The Science Behind the Coaching
What is Positive Psychology?
Positive psychology is a rigorous scientific discipline formally established in 1998, when Martin Seligman devoted his presidential address to the American Psychological Association to a foundational question: what allows human beings to truly flourish — not just survive or cope, but live fully?
The result, over the past twenty-five years, has been one of the most productive research movements in modern psychology — generating thousands of peer-reviewed studies on wellbeing, meaning, resilience, character strengths, purpose, and the conditions under which human beings thrive.
It is not the absence of difficulty. It is the science of what makes a life genuinely worth living.
How The Field Has Evolved
Positive psychology has developed through distinct phases, each deepening and expanding on the last:
First Wave (1998–2010)
Researchers identified and measured the building blocks of wellbeing — positive emotions, character strengths, meaning, engagement, relationships, and accomplishment. This was the era of foundational research and tools.
Second Wave (~2010–2015)
The field matured. Researchers recognized that wellbeing is not simply the absence of the negative — it is something richer, shaped by context, culture, and the dynamic interplay of life's light and shadow.
Third Wave (~ 2015–present)
Positive psychology began opening outward. Researchers across disciplines — psychology, medicine, sociology, philosophy, and beyond — converged on wellbeing as a shared concern, recognizing that thriving humans exist within systems — relational, social, ecological — that cannot be separated from individual experience.
Where the Science is Heading
In a landmark 2022 paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, researcher Marié Wissing argued that the third wave of positive psychology had actually signaled something larger: the emergence of a new, post-disciplinary domain of wellbeing studies — one with a scope broader than any single field could contain.
This evolving domain is organized around what Wissing calls cohering harmony— the quality of interconnectedness within and among people, their relationships, their communities, and the natural world. At its center are four dimensions the research increasingly identifies as essential to genuine human flourishing:
Meaning — a sense of coherence, direction, and mattering
Positive relationality — the quality of connection with others and with yourself
Harmony — inner and outer balance that is dynamic, not static
Virtue — living in ways that are not just personally satisfying but actively contribute to the wellbeing for all living systems
This is no longer wellbeing as an individual pursuit of flourishing. It is wellbeing as a whole-life orientation: with care, concern, and compassion for the flourishing of all planetary life.
Why This Matters For You
This is exactly the terrain of Leslie's coaching.
For fifteen years, Leslie has been working at the intersection of meaning, relationship, inner harmony, and personal integrity — helping clients move not just toward feeling better, but toward living more fully aligned with who they truly are. Long before "cohering harmony" had a name in the research literature, it was the animating center of her practice.
The work draws on:
Evidence-based frameworks from positive psychology's deep research base
Martha Beck's whole-person methodology, grounded in mind-body integration and radical self-knowledge
Wissing's emerging model of cohering harmony — which recognizes that true flourishing is relational, contextual, and inseparable from values and meaning
15+ years of one-to-one attunement — applying these frameworks in ways that are uniquely responsive to each person
You will not receive a protocol. You will receive a partnership — scientifically informed, rigorously practiced, and entirely tailored to you.
A Note on What ‘Evidence-Based’ Really Means
In Leslie's work, evidence-based does not mean clinical or formulaic.
Research in wellbeing science consistently confirms what wise coaches have always known: real transformation happens in relationship — between you and your coach, and between you and your own deepest self.