How to Live Better: Using Modern Science to Cultivate Ancient Virtues

Join Everett Worthington, world-leading social scientist and acclaimed clinical counselor, to learn how to live according to your values through the power of social psychology. Cultivate humility, compassion, and gratitude in your daily life.

For centuries, religion and philosophy have recommended ways to live life more virtuously, and people have honed practices based on that sage advice from religions and philosophers. In the past twenty years, positive psychology has emerged as a transformational new approach focused on happiness, character strength, and virtue.

In this inspiring 15-lecture audio course, celebrated psychologist and author Everett Worthington (professor emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth University) draws from literature on spiritual formation, the philosophy of virtue, and positive psychology to help you develop your character. You’ll apply tools of empirical research and psychological theory to the understanding and practice of virtuous living.

Advice on living virtuously has historically placed personal willpower in the driver’s seat. Positive psychology, in contrast, recognizes that our lives are inextricably connected to the lives of those around us, so personal betterment cannot be achieved in isolation.

As you explore the six key principles of virtuous living with Prof. Worthington, you’ll employ scientific approaches that will help you design your own virtue system. You’ll see that positive psychology brings tools of current culture and science to bear in a systematic way that condenses and tests time-honored truths and identifies time-bound practices.

This course is part of the Learn25 Collection.