Summary

The undefined website presents "The Sailor's Mandala," a comprehensive framework for adult life development inspired by sailing, integrating individual psychological intervention with social practice acceleration, and structured around four thematic spaces and four connected hubs, with the central theme of "Themes of Practice."

Abstract

The undefined website outlines a novel life development program that uses a sailing metaphor to guide individuals through personal growth and life transitions. The program, which has recently entered Phase II, emphasizes the importance of both psychological well-being and social engagement through a structured approach involving two key dimensions: individual psychological intervention and social practice acceleration. It is designed with four thematic spaces—Cognition, Emotion, Opportunity, and Resource—and includes four connected hubs that bridge these spaces: Project, Advantage, Discovery, and Situation. The central theme of "Themes of Practice" is introduced to harmonize individual life themes with collective cultural themes, drawing from various social science debates. The framework is visually represented in a diagram and is informed by feedback from participants and discussions between the program's creator and the author of the website content. The program's success in psychological intervention is noted, and suggestions are made for enhancing social practice acceleration, particularly in defining objectives and seizing opportunities for life change.

Opinions

The author views life transitions as encompassing both individual psychological states and social practices, advocating for a holistic approach to life development.
The program's creator is recognized for successfully applying methods such as Lean Startup, OKRs, and Building In Public to manage and communicate the program's goals and progress.
The feedback from participants indicates that the program effectively addresses cognitive restructuring and emotional coping, though it is not intended to replace professional mental health support.
The author suggests that the program should focus more on helping participants define clear objectives and perceive opportunities for life change, drawing from the Ecological Practice approach.
The concept of "Themes of Practice" is proposed as a central organizing principle for the program, integrating individual and collective themes within a broader cultural context.
The author emphasizes the importance of opportunity and resource dynamics in social practice, recommending a shift from ideal definitions to action-oriented approaches.
The website content reflects a collaborative analysis of the program, with the author and the program's creator engaging in dialogue to refine the framework based on real-world feedback and theoretical insights.

The Sailor’s Mandala: A Life Discovery Framework

Modeling A Life Development Program with a meta-diagram

I have mentioned an Online Adult Development program in CALL: Annual Review (2020–2021).

In June, one friend of mine started an online adult development program. The program was designed with three components: 1) Life Purpose Awareness, 2) Personal OKR Practice, 3) Peer Review and Feedback. The major part of the program is a monthly peer-support group on several social media platforms.

She worked for two startups in the past six years. The first one is an educational company which focuses on psychology and cognitive science related online courses. The second one is a consumer mobile app company. As a new product designer and founder, my friend used the Lean Startup method and the OKRs method to manage her program. She also adopted the Building In Public mindset to share her goals, challenges, progresses, and discussions with others on social media platforms.

One month ago, she launched the Phase II of the program and the new program focuses on the issue of Life Transition. Last week, she closed the first monthly group of Master Life Transition and shared some feedback from participants and her review report with me. Then, we started a conversation about the program work.

This morning, I adopted the hubhood meta-diagram to design a diagram in order to summarize our discussion about the program. In order to explain the diagram, I sent her a long email.

I’d like to highlight some key points of my long email in order to help readers understand the above diagram.

A metaphor: Life as Sailing

The name of the diagram is The Sailor’s Mandala which refers to a metaphor: Life as Sailing.

Life: it is a journey such as sailing at sea.
Boat: social container such as family, team, group, project, company, community, etc.
Sea: social context and social environment.

Two dimensions

The diagram was designed with the following two dimensions:

Individual Psychological Intervention
Social Practice Acceleration

From the feedback and our discussion, we learned a lesson that Life Transition is not only about individual psychological situations, but also about a person’s social practice and work activities. So, I suggested that the program should expand its service to consider social practice acceleration.

Four Thematic Spaces

Based on the above two dimensions, I identified four thematic spaces:

Psychological: Cognition and Emotion
Social Practice: Opportunity and Resource

The program is successful on Individual Psychological Intervention. We found the feedback is pretty positive.

Cognition: Belief/Fact

We found some participants hold some beliefs about their existing situations. In fact, these beliefs block their actions of life change. The program offers a peer-support environment which supports the reframing of beliefs. Once they establish a new belief, they move to new directions quickly.

Emotion: Positive/Negative

There are two types of emotion: positive and negative. As a life development program, she doesn’t want to solve the mental health issue. For example, if the negative emotion leads to a mental health problem for a particular, she’d like to suggest the participant to find a psychotherapy program.

The program is about coping with negative emotion and guiding participants to start a developmental project.

The program only accepts young professional workers, the Individual Psychological Intervention is inspired by Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Opportunity: Perceive/Unfold

As mentioned above, the program adopted the OKRs method as a core to develop the process of Social Practice Acceleration. I have observed the process and reviewed some documents during the past several months. There is a big issue for participants to define an objective for their life change. Though the clarifying of life meaning and life vision is very helpful for orientation, it is so hard for many people to transform abstract life meaning into a short term project. Thus, I suggested that the program could consider Opportunity as an important issue for Social Practice Acceleration.

Resource: Actual/Potential

While Opportunity is about clues from environments, Resource is about internal support for taking opportunities.

Opportunity and Resource are two common concepts about social practices. However, I recommend my own work the Ecological Practice approach as a new theoretical perspective to explain these two concepts. The Ecological Practice approach is an action-oriented approach, it doesn’t pay attention to the ideal definition of a concept. The approach emphasizes the dynamics of opportunity and the diversity of resources.

Four Connected Hubs

A unique part of the Hubhood diagram is four connected hubs. Each connected hub connects two Thematic Spaces together. In fact, a connected hub is a thematic space too.

I consider the following four connected hubs for the Sailor’s Mandala diagram:

Project: Objective/Object
Advantage: Play/Gain
Discovery: End/Means
Situation: Experience/Reflection

We mentioned these topics in our conversation. So, this is curated from the feedback and our analysis.

One Primary Theme

Originally, I put “Life Themes” at the center. However, I realized the term “Themes of Practice” is perfect for this diagram because it considers both individual life themes and collective cultural themes. It matches the two dimensions.

In 2019, I developed the idea “Themes of Practice” in order to discuss the “meaning” of the meaningful whole for my book Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice. I realized the notion of “Theme” is a great tool for curating experience and actions.

The dichotomy of “things — themes” refers to two classical great debate of social science: “mind — matter” and “individual — collective”. After reviewing the concept of “theme” in various disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology, Counseling Psychology, Cognitive Psychology and the Philosophy of Science, I developed a new concept “Themes of Practice” to propose a process view of “Theme”.

Anthropologist Morris Opler (1945) developed a theoretical “themes” for studying culture. Career counseling therapists and psychologists also developed a theoretical concept called “life theme.” If we put culture themes and life themes together, we see a “great debate” of social science: “individual — collective.” The above diagram visualizes the “concept network” or “idea ecology” of “Themes of Practice”.

You can find more details about Themes of Practice here.

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