“Human Flourishing: A Field Guide Be Well, Do Good, Together”, a new book from the Trilith Foundation, will debut April 14 as a lifestyle companion designed to help readers navigate suffering, purpose and personal transformation.
The guide is rooted in a five-year initiative called the “Global Flourishing Study,” which was conducted by Baylor University and Harvard University, tracking more than 200,000 people across 22 countries to identify the characteristics of prospering individuals across cultures.
Designed as a field guide, the book includes space for journal entries as readers move through exercises focused on physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and artistic transformation. The reader’s reflections become part of the experience, creating a personal testimony from beginning to end.
The reflective prompts encourage readers not to ignore or diminish suffering, but to recognize its role in shaping the human experience. The guide combines ancient wisdom, scientific research and personal accounts to validate this belief.
Readers will also engage with six companion videos featuring testimonials from individuals, including an Olympic athlete, a Grammy-nominated musician, an artist and activist and others who have experienced profound transformation through suffering.
Their stories explore adversity, disability, addiction and hardship, while highlighting the power of human resilience and what people choose to make of their experiences.
Krissy Lewis, project lead for “Human Flourishing,” sees this as “research made accessible, made human and made relevant to all people, but especially creatives.”
Though the guide can be purchased by anyone, “Human Flourishing” is specifically geared toward creatives, who suffer in ways that are unique from other industries.
Creatives are individuals who often live in constant motion, moving from project to project in nomadic professional cycles. For many creatives, community is treated as optional rather than essential to a fulfilling life, yet one of the foundational components of flourishing is having a dependable support system.
At the same time, the creative process is often solitary and deeply personal. Artistic work frequently reflects the creator’s identity, making missed opportunities, failures and unanswered callbacks especially painful. For creatives whose self-worth is tied to performance, those setbacks can feel like profound personal rejection.
“Human Flourishing” seeks to address their form of suffering by helping creatives redirect their sense of purpose and break free from performance-based value systems.
The Trilith Foundation says the initiative aligns with its mission to enrich the lives of creatives who inspire the world. Through “Human Flourishing,” the organization hopes the entertainment industry will invest in people with the same seriousness it invests in tools and technology.
With Georgia at the center of one of the world’s most dynamic creative ecosystems, the foundation believes the state can become a model for what investing in people looks like in practice.
“It’s the stories being made here that reach millions of people,” Lewis said. “And it is our hope that the people making them are given every possible resource to be fully alive while they do it.”
