Marie McLeod is Founder of ThriveAbility and How to Thrive program, Creator of the BEACON framework™️, Mental health specialist, Keynote Speaker, Coach, and positive psychotherapist as seen in the "How to Thrive" film. Marie has been a social worker in child protection, juvenile justice, disability services, and neighbourhood renewal. Megan and Marie had not met prior to recording the podcast, despite realising a lot of their work history has some cross over.
In the ‘How to Thrive' film, Marie takes a group of volunteers who are experiencing struggle through a program using interventions grounded in positive psychology, neuroscience, and wellbeing science. In this episode, Marie shares what it was like to support the group, how the Melbourne lockdowns hit at the same time as the program, and the importance of creating safety and connection between the participants. Marie shares some of the outcomes the participants experienced, all exceeding the expectations of those working on the film.
Megan and Marie discuss some of the gaps of the PERMA wellbeing framework and how Marie worked to create the BEACON framework for thriving. Marie shares her personal journey of finding positive psychology at a time when she was experiencing struggle herself. She explains that she found herself accessing services that were problem focused and not necessarily helpful. Marie explains that positive psychology provided her with a new lens of “what is strong?” rather than “what is wrong?” and has been applying it to her life and work ever since.
Megan highly recommends watching How to Thrive. The film (and extra resources) can be accessed here:
https://www.howtothrivefilm.com/
More on Marie McLeod can be found here:
https://www.mariemcleod.com/
Host: Megan Corcoran, Wagtail Institute, https://wagtailinstitute.com/
Music by Kabbilistic Village https://kabbalisticvillage.com/