Day 1: Lifefulness
Hey, this is my first post on Medium, sweet.
While at the Edinburgh Fringe I thought it would be great to work in public, to let everyone in on the vision that my life will be dedicated to and to see who else wants to join in (if you are keen to get onboard then there’s a Facebook Group called ‘Lifefulness’ that you’re welcome to join).
Over the next 30 days, I’ll try to share what I want to build and with a Facebook Group called Lifefulness, it makes sense that the first post is on that topic. .
Yes, the word Lifefulness doesn’t much yet but I’m sure ‘mindfulness’ had most people scratching their heads when Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of modern mindfulness) first starting talking about it in 1979.
What is Lifefulness?
Lifefulness is the practice of adapting the congregational community in a way that is secular, inclusive and evidence based.
The word is a deliberate echo of the word ‘mindfulness’. Why? Because modern mindfulness took Buddhist vipassana meditation and made it secular, inclusive and created an evidence base for it.

Nice theory, what does it look like in practice?
It looks a lot like Sunday Assembly, the global movement of organisers, volunteers and participants who have created a worldwide network of secular, inclusive and evidence based congregational communities.
The movement was founded by me and Pippa Evans, when we took the model of the congregation and did it in a way anyone can come to.
Because we’re both performers and comedian we built first and worked out the theory, Lifefulness, later.
The 6 Elements of Lifefulness
Lifefulness is based on the 6 elements that will make a secular, inclusive congregational community work.
At the top there is a Sacred Value: the purpose of your life, and the purpose of your community, is to live this value every day and to manifest it in the world.
The Sacred Value is brought to life through 5 core activities: Community Life, Transformative Gatherings, Personal Growth, Serving Others and Changing The World.

Where does this model come from?
There are two main sources for it: first up, it is an adaptation and secularisation of Rick Warren’s seminal book on church building The Purpose Driven Church. Segundo, it draws on my experience at Sunday Assembly in translating religious practices in an inclusive way.
The aim is to keep these posts short and snappy, so I won’t dive into the model here, instead I’ll end with a few words about the importance of language.
Let’s Keep Everyone In The Room At The Same Time
A Christian, atheist, Sikh, Jew and a Muslim can attend the same mindfulness workshop, learn and grow, without their worldviews being called into question.
One of the reason I went to the Edinburgh Fringe was to work out how to take this work to a wider audience and to learn the words that work and the ones that don’t (“comedy plus wellbeing” = yes, “secular spiritual experience” = no).

Lifefulness has to be expressed, like mindfulness, in such a way that everyone can stay in the room at the same time.
The lesson from mindfulness (gosh I’ve used that word a lot) is that Lifefulness (and that one) can become integrated into the modern world: whether it is individuals finding the 6 Elements of Lifefulness from different ‘suppliers’, or communities, schools, prisons, businesses, or hospitals putting the principles into practice with their people.
By finding the right welcoming words, the benefits of congregational community can be reintroduced into our secularised societies — societies that are wracked by a crisis of meaning and belonging.
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Lessons from Day 1. I probably took a bit too long writing this one. Tomorrow I’ll try to just bash it out. Remember, if you want to be part of this discussion come along to the Lifefulness Facebook group and let’s get talking.
