The Kindness That Keeps Us Small

The Kindness That Keeps Us Small | The Flourishing Journal The Kindness That Keeps Us Small When we care for someone, we often want to spare them difficulty. Sometimes the greater gift is to help them meet a challenge they can grow through. VCVictor Counted, PhDThe Flourishing Journal A recent Economist article argues that university for all harms poor students the most. Its headline raises a question that reaches well beyond higher education, and that is: What happens when an institution promises opportunity but does not give people what they need to develop their capacities? That question is one that we should extend to our homes, workplaces, churches, and communities.…

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The Life Beyond Achievement

The Empty Self A decades-old critique of American psychology helps explain why focusing on just the self never seem to be enough. By Victor Counted • The Flourishing Journal • 9 min read You finally buy the thing you have wanted for months. For a few days, perhaps a few weeks, it works. Something inside you settles. There is usually a rush of excitement. You feel more confident about your purchase. Then the feeling fades, and another object takes its place in your imagination. We usually explain this pattern as materialism or poor self-control. If you are a Marshmellow Test's fan, you perhaps might say that it is a lack…

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The Colors of Organizational Flourishing

The Colours of Organizational Flourishing | The Flourishing Journal Organizational Flourishing The Colours of Organizational Flourishing Every organization has a temperament. It shapes what gets rewarded, what gets avoided, and what people feel when they walk in on Monday. An idea first sketched in ancient medicine can help leaders name it. VC Victor Counted, PhD The Flourishing Journal  ·  8 min read  ·  July 2026 The meeting had been running for forty minutes before I realized I could have written the minutes in advance. I knew which proposal would be praised, which would be starved of oxygen, and which objection would be raised in the exact tone it was raised…

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The Flavor of Character

The Savor of Character Character Formation The Flavor of Character Competence is light. It exposes. But light alone blinds a room, and the thing that makes truth bearable is not more light. It is salt. The Flourishing Journal It has been almost a month since I last wrote for The Flourishing Journal. I had planned to take a short summer break, but a health challenge extended that pause and forced me to slow down more than I expected. There is something clarifying about being forced to stop. You begin to notice your limits, the people around you, and the qualities that matter when productivity and competence temporarily recede. I found…

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The Sin of Calling a Human Being “Illegal”

Why Referring to Another Human Being as an "Illegal Alien" Is Ungodly and Evil | The Flourishing Journal Place & Belonging · Part II The Sin of Calling a Person "Illegal" Before a single home is burned or a single family is torn apart, a word has already done the work. The second essay in a series on the global anti-foreigner wave examines the vocabulary that makes it. VC Victor Counted The Flourishing Journal · July 2026 I want you to imagine a driver who breaks the speed limit on the way to work. We do not call him or her an illegal driver. Also consider a person who jaywalks…

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Anti-Foreigner Protests and the Problem of Broken Native Belonging

Place & Belonging The Stranger at the Door The anti-foreigner wave sweeping three continents is being read as a story about hatred. Underneath it is something the science of belonging can name, and there may be a solution in sight. VC Victor Counted The Flourishing Journal · July 2026 In Johannesburg, a pregnant woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo has taught her children a drill. If the marchers come, she tells them, run and hide, because there is nothing she can do to protect them. She has been turned away from clinics where protesters now stand at the doors deciding who deserves care. She fled one country to survive.…

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America at 250: The Psychology of What America Means to Us

America at 250: Safe Haven, Secure Base, and the Attachment We Owe Each Other | The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal★Est. 1776 · Celebrating 250 Place & Belonging The Psychology of What America Means to Us On the 250th anniversary, place attachment theory offers a way to see two kinds of Americans clearly, and the debt one owes the other. VC Victor Counted, Ph.D. THE FLOURISHING JOURNAL Two hundred and fifty years is long enough for a nation to become invisible to the people who live inside it. We stop seeing the walls because we have never known a world without them. We stop appreciating the place because we have…

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The Cost of Competence

The Cost of Competence Formation · Vocation The Cost of Competence Light is rarely resented for being false. It is resented for being bright. What do you owe a room that would rather stay dim? The Flourishing Journal Walk into a dark room and turn on the light, and no one thanks you first. They wince. Hands go up to shield eyes that had made their peace with the gloom. For a moment you are not the person who helped them see but the person who hurt them. This is the strange social physics of competence. We are told it is the thing that earns belonging, the currency that buys…

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Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing — The Difference a Word Makes

Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing: Three Words We Keep Using as if They Mean the Same Thing? | The Flourishing Journal Flourishing Science Wellbeing, Thriving, Flourishing: Three Words We Keep Using as if They Mean the Same Thing? On wellbeing, flourishing, and thriving, and why mixing them up changes how we research, counsel, and help people. VC Victor Counted, Ph.D. Professor · Author · Psychologist · June 2026 · 7 min read A friend of mine treats the word ‘thriving’ the way most people treat the word ‘fine.’ It comes up every time we connect, unplanned, almost a running joke between us by now. He has a point. Three words show up…

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