In my work as a trainer and coach for resilience and wellbeing, it is a special thing when I come across something new so useful it makes a real difference. I’m finding that increasingly with the word ‘Thrutopian’ – while I know I’ve mentioned it here before, I’d like to share some of what I’m finding refreshing and transformative when using this term. Here’s the recording of a recent free webinar introducing Thrutopian Resilience as an approach that might help us make it through challenging times in the best way we can, on both a personal and collective level. It is in 8 short engaging episodes, all on You Tube. You can also watch it here – and read the text below the videos for more information. Plus if you’d like to take this further, our Resilience Practitioner Training starts on October 7th.
What is Thrutopian Resilience?
Part 1 (less than 6 mins)- Introduction – with thanks to Rupert Read for introducing Thrutopia here.
Part 2 (6 mins) – Introducing a thrutopian framework for personal and collective resilience
Part 3 (about 8 mins) – Looking at how we make it through the disbelieving block of ‘NoWay’
Part 4 (4 mins)- With guest Manda Scott, looking at Thrutopia and the Great Turning
Part 5 – The Preparation Stage of Change
Part 6 (4 mins) – Helping Our Hopes Happen Through Us
Part 7 (less than 3 mins) – Learning from Lebanon
Part 8 (11 mins) – A Tool To Activate Hope
This introduces, and invites you to try out, a practical exercise that helps cultivate vision and activate hope. Many people have found this an inspiring things to do, and it only takes three minutes.
Here’s some more information about the Thrutopian Resilience approach.
Earlier this year I ran two quite different online trainings – my Resilience Practitioner Training for a group in Lebanon facing the aftermath of recent war, and a Thrutopian Wellbeing course for a group of healthcare students on placement at a hospital in the US. While the contexts they faced were worlds apart, the story pattern we looked at had a similar shape. To give you a sense of what I mean, I invite you to try this series of sentence starters
Try this – finding yourself in a Thrutopian Story Pattern
1) Think of some situations where you feel challenged, or where you support others who do,
and you’d like to help yourself, and/or others, make it through whatever you or they face in the best possible way.
2) For each situation, try this sentence completion template where you fill in the gaps.
I’d like to help … (who? It might be yourself, someone else, or a collective entity)
make it through … (what challenge or difficulty?)
in a way where … (what is a better way this could happen?)
When you complete these sentence starters, you’re placing yourself in a story where you have a key role to play. If that role is important to you, and you’d like to play it well, then resilience and wellbeing become more meaningful – as they can help you – and help you help others – bring more resourced, capable versions of your or their self to whatever is faced.
My dear friend and mentor Joanna Macy, who died in July at the age of 96, taught a process that helps people recognise their potential to make a difference. She invited them to look into each other’s eyes and consider the very real possibility that the person in front of them might play a decisive role in the healing of our world. They might be in the right place at the right time with the right gifts and motivation to do something valuable that is uniquely theirs to do. As I write this, I hold in my mind and heart the very real possibility that this applies to you too. I invite you to look in the mirror and try this process with yourself – as well as with those you come into contact with each day.
Thrutopian narratives
engage in the process
of making it through challenging times in the best possible way
Finding a way through our own disbelief
Does playing a decisive role in the healing of our world sound over-ambitious as a goal? – yet we can play a vital role in a project without having to do the whole thing or the main thing or having a guarantee of success. The healing of our world happens through its parts, including its people and the relationships between them. It is a process we can all contribute to.
One of the times we might play a decisive role is at a threshold moment. We’ll all hit crunch points where we might either grind to a halt and give up on something important to us, or find a way of carrying on through in the direction of our hopes. Have you had times when someone played a decisive role in helping you make it through a threshold time like this? Have you also had times when you’ve shown up for yourself, and/or others, in ways that made a real difference? By helping ourselves and each other through such threshold times, we play important, and perhaps decisive, roles in a larger process of healing and positive change.
The Preparation Stage of Change
What I love about working with story patterns is they build in the possibility of turning points. It is common for stories to start out bleak or empty of promise, yet then surprise us with twists and turns that lead to shifts in what is possible. A ‘preparation stage of change’, where the main characters engage in a quest of seeking out allies, insights, different ways of doing things and new sources of strength, can make desired turnings more likely.
We can apply the thrutopian story pattern at so many different levels – whether about yourself making it through a challenging time in a good way, or about helping someone else do this, or about a community, organisation, society or ecosystem you’re part of. It isn’t guaranteed that our species will make it through this century, or that any of us will make it through these times of challenge in ways we’d like. But do you hope both you and we will? If you hope for this, how can you help your hope happen through you, through your choices and actions and ways of being?
Coming back to the sentence starters at the top, who would you like to help, and what do they or you want to make it through? What might be desirable ways of doing this? My hope with CollegeOfWellbeing.com is that it supports your preparation stage of change with tools and trainings that strengthen your ability to make it through what lies ahead in the best ways you can, and help others do this too.
So on that note, here’s some of the courses I’ve got coming up soon or that are available already as recorded versions. I also work with people one to one.
Next Resilience Practitioner Training starts 7th Oct 2025
I’m pleased to now be in the tenth year of running the Resilience Practitioner Training, and this year have also had versions of this course running in Lebanon and China. While I’ve a recorded edition people can start at any time, the live webinar based version brings the added advantage of a learning community engaging in this life-enhancing work together. The next live course starts on 7th October, and follows a journey exploring practical, easy to teach resilience tools that help us deal with difficult times. This course applies a thrutopian perspective and offers a pathway to becoming a certified resilience practitioner.
With you, for thrutopian resilience, wellbeing and active hope,
