16-Week GROWTH Journey

Growth- and Resilience-Oriented Wellbeing and Transformational Healing (GROWTH) is a 16-week virtual coaching program applying the science of positive psychology, resilience, and posttraumatic growth to help you grow and thrive amidst the most difficult things in life.

The GROWTH Journey is for adults who have had a painful or highly distressing life experience like trauma, grief, or betrayal, a major setback or personal failing, or other substantial adversity that feels like a personal turning point. 

You'll enjoy and benefit from the program if you're interested in exploring both painful and positive aspects of your experiences with an eye toward identifying and building your strengths, developing habits of thought and action that support personal thriving, and engaging in good and meaningful ways with the people and world around you.

Most of the exercises and reflections in the GROWTH Journey have been adapted from activities to support flourishing in a wide range of groups or use positive psychology concepts that apply to lots of people. But this journey is about not only examining and integrating the really difficult experiences you've had to live a more meaningful life that is a blessing to yourself and others.

Not everyone is ready for the GROWTH Journey (and that doesn't mean you won't be at some point). This program is intended for people who are not in need of clinical care or therapy for PTSD or other mental health disorders, or, if they are in need of such care, they are receiving it, and they have informed their clinician of their plan to participate in this program.

Over ten research-based modules, you'll learn about key concepts and engage in individual practices that can help you honor the past, cultivate thriving in the present, and embrace your path ahead. 

What are the ten modules?

1. Start Your Journey
2. Cultivate Good Feelings and Peak Experiences
3. Envision a Good Future
4. See the Good in Yourself and Others
5. See More Good in the World
6. Grow into a Slower Thinker
7. Grow in Connection to Others
8. Grow in Gratitude
9. Embrace the Future and Forgive the Past
10. Crystallizing Your New Narrative

What to expect in each module

Besides this introductory module and the final module on Crystallizing Your New Narrative, each module follows the structure below:

• Introduction and Background: A quick review of key concepts that inform the exercises and reflections in the module.
• Learn More: An optional deeper dive into the research and available resources for those who want more science or additional practice.
• Weekly Exercises: Each module includes two week-long exercises with culminating journal reflections.
• Additional Journal Prompts and Worksheets: Three recommended journal reflections and tools for deepening understanding and integrating practices.

You can also expect an occassional email from your Expert Companion to encourage you and share tips to refine your understanding and practice.

The GROWTH Journey was created by Mark L. O'Brien, who serves as your expert guide throughout the program. 

Mark is the founder of Growth & Goodness. Helping people grow and find meaning when they've faced trauma, grief, and other life crises is his passion and purpose. He got into his work because of his own experience with tragedy and growth, and his observations of others whose lives and purpose had been shattered and reshaped by hardship.

"I know how quickly life can change and how some wounds can shake us to the core, challenging our most basic ideas about the world and disrupting our self-images and personal narratives," Mark says. "But I've also known hundreds of people who were shaped in profoundly positive ways by their most difficult struggles, people whose characters seemed simultaneously strengthened and softened by their most difficult experiences."

After years studying under top researchers in the science of wellbeing and building on lessons he learned supporting and spending time with others who've faced and been forged by the unthinkable, Mark developed the GROWTH Journey to share a set of tools, ideas, and ways of thinking for people who are seeking meaning, who feel compelled to make something good out of experiences that have been painful, scary, or heartbreaking, or who are hurting but hopeful and a little suprised that they have grown stronger and deeper in the midst of despair.