David Arnold

David Arnold

Senior Change Management Business Partner

City of Casey

Melbourne, Australia

Alumni: Byron Bay, Australia

In our 11069NAT Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing we always talk about the ripple effect; starting with self and creating a ripple out there in the world - whatever that may mean for each person.

In this interview, one of our Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing graduates shares how applying his learnings has helped him reach significantly more interest and engagement from his colleagues and community and what life-changing influence it had on the relationship to his wife and teenage son!

What drew you to complete the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing?

My purpose of ‘supporting people’ saw me intuitively incorporating many of the topics of positive psychology and wellbeing into my work and learning and development programs. My role is to make the whole organisation and its people more change capable. To me, that means our people need to be resilient, adept at navigating change, and confident in understanding their emotions as they do. While I have run programs such as the ‘Resilience Project @ Casey’ and created my own ‘Thriving Through Change’ (change resilience program), most of my efforts were intuitive with what I felt was needed. As it happens what I was doing intuitively, turned out to be positive psychology!

Personally, as a father of a year nine / teenaged son who is navigating adolescence, I saw this course as a way of supporting him, my wife and myself as our family coped with various challenges. These had included multiple visits to hospital emergency rooms, and we had seen our own wellbeing suffer. In completing the Diploma, I hoped to be better able to support my family and my own wellbeing and apply some of my learnings in supporting my son with all the changes he was experiencing. In this my expectations were surpassed, as I even had the opportunity to involve him in the learning as my study buddy on the parenting elective module.

How was your experience of the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing?

Was the course what I expected? YES – and so much more!

From the first morning, I realised that these were the learning subjects that I wanted to learn AND needed to be involved in to further develop my career and personal purpose of ‘supporting people’. The more subjects we tackled during the immersion course, the more I became immersed myself. ‘Ah-ha’ moments occurred every day, during every module. There are probably too many to remember. Yet learning all the scientific research and theories behind the course validated my understanding.

There were moments that saw us all being vulnerable and moments that saw us open up in unexpected ways and grow as people over the six days. As we explored each topic, more fireworks went off in my mind as I realised everything I was doing and the approach I thought we all should be taking with our lives was right there in this course.

During the main training days, I discovered things about my family I had struggled to understand before (e.g., my mother’s explanatory style – Seligman), gained clarity on things that, until then, had remained blurred, and gained a solid understanding of how I can approach my emotions (and feel more positive more often – Fredrickson).

The final ‘ah-ha’ moment was when we organised a meal at the end of the course. Sitting there, in that restaurant, with those people laughing and smiling, I realised that these were the people who felt inspired by the science of happiness they had learnt and were excited to build it into their own lives. These were the people I needed to hang out with more.

How are you spreading your positive ripples, and how has the Diploma of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing helped you achieve this?

The ripples began before I even left the classroom!

Such was the profound sense of change, even while travelling back from the immersion course I was filled with a sense of positivity that I knew would strengthen my relationships with my wife and son, in ways we have yet to become aware of.

The learnings, the activities, and yes, the emotions, all built to me knowing that the next six months as I undertook all the assignments would be personally meaningful.

They would also be professionally significant.

The appetite for my change management learning and development programs from the people across my organisation saw instant and expediential growth as I started incorporating positive psychology and wellbeing in them. My change leadership training saw a spike in attendees, my ‘Thriving Through Change’ resilience program saw demand that could only be satisfied by running 100 per cent more sessions each month. Colleagues were - literally! - running across the car park in the cold and rain to tell me they had used the emotions monitoring tools I had provided. Others got in touch to say that the new content had made a significant difference to their lives. Some have taken up my positive coaching at times when they really needed the support. It has been hard to keep up with all the interest and appetite.

­­It has also inspired me to take further courses such as ‘Emotional Agility for Workplace Wellbeing’ (Susan David PhD) and I am planning to undertake the ‘Work on Wellbeing Practitioner’ course (Langley Group) in 2024. From there, I’ll be looking to enact a career shift into the world of positive psychology and wellbeing.

I also experienced a significant lift in engagement in my LinkedIn stories. My posts, which up until then had seen a few likes and comments, suddenly saw an increase in engagement that even took me by surprise. One post, after my random act of kindness assignment for the Diploma’s meaning module, went global. Having anonymously paid for some coffees in my local café, I wrote a story about my Mayah, my barista, who had helped out that morning and invited my network to pay it forward to her by assisting with her studies. This resonated as the post ricocheted around the world, attracting over 26,000 impressions and many offers of engagement with Mayah, and even people such as Dr Paul Wood sending her his book to further her studies. That one assignment continues to create ripples even now.

Personally, the ripples have been significant. My relationships with my wife and son are stronger and in applying my learnings to the challenges he was facing through the parenting module, we have seen a total turnaround from the early part of the year. We have gone from hospital emergency rooms to enjoying positive wellbeing even during difficult teenage challenges. My son is now journalling every day helping to release his inner thoughts, is eating far more healthily, has lost a lot of excess weight and is much more emotionally stable.

I describe my experience as being professionally significant and personally meaningful.

I have no doubt that in years to come I will look back on this training as a pivotal moment in my personal development and one which changed the direction of my professional life.