We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liana Lianov a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Liana, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

I have always been interested in what makes people tik. What drives them to do the things in life that feel truly engaging and represent their inner core? I was reading and learning as much as I could on the topic. How do people with different personalities, past successes and traumas, and various cultures and social environments approach life and embrace their passions? As a lifestyle medicine physician, this interest became relevant in helping people achieve and sustain healthy habits. Behavior change is one of the greatest challenges in medicine. I learned that positive emotions are key drivers – much more powerful than negative and threatening ones. Hence, I became enthralled with the field of positive psychology – the scientific study of what makes people flourish.

In 2017, I was attending the World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) in Montreal. Sitting in the audience during the keynote address of the outgoing IPPA president, Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher in the field, I experienced a flash of inspiration. Dr. Fredrickson was talking about the upward spiral of lifestyle change – how the more we enjoy positive feelings during a healthy behavior the more likely we are to do that behavior again in a “nonconscious” way, without feeling forced. Then the more we engage in the health behaviors the greater our positive emotions. I looked around the room of about 2500 international attendees. Having looked at the attendee list, I knew they represented many professions- education, Human Resources, workforce development, clinical psychology, positive psychology research and more, But few were physicians and health professionals. At that moment, I vowed to change this situation and bring more of them to such conferences and engage them in this science and practice. My health care colleagues needed to learn about the incredible, reinforcing and reciprocal link between health behaviors and positive emotions. They needed to learn about the physiologic benefits of engaging in positive psychology interventions, such as gratitude practice, acts of kindness, savoring positive experiences and making high quality social connections. They needed to learn that this area of psychology is not a nice add-on for wellbeing, but the foundation for healthy lifestyles and promoting all major elements of wellbeing- mental, emotional, physical, social and spiritual. Changing health behaviors successfully would treat the underlying cause of most common diseases. I felt strongly that health professionals needed to incorporate the science and practice of positive psychology into healthcare to help patients achieve best outcomes and thrive. Moreover, these lifestyle practices can lead individuals to do well in the face of adversity and even experience growth during traumatic times. My deep notion was that healthcare needed to be transformed, even beyond what we were aiming for in the lifestyle medicine community, in which I had been actively involved.

I initially had hoped I could work with existing organizations to accomplish this dream. After about three years of exploring options and engaging in a few collaborations, I realized that my vision was not going to materialize through such collaboration. These organizations had many other priorities. Therefore, in the midst of the pandemic, in 2020 when it was clear we all needed positive health (i.e. healthy lifestyles with positive psychology in the context of supportive factors in the broader biopsychosocial model) more than ever, I founded my nonprofit, the Global Positive Health Institute (GPHI), The GPHI would be dedicated to providing education, training and practical tools to health professionals helping them integrate the best of positive psychology into their practices. This integration of healthy living with positive psychology mindsets and activities in a supportive environment has evolved. We now refer to it as positive health. Although I had searched for like-minded groups globally, before starting the GPHI, I later discovered others working in this space, and we are now taking steps to springboard off each other’s work. The GPHI is in its 4th year and the work has been quite challenging, especially in getting the attention of the health professionals and the health care community and securing funds to support the work. Not only do health professionals have many competing priorities, but also similar verbiage in the marketing by wellness organizations makes it difficult for the unique goals of the GPHi to stand out. We are continually looking for innovative and productive ways to get the unique messages out and create educational offerings that will be truly useful. Acknowledging that we have a long way to go to become fully established, the core mission continues to inspire this work. Our board and advisory council have been our champions to guide the way forward, and ambassadors to spread the word. Step by step we’re making a difference for the health providers who need positive health for themselves, as well as for their patients.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a physician, boarded in internal medicine, preventive medicine and public health, and lifestyle medicine. The first part of my career involved leading public health programs for the California Department of Health Services, directing chronic disease programs, including the Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program and the Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program, Having a special interest in behavior and psychology, especially for medically ill patients, I took a leave of absence and re-entered medical training as a fellow in consultation liaison psychiatry. I learned to conduct group therapy and offer cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. I also implemented my own program which individualized psychological interventions based on personality preferences of patients. After completing the program, I returned to the health department, while also starting a private practice helping patients struggling with their weight after gastric bypass surgery and those struggling with chronic pain and disability. I was able to apply much of what I learned, including elements of positive psychology.

But I longed to have greater impact by creating programs that would reach many physicians, health professionals and their patients. So I leapt at the opportunity to become the first director of the new Healthy Lifestyles Division at the American Medical Association. That positioned me to make connections with leaders across the country and collaborate with national health professional organizations. Two of these were the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM). I worked with them and other groups to develop the first lifestyle medicine competencies for physicians – which catapulted the field of lifestyle medicine. With the dedication of many wonderful colleagues, we have advanced this field.

I served on the board of regents for ACPM and received the ACPM Service Award. I also served as president of the ACLM and also the founding vice-chair of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine that certified physicians in the field. I was deeply honored to receive the 2022 ACLM Trailblazer Award for my work to help establish and advance the field of lifestyle medicine.

I am continuing to work as a trailblazer by developing new recommendations for expanding the lifestyle medicine competencies for health professionals with positive psychology and positive health elements. I’ve published several papers and contributed textbook chapters on the topic, as well as a handbook for health practitioners – The Roots of Positive Change, Optimizing Health Care with Positive Psychology. I am excited to serve as coeditor and coauthor of the Rutledge International Handbook of Positive Health Sciences and coauthor of Lifestyle Medicine From the Inside Out, Using Positive Psychology with Healthy Living for Positive Health – both of which are being released in 2024. The latter represents core content for the positive health courses offered by the organization I founded, the Global Positive Health Institute.

My urge to develop innovation in health and wellbeing goes much farther back than my work with the lifestyle medicine community. I have held a long-standing interest in how different personalities affect an individual’s approach to health and happiness habits. I found myself gravitating to the underlying constructs of personality types as developed by the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, Many readers may be familiar with the 16 Myers-Briggs Personality Type Theory that was created based on his work. In recent years, experts in the field have focused on Jung’s original 8 ‘cognitive functions., which I refer to as brain strengths. I’m proud to have leveraged my creative abilities to develop the first of its kind framework that connects one commonly used model of behavior change – the transtheoretical or stages of change model – with brain strengths. This framework, along with healthy living and positive psychology constructs, was imbedded into a web-based app, My Happy Avatar – that guides users to track what is going well in their lives and especially the resources and strengths they carry to support them no matter what bumps in the road they encounter. A companion app guides health coaches, or anyone coaching any behavior change. About a decade ago, I published an e-book that posited this innovative framework and how to use it to make the most of your mobile devices for health and happiness in My Happy Avatar: Use Your Mobile Device & Personality to Transform Your Health. An updated version of this ebook, along with a new book for making changes based on one’s personality will be coming out soon. After teaching this model for many years, I’m creating a new course on relevant to how we now use our devices and social media today and how we can navigate the current, challenging world. Both my consulting work through my company, HealthType and the nonprofit GPHI are helping to spread the word about this unique tool.

I combined my expertise in healthy living with this passion for personality-based brain strengths in my book: Strengths in the Mirror, Thriving Now and Tomorrow, in which I share stories form my life as well as from colleagues about using one’s strengths to thrive no matter what. Indeed, one of the key ways to thrive is to regularly use our strengths to make a difference for ourselves and those around us. I’m proud that this has been my key driver all of my life and that I’ve applied my strengths in a variety of ways. Hence, I’ll wrap up here by mentioning that I’ve found solace, renewed energy and healing though my art, Leaders in wellbeing science and flourishing emphasize how the arts are indeed a source of healing and rejuvination. Using my strengths to make a real difference in my work, my art, genuine connections with the people I meet during my world travels, and my very special relationship with my daughter, who is adopted from China, represents the core of who I am.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I were to go back, I would absolutely choose my current profession in lifestyle medicine and positive health. These fields uniquely offer the backbone that we all need to thrive in this increasingly challenging world. With the public health crisis of loneliness, increasing disease of despair, violence, wars, and the existential threat to our planet, we can nudge and even propel ourselves forward through the power of practices of healthy living and positive psychology. Not only can we develop the physical and mental resilience through these practices, but we can contribute to slowing climate change by eating a predominantly plant based diet, for example. Also the science behind positive social connection is clear; this element of positive psychology is most robust and, along with other elements, needs to be harnessed by individuals, health care and the community in general. I have been honored to be working at the crossroads of this evolving field of positive health.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Success in health and medicine and in leadership comes down to honesty, integrity, authentic connection, and dedication. For example. We need to make sure to honestly look at the science and not oversell interventions where the science is not clear; that is key. This way we build credibility, Health care leaders, clinicians and researchers can collaborate to honestly expose what we do not know, pose the questions that guide better practice despite lacking all of the answers, and promote future necessary research.

Contact Info:

• Website: Https://positivehealth.world
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianalianov
• Youtube: Global Positive Health Institute, @globalositivehealth

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