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To cite this article: Tony Ghaye (2010) In what ways can reflective practices enhance human
flourishing?, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 11:1, 1-7, DOI:
10.1080/14623940903525132
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623940903525132
Reflective Practice
Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2010, 17
EDITORIAL
In what ways can reflective practices enhance human flourishing?
Tony Ghaye*
Reflective Learning UK (RL-UK), Overton Business Centre, Maisemore, Gloucestershire,
GL2 8HR, UK
I wish to raise the question, In what ways can reflective practices enhance human
flourishing? Underpinning this question is my assumption that enhancing human
flourishing is important work. So in what ways is it important? How does it matter?
And what do we actually mean by the term human flourishing? In a very pragmatic
sense would reflective practices that enhance human flourishing help us bounce-back
from adverse events in our lives? Would they help us be more open-minded, have
more creative thoughts, enjoy better relationships with others? Be more resilient?
These, I suggest, are big questions that deserve some serious attention from those who
regard themselves as reflective practitioners, who learn through reflection and who
use various reflective practices for some positive purposes. For those who believe in
practical action for positive purposes, I frame a challenge as a positive question
namely, What would we need to do to (re)cast reflective practices in the role of
enhancing human flourishing? I wonder what kind of uncommon wisdom we would
discover if we embraced a question of this kind? Aristotle (384322 BC) had much to
say about this. Through his writing and teaching, Aristotle explained that the purpose
of life is earthly flourishing, achieved via reason and the acquisition of virtue.
Aristotle suggested that each human being should try to use their abilities to their
fullest potential and should obtain fulfilment through the exercise of their realised
capacities. Arguably if human flourishing involves the intentional use of human
potentialities, then these could include what an individual, a group, team, organisation
and community may regard as their gifts, talents, abilities and virtues in order to
pursue their freely and democratically chosen values and goals. Intentional action
could therefore be considered to be appropriate if it leads to the flourishing of the
person, or people, performing the action.
I am also suggesting that the idea of human flourishing can encompass a wide variety of moral and ethical pursuits, the development of character traits such as being
optimistic, meaningful and productive work, religious pursuits, community strengthening and altruistic activities, love, allegiance to persons and causes, self-efficacy and
so on. Some might regard all of these as relevant to the notion of well-being. Boniwell
(2008) states that:
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current theories of well-being seem to give a one-sided, rather bare picture of well-being.
In fact what they seem to cover quite well is the notion of hedonism striving for
maximisation of pleasure positive effect and minimisation of pain negative effect.
(p. 39)
*Email: tony.ghaye@btinternet.com
ISSN 1462-3943 print/ISSN 1470-1103 online
2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14623940903525132
http://www.informaworld.com
T. Ghaye
Another idea of well-being comes from Aristotle and is called eudaimonic well-being.
This is a broad idea. He thought that true happiness could be attained through leading
a virtuous life and especially doing what is worth doing. He argued that the realisation
of human potential was the ultimate human goal. So two questions arise: (a) in what
ways is reflection a practice worth doing? (b) In what ways do the practices of
reflection contribute to the realisation of human potential?
During 201011 the journal Reflective Practice International & Multidisciplinary Perspectives, will be encouraging its readership to consider submitting
papers that address the question, In what ways can reflective practices enhance
human flourishing? My argument is that if we can use reflective practices to
enhance human flourishing, we may make a significant contribution to reducing
depression, enabling people to do better at work, to stay healthier, to become more
resilient and even to live longer! I have sketched out some possible dimensions of
this question in Figure 1.
Figure 1. In what ways can reflective practices enhance human flourishing?
Figure 1.
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squads, organisations and whole communities. These might be emotions like love,
happiness, joy, contentment and accomplishment. Positive emotions can be about the
past (gratitude), present (savoring), or future (hope). So how do the practices of
reflection build hope, for example? A consideration of the way reflective practices
might enhance positive relationships can be linked with issues about the quality of
interpersonal action, trust, honesty, openness and positive regard. The idea of positive engagement might take reflective practices into the arena of an activity that
results in flow. This a psychological state in which people are fully engaged in an
intrinsically enjoyable and challenging activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). This would
indeed be welcomed, by some, as reflection can be associated with being a rather
burdensome, time-consuming and a traumatic experience. Positive engagement also
opens up possibilities for reflective practices to explore work-life balance issues and,
of course, ones engagement with the workplace. With regard to meaning and
purpose in life and work, there is now a considerable and pursuasive amount of
research (Robertsoncooper, 2008) that emphasises how significant this is, especially
in terms of psychological well-being. I suggest there is much work to be done by
those in the field of learning through reflection with regard to the way reflective
practices may enhance a sense of individual and collective meaning and purpose in
working life.
Developing conversations of positive regard
A practical way to begin to address the central question, In what ways can reflective
practices enhance human flourishing? might be to think about the interface between
reflective conversations and the development of conversations of positive regard. I
have argued elsewhere (Ghaye et al., 2008) that when trying to improve work and
working lives through reflective practices, thinking and conversations can get stuck
with vocabularies of human deficit and in doing so fail to unlock the creative potential
of those involved. Deficit phrased questions lead to deficit-based conversations. These
in turn lead to deficit-based actions. A particular kind of reflective practice called
Participatory and Appreciative Action and Reflection (PAAR), being developed by
colleagues in Reflective Learning Centres and groups in the UK, Italy, Uganda,
Nigeria, Sweden and Bulgaria for example, is both a general disposition and a style of
research which requires us to use our appreciative intelligence to focus on the best of
what is currently experienced, seek out the root causes of this, then design and implement actions that amplify and sustain this success. I have shown this interrelationship
in Figure 2. In order to enhance human flourishing, we may have to shift reflective
practices away from those that are concerned with problems, rather more, and
towards practices that are more strengths-based. One practical way to achieve this is
to focus on making conversations of positive regard those which place an emphasis on
active and constructive dialogue, where you (and others) take time to identify good
and successful experiences and events and put what you learn from such conversations
to good use. This is not the frivolous activity that some seem to think it is! Such a
conversation unfurls where these good events that you disclose, are actively and
constructively responded to, by other people. This way of conversing is a real opportunity to build more positive and more productive relationships. Far better I suggest,
than conversations that are either active and destructive (e.g. where what you say is
dismissed) or even worse, passive and destructive (e.g. where what you say is
ignored).
T. Ghaye
Figure 2.
(1) Appreciation: This concerns reflecting not only on what is, but also what
might be. It involves utilising what it is we currently know as a creative springboard, to unleash our imagination in order to envision doing things differently.
Having said this, individuals and communities still have to exercise their
judgement with regard to what is best and for whom. A key question becomes,
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Figure 3.
T. Ghaye
Notes on contributor
Tony Ghaye is director of Reflective Learning-UK. He is an organisational strategist and
social entrepreneur. He currently works on a range of quality of life, workplace engagement,
ethical leadership and high performance teamwork projects in Europe, West and East Africa
all of which use the principles and processes of participatory and appreciative action and
reflection (PAAR). He has written many academic books and research papers on reflective
learning.
References
Boniwell, I. (2008). Positive Psychology in a Nutshell: A Balanced introduction to the Science
of Optimal Functioning (second edition). Personal Well-Being Centre, London.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York:
HarperCollins.
Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the
hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. New York: Crown
Publications.
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Ghaye, T., Melander-Wikman, A., Kisare, M., Chambers, P., Bergmark, U., Kostenius, C., &
Lillyman, S. (2008). Participatory and appreciative action and reflection (PAAR)
democratizing reflective practices. Reflective practice, 9(4), 361397.
Marchi, S., & Ghaye, T. (2010). Appreciative Reflection: How to feel positive and do good
work. New Vista Publications, Gloucester. Forthcoming.
RobertsonCooper. (2008). Well-Being at Work: The new View, The Business Well-Being
Network Annual Report, RobertsonCooper Publications, Manchester.