An innovative workshop that builds your resilience so you can thrive.
Changing Minds, Changing Lives (CMCL) is a one-of-a-kind program created by Dr. Genevieve Chandler from her extensive research on the process of resilience. The four unique practices of CMCL are:
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​1. Focus on strengths
2. Create an empowered environment
3. Build resilience from adversity
4. Write to connect to self and others.
1. Focus on Strengths
The question moves from 'what is my weakness, what can I improve?' to 'what am I good at? what are my strengths?' This strength-based approach moves from a focus on pathology to one of potential.
2. Create an empowered environment
If a position has access to necessary information, relationships, resources, and opportunities, the person in that position feels empowered. With this new understanding my dissertation study demonstrated that empowerment or powerlessness results from the interaction between individual and their environment. Thus, to empower an employee, student or friend, provide them with the right relationships to access resources, information, and opportunities.
3. Build resilience from adversity
As a professor at UMASS Amherst, I taught in the classroom and supervised students in the clinical setting. My guiding question was, "Why wait for stress and struggle?" My goal was to disrupt the trajectory from stress to illness by building resilience to prepare for life’s adversities.
4. Write to connect to self and others.
I designed a study on adolescent resilience using expressive writing with students in a homeless shelter and an inner-city high school. At the time, resilience was defined by a high GPA and school involvement—criteria that excluded many of my students. Yet their writings revealed powerful resilience: living in a car and still attending school, raising a child while studying, or working jobs alongside classes. As we wrote together, students became more engaged and invested in learning. Serendipitously, the method itself—expressive writing, sharing stories, and receiving positive feedback—not only revealed their resilience but also strengthened their potential.
CHANGING MINDS, CHANGING LIVES
Combining the results of the research on strengths, careating an environment for empowerment , building resilience from adversity and writing to connect to self and others I developed the Changing Minds, Changing Lives course to build resilience to promote well-being and thrive.