PHLOURISH IS HERE
This week SeeingHappy is announcing our PHLOURISH program – we are putting the entire program on our site along with a library of photographic prompts.
The main aim of our program is to show how photography, both the skills of photography and the content we photograph, can lead to different ways of seeing the world. How we see the world can become a self-fulfilling prophesy and this has an effect on our well-being, resilience and happiness.
SeeingHappy was conceived to bring together people who believed in the goodness that is still possible in our world. We want to inspire, be inspired, and inspire others. We believe that inspiration and community can change the way we all see the world for the better.
Our mission is especially urgent at this time because we are experiencing anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide at historically unprecedented rates particularly among young people. Social media has been held responsible for much by many mental health professionals. But social media is not going away and indeed SeeingHappy is a social media platform. We want to ask how social media can be used for good.
One idea that has been proposed is that social media undermines attention. It says that our attention has been broken up into small chunks and we are now lacking the ability to attend to anything for a long time. This, of course, hurts our ability to think deeply about just about anything especially our own lives.
Here are SeeingHappy we have built a program that asks the photographer to pay attention and take a deeper look at the way we each see the world. We ask you to attend to the choices you posses – that you can the glass half empty or half full. We want to inspire the half full view. We acknowledge the difficulties the world has to face right now and how that impacts each and every one of us AND we believe we can still get up each day and ask “what can I do?” We can each be inspired to see what is possible and act on that. Each of us can keep on trying.
The program can be a fun project or a deep dive that requires full attention. For some people it will take time, thought, and mindfulness. Ironically we don’t ask you to put down your phone but rather to pick it up! Pick up your phone and use it as a social media tool for your own good, for your well-being, resilience, and happiness. We want to inspire everyone to understand that we have choices in how we see the world and that what we choose to act on has huge implications for what we receive back from the world, our own happiness, and our resilience when bad stuff hits.
PHLOURISH outlines five areas in which we believe photography can help us see a positive, optimistic world:
Noticing: Notice what is beautiful and good in your world. Embrace gratitude.
Creating: Use photography and editing tools to increase the fun and creativity in your life.
Connecting: Use photography to broaden and deepen your social circle.
Reframing: Use photography to see the choice between dark and light, optimism and pessimism.
Storytelling: Use photography to tell hopeful and inspiring stories.
Together, we are demonstrating how photography can change habits of seeing, inspire positivity, and build a storehouse of images that represent the best of who we are.
The Team at SeeingHappy
