work, we truly can change our own worlds. And who knows, maybe we can start to make some headway with the big picture stuff too.

I have a family and two little people who deserve to be my priority, so my work is strictly part-time. One day, that won’t always be the case. If you feel that this space has something to offer you, I would love to bring the power of Positive Psychology to your world. If you are a parent or an educator who is passionate about being a part of the change we yearn to see for children and students, get in touch. The Positive Education Certification (PEC) program truly is the critical missing piece in education and parenting today. I am so honoured to be able to bring it to you.

If you got to the end of this (thanks mum), I thank you for gifting me your precious time. I hope that it has been valuable and helped you to think about your mental wellbeing in a new light. Never hesitate to reach out, I would love to support you, wherever you are, to help bring greater wellbeing into your life.

Katie x