ABOUT US | The Healthy Thinking Initiative

John Weaver, Psy.D. Licensed Psychologist

Director of The Healthy Thinking Initiative

Paul K. Glass, Ph.D. Licensed Psychologist

Contributors

Nancy Brady-Freitag, Ph.D.

(in loving memory, 1957-2015)

Kathie Koenig LCSW, CEAP

Terry Bruett, Ed.D.

Bob Verwert, Ph.D.

The Healthy Thinking Initiative is a program that trains your organization in mindfulness, optimism, and resilience, bringing you and your employees the best available psychological knowledge and skills. We select our interventions by carefully reviewing ongoing psychological research and we are continuously gathering data to ensure the best scientific foundations for our efforts on your behalf.

The Skills We Teach:

Optimism is a set of skills associated in research with improved outcomes in almost all aspects of organizational life. Many managers and executives are very aware of the benefits of optimism for high performance but they are surprised to find out that it can be learned.

Resilience is a critical tool for handling the stress and pressure of the real world of business. In a recent poll taken by the American Psychological Association, 68% of employees wanted more training in skills that would build resilience to stress.

Mindfulness is being employed by many organizations in their efforts to improve the psychological well-being of employees. It is also improving the bottom line for these companies. It involves learning to pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment. This brings about increased awareness that facilitates effective decision making.

We will help you by training the skills in your workforce that increase your competitive advantage in the global market. A workforce that is mindful, optimistic and resilient meets and exceeds the challenges of today's business climate.

The Beginning: I (John) was at a Society of Human Resource Management conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during September of 2005 when the ideas for The Healthy Thinking Initiative were born. As I listened to a speaker describe the wellness program that his company had developed, it occurred to me that he had covered many important areas for health improvement but had not addressed the most expensive cost, the cost of depression. So I asked him about it. He agreed that depression was the most expensive (and a growing) cost but he did not know what to do about it.

As a psychologist, I knew that there were researchers examining several strategies for the prevention of depression. But their efforts were not being applied in the workplace.

Work on mindfulness, optimism, and resilience were all demonstrably effective in reducing the onset of depression and relapse rates in those who had been diagnosed with depressive disorders.

My team and I began the process of adapting these promising strategies to a format that can be taught within organizations.

Within a short time, we realized that preventing depression was only the tip of the iceberg. In a knowledge economy, it is more and more important to implement healthy thinking training, not just to save medical costs, but to increase effective decision-making skills, improve leadership outcomes, and solidify customer relationships, among many other benefits.

The success of business is dependent on maximizing the value of the workforce. Healthy thinking supports motivation. It is a dimension of effectively engaging workers. It is critical to the growth and development of your organization.