Certificate in Positive Psychology, USA

Cultivate your potential towards the good. Study positive psychology to enhance your self-leadership.

Fall Session: August 30, 2021—June 6, 2022

Through an in-depth study of positive psychology, including sessions with world-class faculty and uniquely transformative live experiences, you will gain the tools, practices, and research to support an increased capacity for health, strengthened resilience, deeper mindfulness, and greater levels of overall well-being.

Watch this video with WBI founder Megan McDonough to learn who this course was created for and how it could help you.

Get started by learning about the SPIRE methodology, how it's used to enhance well-being, and why it's foundational to the course.

Who This Course is For

This course is for coaches, business leaders, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, lifelong learners, and anyone who want to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.

“CiWPP motivated me to get my ideas shaped into what I wanted to achieve. My final project was a rough version of what RISE became.”

Rebecca Soni

Founder, RISE Elite Athletes

“This course is the most powerful and important training program I have ever been exposed to. I use it every day.”

Michael Silverstein

Private Equity Investor

“Wholebeing Institute allowed me to completely turn around a life focused on what I wasn’t good at to focusing on my positive strengths.”

Kathy Washburn

Founder, Carved by Cancer

The Benefits of the Certificate in Wholebeing Positive Psychology

This course is for coaches, business leaders, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, lifelong learners, and anyone who want to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.

Students apply the whole-person approach personally and professionally in leadership, counseling, coaching, parenting, or teaching, in order to

Bring about lasting change in individuals and organizations
Create healthy personal and professional relationships
Build positive emotions and the resilience to deal with painful ones
Develop constructive self-regard and grounded optimism.

Why Study Positive Psychology

What would success look like for you as a result of this program? Why study positive psychology? Watch as Megan McDonough and lead faculty Dr. Maria Sirois talk about their “why.”

Could the Certificate in Wholebeing Positive Psychology answer your "why"? Get a free SPIRE check-in, more information about the flow of the course, and an opportunity to connect with faculty, to help you decide if the course is the right next step for you.

Course Flow

The program consists of nine modules, and runs from August 30, 2021—June 6, 2022. The experience is delivered through live interactive webinars, virtual group sessions, pre-recorded videos, and two live online immersions.

Students complete Module 1: Introduction to Wholebeing Happiness independently upon registration. The entire student body starts Module 2 together, and stays together as a cohort for the duration of the course.

Attendance at the immersions is required. The first required online immersion is Thursday, December 9–Monday, December 13, 2021, during which students are connected in small groups that study together. The second immersion is Thursday, June 2–Monday, June 6, 2022, in which students will present their final projects. The other monthly webinars are recorded; live attendance is strongly encouraged but not mandatory.

Tuition also includes an optional on-site Wholebeing Weekend in 2022. Please note that there is an additional fee for accommodations.

Click here to learn more about each module.

Continuing Education Credits

Immersion A offers:
❖ 15 ICF CCE units in Core Competencies
❖ 7 ICF CCE units in Resource Development

❖ 26.5 Continuing Education hours are available for Psychologists, Psychoanalysts, Social Workers, Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists, Creative Arts Therapists, Chemical Dependency Counselors, Educators, Nurses, Dentists.

Immersion B offers:
❖ 12.5 ICF CCE units in Core Competencies
❖ 12.25 ICF CCE units in Resource Development

❖ 25.25 Continuing Education hours are available for Psychologists, Psychoanalysts, Social Workers, Counselors/Marriage and Family Therapists, Creative Arts Therapists, Chemical Dependency Counselors, Educators, Nurses, Dentists.

Introducing SPIRE: A Whole-Body Experience

Learn what the SPIRE methodology is and how it’s used in our certificate course.

Team Teaching

You have a teaching team supporting your learning experience, integrating expert advice in an organized and methodical way.

You connect with lead faculty in weekly video lectures, expanded through interviews with guest faculty. You’ll not only see leading experts in the online lessons, but also experience live lectures by renowned positive psychology researchers and practitioners.

Between the optional in-person Wholebeing Weekend, the live webinars, and the recorded lectures and interviews, you’re exposed to many voices and perspectives within a cohesive learning experience.

Lead Faculty

Maria Sirois, PsyD

Maria has been teaching at the forefront of wellness, psychology, and spirituality for more than two decades. She’s the author of Every Day Counts and A Short Course in Happiness After Loss (And Other Dark, Difficult Times), and holds a doctorate in psychology. Maria is the lead faculty for Module 7: Resilience. She also teaches at both immersions.

Megan McDonough

Megan is the award-winning author of Infinity in a Box, A Minute for Me, and Radically Receptive Meditation. With a degree in nuclear medicine, decades of leadership experience, and many years of teaching and practicing yoga, Megan combines intellectual understanding with an embodied approach to teaching and leading. She is the lead faculty for the online modules, and teaches at both immersions.

Lynda Wallace

Lynda holds an MBA from Wharton, and spent 20 years as an executive with Johnson & Johnson, where she ran a billion-dollar global consumer healthcare business that includes some of the world’s most iconic brands. A Positive Psychology Coach and the Director of WBI’s Positive Psychology Coach Certification program, Lynda is the lead faculty for Module 6: Realizing Dreams.

Contributors

Students are exposed to various voices from the field through interviews and videos integrated into the lessons. Featured experts include the following:

Phoebe Atkinson

Megha Nancy Buttenheim

Kathy Washburn

Henrique Bueno

Uneeda O. Brewer, MSW, CEG, CP

Val Williams

Barbara Fredrickson, PhD.

Kristen Lindquist, PhD.

Patty Van Cappellen, PhD.

Sara Algoe, PhD.

What Graduates Say

“The course helped me define who I want to be as a contributor—I found my voice. It helped me make sense of who I am at my best. It gave me the clarity and the tools to make change—to act on what I learned.”

“The focus on building community is a differentiator for Wholebeing Institute. By staying connected, we become ambassadors for each other and the work.”

“Being a part of this course allowed me to design the life I always dreamed of. Using the tools, I am a better father, husband, and professional.”

“Wholebeing Institute offers deep science and deep human connection—a genuine sense that each of us matter. This is rare and very special.”

“Absolutely groundbreaking to see how the structure of support was maintained throughout the year, leading to a deep understanding that connection is crucial to well-being. It’s not just about the tools and practices.”

About the Wholebeing Experience

Tuition for the Certificate in Wholebeing Positive Psychology includes an optional on-site Wholebeing Weekend. The Wholebeing Experience is a weekend retreat where alumni, guests, and current students come together to connect, learn new material, and have great conversations with like-minded people to support application of the tools in a deeper and broader way.

The 2022 event is currently being planned.

Tuition for this course is $3800.

Payment plans are available for a limited time. Click on the Register button to see current options.

Questions? Email us today.

❊ Module 1: Introduction to Wholebeing Happiness

This module introduces key principles from the diverse sciences of optimal human functioning, including positive psychology, neurobiology, and the social and behavioral sciences. The research is integrated through the SPIRE model of well-being. Students are introduced to the concept of aiming towards an ideal self, the advantages of a positive focus, the five perspectives of well-being, how to engage character strengths and appreciation, and using evidence-based tools to make lasting change.

❊ Module 2: What Makes Us Happy(er)?

This module begins by defining happiness as the overall experience of meaning, strengths, and pleasure. Students are then introduced to the theory and practice of a growth vs. a fixed mindset, and the related concept of a growth heartset. Topics covered include full-body engagement, finding flow, identifying our purpose, detecting meaning (even in the mundane), and appreciative inquiry.

❊ Module 3: Online Immersion

This module moves the class from an online experience to a community of support, setting the stage for the group work to come. Peer groups of six are created during this time, and students leave with a plan of action for instituting positive habits through the 30-day practice and a group-determined structure for peer communications. Topics covered and practiced include a deeper dive into values and ideal self, effective listening, resilience, mind-body practices, systems thinking, and reminders for successful habit change.

❊ Module 4: Moving Towards Your Best Self

This module focuses on self-compassion, habits and habit change, and expanding the use of character strengths to make new habits stick. Prioritizing positivity and the mind-body link will be discussed, using the body for biofeedback to manage stress and procrastination, and enjoying the process of change rather than fighting it with willpower. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, the ABCs of psychology (affect, behavior, cognition), and the SPIRE check-in, students learn how to engage the whole mind-body towards the best possible self.

❊ Module 5: Living and Working Well with Others

You don’t live in a vacuum. Your best self comes alive through interactions with others—through your relationships. Relationships are the number-one generator of well-being; gone awry, they produce pain and misery. Done right, positive relationships are key to positivity and wholebeing. This module looks at relationships as ways of expressing who you are and who you want to be, and as opportunities to grow both your own and others’ potential, increasing the bond you share—whether as lovers, friends, family, teammates, or colleagues. We study and practice lovingkindness meditation, and explore the topics of authenticity, effective communication, the importance of listening and appreciation, and how to effectively deal with the energy of conflict.

❊ Module 6: Realizing Dreams

We all have dreams and aspirations; however, most people’s dreams remain unrealized. This module looks at how we can cultivate the seed of hope and help it flourish. Topics covered include beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies; setting goals and using the CHANGE model to map the process; raising our belief in ourselves through action, visualization, and priming (including a common mistake people make in visualizing); focusing on personal strengths; and learning from failure.

❊ Module 7: Resilience and Grit

Life encompasses challenges, difficulties, death, and dying. As the Buddha said, life is suffering. Big or small, difficult times cannot be avoided. We can understand, practice, and build the skills of resilience, increasing our capacity to adapt. Topics covered include implicit wholeness (how we can be both broken and whole), post-traumatic growth, the tools of resilience and grit, and bringing alive the archetypal wisdom found in the stories and poetry of those who have chosen a meaningful quest.

❊ Module 8: Choosing and Realizing Your Best Life

At every moment in our lives, we have a choice. Moments add up to a lifetime; choices add up to a life. This module summarizes the material presented in the previous seven, through examining the choices that we make—the big ones, such as the kind of work we want to pursue or the kind of person we want to spend our lives with; and the smaller ones, such as the physical posture we assume when walking into a room or the way we respond to a request from a colleague. It is through these choices—both major and minor—that we become co-creators of our reality.

❊ Module 9: Online Immersion

In this final module, participants move from students to teachers, by synthesizing and summarizing what is personally most compelling to them about positive psychology via the final project, and presenting to a small group of peers. This module emphasizes the concept of serving it forward—sharing with others the key lessons learned, the “power of one,” and the ripple effect of modeling the work. This way, even as our course ends, our impact continues to grow, and we come to understand the paradox of endings as beginnings.

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