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HOW DO YOU SHARE HAPPINESS?

Live Happy’s March/April Issue Encourages All to Be a Part of the Happiness Movement and Make the World A Better Place via #HappyActs Dallas, TX– March 3, 2015 – Live Happy celebrates the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness (March 20th) with its second annual issue dedicated to this day. As the magazine continues to share its quest of creating and living a happy life, the March/April issue offers features exploring well-being around the world and close to home. It also offers expert advice on habits, staying positive, celebrating at work and celebrating you. In addition, this issue kicks off Live Happy’s #HappyActs Challenge. With the mission to make the world a happier place, Live Happy is asking people to do the small things that bring a little happiness to the world around them. By sharing these actions online using #HappyActs, others will be encouraged to spread even more joy. You can accept the challenge to do #HappyActs at www.happyacts.org. On March 20th, Live Happy walls will also be set up in cities throughout the country, where residents can post messages and artwork in their local communities. Dedicated to embracing the spirit of International Day of Happiness, this new issue features articles inspiring happiness in all aspects of life, including tips from celebrities: “Good Company”: Tiffani Thiessen, the Cooking Channel’s Dinner at Tiffani’s host who starred in White Collar, Saved by the Bell, and Beverly Hills 90210, shares her tips on how to host a happy, stress-free and flavorful dinner party. “Balancing a Full House”: Candace Cameron Bure, a recent Dancing with the Stars contestant and former star of Full House, discusses how she finds a happy medium in all aspects of her life —as a wife, mother and actress—by staying focused on core family values through a balanced priority system. “The Happiest Place on Earth”: Home experts offer health and design tips on how to create joyful spaces that promote healing, togetherness and peace. Ideas include how to make one’s home a sanctuary, how to invest in a more sustainable home, as well as unhealthy house remedies from Travis Stork, M.D., co-host of the syndicated talk show The Doctors. “Happiness Around the World”: People from six countries tell where they found happiness and reveal how the quest to thrive goes beyond age, country, belief, and circumstance. “Can Positivity Save the Planet?”: Psychologists explain how positivity—specifically the connection between sustainability and happiness—shifts focus from consumption to shared experiences, helping to preserve the planet for future generations. “For the second year in a row, Live Happy’s March/April issue is dedicated to the International Day of Happiness, which perfectly aligns with the magazine’s mission to inspire all to be happy, but also to pass it on!” says Deborah K. Heisz, Live Happy’s co-founder and editorial director. “Spring is the season of renewal, so it is the perfect time of year to fill life with meaning and purpose by celebrating moments big and small to make the word a happier place—for yourself, family and friends and the world in general.” This issue of Live Happy also celebrates the start of spring and Earth Day with suggestions for ways to make life greener. You’ll find “Go Green” goods that will make both people and the planet happy, information on the mental and physical benefits of gardens, parks and even backyards, as well as tips to lift your spirit as the weather warms. Live Happy is available on major newsstands, and a digital edition is available from the App Store and on Google Play. Current Live Happy subscribers receive complimentary access on their tablet devices. Separate digital subscriptions are available for $9.99 at livehappy.com. For more information on the #HappyActs Challenge, to post online or find a local wall location, please visit www.happyacts.org. # # # About Live Happy Live Happy LLC, owned by veteran entrepreneur Jeff Olson, is a company dedicated to promoting and sharing authentic happiness through education, integrity, gratitude and community awareness. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, its mission is to impact the world by bringing the happiness movement to a personal level and inspiring people to engage in purpose-driven, healthy, meaningful lives. Media Inquiries: Alessandra Carriero Krupp Kommunications acarriero@kruppnyc.com (646) 797-2030
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Man finding his purpose

Finding Your Purpose in Life

Take a glimpse into the world of applied positive psychology with The Flourishing Center podcast. Each episode includes three sections giving you insights and hacks into living an authentically happy and flourishing life.​ What you'll learn in this podcast: Science Says—How getting Facebook likes can affect our happiness. Life Hack—Learn how to find your purpose in life. Practitioner’s Corner—Learn how a University is helping their students thrive. Learn more about The Flourishing Center Read the interview from the Practitioner's Corner: Emiliya:  Hello everyone and join me in welcoming Diana Brecher. She is coming to us live from Toronto, Ontario, and she is a clinical psychologist and scholar in residence for positive psychology at Ryerson University. She's been integrating positive psychology into her work, and I'm so excited for you guys to hear more about the delicious things she's up to in the world. So Diana, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us. Diana:  It's a pleasure. I'm so happy to be here. Emiliya:  Diana, tell us, what brought you to this work? Diana:  Well, I've been working in the university setting in the counseling center at Ryerson University since 1991, so it's 27 years since I started here and I've been working with students in distress that whole time, up until about a year and two months ago. And what I found was that I was able to really make a difference in these students' lives, but what I wanted to do, was I wanted to move upstream. I wanted to get into contact with these students well before the crisis emerged. And so I became really interested in positive psychology because I think that's a field of research and practice that really shows us that if we front-load a lot of skills and attitudes and behaviors early on, that kind of 40 percent that Sonja Lyubomirsky talks about that's under our control, we can make a huge difference in terms of our capacity to thrive and to flourish. So I became interested in learning those skills so that I could teach them to my community, being students, faculty, and staff in the university. Emiliya:  That's beautiful, Diana. One of the things that excites me so much is that so many psychology students go through university training and they rarely ever get to hear about positive psychology, because they spend so much of their time studying the basics of psychology, which of course is important, but I can't tell you the number of undergraduate students I've met that either ... maybe they finally heard about positive psychology their very last semester of college, or haven't heard of it at all, so it's so exciting to know that these tools are being given to our young adults and that they're getting the skills so early on, as well as their professors. Diana:  Absolutely. What I decided to do was, when I took the certificate course, certificate in applied positive psychology through the flourishing Center, what really struck me was that one of the foundations of flourishing is resilience. And so I created a five-factor model of resilience, which was the genesis of a training program that I now run for students and faculty and staff. It's a four-week program. It incorporates, I think, some of the best ideas in positive psychology, but I've put them together like pieces of a puzzle and I get people to engage in these skills with the hope that front loading them will allow these individuals to flourish when they do come across really stressful and difficult challenges. Emiliya:  That's awesome, Diana. Can you tell for the audience that's listening ... Some people might not be familiar with the concept of resilience. So, what, in your eyes, is resilience and in particular, what are the kind of things that you see that faculty in the schools and the students needing to be resilient around? Diana:  Well, I think of resilience as ... if you think of five pieces of a puzzle with mindfulness being the heart of it, so the capacity to be in the present moment, then gratitude for the good things in our life and our capacity to notice possibilities and engage in them. Optimism, which allows us to frame experiences in such a way that gives us the energy to bounce back, self compassion, really based on the work of Kristin Neff, looking at being your own best friend, and seeing your suffering in context. And then finally grit and resilience, so Angela Duckworth's work in grit around persevering, around obstacles, and having passion for very long-term goals, and at the same time, I've borrowed from Christine Padesky's work, who's a clinical psychologist in building a personal model of resilience, which is attending to the strategies and attitudes that we use when we persevere doing something we love to do, and transferring those same skills when we're encountering a challenge. So the second part of your question was what kind of challenges do students experience? Well, they're huge. They could be academic challenges because they may be unprepared for the demands of their program, or it may be life circumstances completely outside of their college or university experience, but they're simply not prepared to deal with a fire in their apartment building, their parents getting divorced, going through a serious breakup, dealing with health concerns, managing being far away from home as an international student. All kinds of stressors can come in, plus life events, like experiencing a clinical depression or an anxiety disorder, or a trauma where you do need a lot of help to bounce back. But sometimes, people postpone the help-seeking behaviors so long that it becomes a huge crisis by the time they get help. So I'm trying to teach people the strategies to manage things early on, to nip them in the bud so that they don't need crisis intervention because they've actually bounced back along the way. Emiliya:  I love that, Diana. Thank you so much for both walking us through your model and sharing some of those specifics. I think that one of the things I found in speaking about resilience and teaching resilience skills in our programs and others, is that I find that resilience becomes this buzzword that people want. Of course, you want to be resilient and we want organizations to be resilient, but so few people recognize that it's actually a skill set and it's made up of these micro level skills and that we could break it down and we could teach it and we could workshop it and we could train these muscles and when you train all of these different factors, they're all important pillars, you do get more resilience and I think the thing that's held people back from recognizing that resilience is something that they can increase, is that resilience is what is the outcome of all of these other factors that we work on building. Diana:  Exactly. And alongside of that, because it's ... you know I work in a very large university. There's 35,000 students. There's no way I'm going to personally interact with each one of them. What I did was I created a workbook, which I've called, Cultivate Your Happiness, A Thrive RU Weekly Workbook. Thrive RU is the title of the program that I'm running because RU stands for Ryerson University and what I did was I thought about the challenges of the academic term for both the fall and winter terms and came up with a weekly exercise for each of the 13 weeks of the term. Based on what I know about the challenges that students face, and so I'm kind of introducing positive psychology light through just a very simple exercise and a reflection question for each week so that students can play with the workbook like a journal. We've done it as a downloadable pdf, plus a print copy, and they can write all kinds of things in it, but each exercise is something taken from kind of research-validated exercises through Sonja Lyubomirsky, through the mindfulness tradition, through the cognitive therapy tradition, so I've kind of pulled in from whatever seemed most useful for me. And the feedback I've been getting from people who are using the workbook is that it's really changing how they're interacting with their ... kind of dealing with their challenges. They're feeling more resilient. They're engaging in more healthy activities. They're beginning to go, as it was talked about in the course that you taught, going kind of north of neutral. So they're not just going to get by. They're going to thrive. Emiliya:  That's amazing, Diana. Thank you, and I'm curious, what is the reaction from the faculty within Ryerson been, as you've been introducing positive psychology to them? Diana:  Well, you know it's been great because I've been doing it in two different ways. I've been invited into specific academic departments and teaching the faculty the five-factor model of resilience, so we do four sessions together. And then they've been inviting me slowly into the classroom to teach it to their students, so one fashion professor, who teaches a first year introductory course to 150 students, has invited me in for every week of this term, to teach her students about the workbook. So giving more of the background knowledge to the exercises that I've pulled together for that. I've been invited in to do lectures on resilience. I've been invited to work with the student leaders, or student ambassadors, in a particular department. I come in and I do training with them, training with students who work in the residence. And the faculty are basically saying, "We want our students to know this because we want them to do well. And they recognize that doing well academically, in part has to do with how well you're doing personally. And so if someone is unwell, they can't really flourish in a classroom. And so they want those kind of double set of skills. They're being talked about as the academic skills and then the thriving skills. Emiliya:  Diana, I'm so excited about what you're creating, and I'm imagining this ripple and tide effect and thinking how cool would it be to train the university students to be able to teach other students within the university and empower them with the skills to then teach it to others. Diana:  Well, actually, this Saturday coming up, I'm going to the University of Windsor. I'm going to be working with 45 or so mentors, who are student leaders like in maybe their third or fourth year of their degrees, who are going to be working with first year students and teaching them to thrive by incorporating the exercises from my workbook, but by really bringing it to life what I'm doing in the workshop is I'm giving them the background of what the exercise is all about and how to teach it with extra resources and such. And my hope is that as I keep working with student leaders also at Ryerson, that it's going to be almost like a pyramid scheme in the best possible way, where I teach one group of people and then they teach the next group of people. So it's the train the trainer model and it's really exciting to see that roll out where I don't have to be the one person who has all this knowledge, but I'm sharing it with everyone and it's giving it away and then they take it and they own it and they teach it to other people. Emiliya:  The thing that excites me the most about that is that so much of what we're doing is we're teaching skills and sometimes positive psychology can come across to people as that's really nice theory, or that's a good skill to know, but there's only so much life experience you could be going through while you're learning those skills, and so to teach really is to learn. So I'm excited for these students because as they learn these skills, they learn it one level. They learn it first on the head level and they go, "Yeah, that makes sense." And maybe from this massive tool kit of tools that you're offering them, at that point in time in their life, they're only going to be able to use one or two, because they'll be most relevant, but as they start to teach it to others, they have more time with the skills, and they start to embody the skills in a very different way. And so, to teach is to learn and I'm excited that these students are going to get this opportunity to pass the skills on to others. Diana:  Absolutely. We've had an amazingly positive reaction. There's another program that I just launched with a colleague who's a learning strategist. So last March, we invited students who were not in crisis, but not flourishing, kind of that middle ground, languishing, into an eight week program that we call Thriving in Action. And what we did was, each week for two hours, my colleague, Deena Shaffer, would teach holistic learning strategies, and I would teach thriving strategies. And we did it over an eight week period. We had enormous success. We did pre and post tests trying to measure change by self report, by the students in these objective measures, and also subjectively, and what we found was there was a huge shift in the sense of well-being in these students, in part because we were really getting them where they lived. So their context is a university. So if they can do well in an exam, they're going to feel better, and if they are sleeping better and exercising, and becoming more optimistic, and engaging in daily gratitude, they're going to perform much better academically. And so it becomes like this one hand washing the other and the students found that it made an enormous difference. And so we're now running a whole set of ... well this term is going to be three cohorts of students who are self-identified as struggling either academically or personally. And they're going to be coming to the skill-based group. We've made it an eleven week curriculum. We've involved Outward Bound, which is a kind of outdoors, in nature experience around resilience. We've partnered with our athletic center so that students who are taking our program can access any of their exercise classes for free. We're really working at trying to look at the whole person and our hope is that this is really going to be an idea that takes off and that this curriculum is going to be something that others can use. We're hoping to turn it into an e-course. We're kind of working around the pedagogy around that as well. Emiliya:  That's awesome. Thank you, Diana. And Diana, I'm curious. How has positive psychology impacted you, personally? Diana:  It has in the best possible way in that I reinvented my career at a somewhat later stage of a career. You know, 25 years here. I left the counseling center. I was seconded into this new role. I'm now in the second year of this work, and what I'm finding is that I'm flourishing because I'm so happy in what I'm doing. The life satisfaction of teaching these skills in this role, thinking about, reading about, and kind of being immersed in positive psychology, has actually become an incredible emotion boost for me. I'm feeling like I'm flourishing because now I know so much about how to do it. So I'm applying it to myself. Emiliya:  And what are some of your favorite ways to put positive psychology into practice yourself? Diana:  Well, I used to meditate periodically, doing mindfulness meditation, but I've become a regular meditator. So, I do that daily. It's really become part of my whole routine, so every morning I do yoga and meditation. I engage in daily gratitude. Three good things are just not enough. There are many more than three, so I really take note of them all day, and it really helps when I'm faced with challenges to remember all of those good things. I've taught myself how to become an optimist. I mean Martin Seligman's work in learned optimism is really the genesis of what I teach people as part of the resilience training and I can do it now. I know how to be more optimistic. Self compassion is something that didn't come that easily to me, but now that I'm teaching it, I'm teaching it to others, but teaching it to myself, so I'm becoming much more self compassionate. And I'm persevering. Not that it takes a lot of perseverance to do this because it's so much fun, but the days are long and I have a lot of commitments, and you have to keep going, and it's easy for me to do that because I get such a sense of meaning from it. And that's one of the things, when I think about PERMA-V, is the meaning that we derive from activities that are in our value system, is incredible. And if you can live your life according to your values, there's nothing better. Emiliya:  Diana, I'm curious if you have taken on any words to live by that are your guiding principles of what helps you show up in the world the way that you want to. Diana:  Really, it's about bouncing back. Life is going to always have challenges before us. And our job is to do more than just cope with that. It's really to bounce back. And so that's what I try to do, is I try to be flexible. I try to be open. I try to be playful. And when these things are challenging, I just remember I have to bounce back. Emiliya:  Thank you so much for sharing that. And the last question that we've been asking people is how do you define in your heart and in your mind, what it means to flourish? Diana:  I think it's really being your best self and giving yourself permission to take the risks that you need to take in order to reach your dreams. Emiliya:  That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that, Diana. Diana, people would love to learn more about what you're up to, what Ryerson University is up to, this amazing program on thriving that you've created. What are some ways that we can learn more? Diana:  Well, at this point, our website is probably the best place to go, because you can download the workbook from there, I have some tip sheets, and we have some resilience flash cards. We've created some materials. We're going to be updating the website sometime soon, but that's probably a good place to start. So it's basically https://ryerson.ca\thriveru Emiliya:  Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing your insight, your wisdom, your passion, and some of the beautiful things that you're doing in the world. Diana:  Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking with you, Emiliya. And again, I really have to thank you once again for offering this certificate in applied positive psychology, because it changed my life. And so I really am very grateful. So thank you. Emiliya:  Thank you, Diana. Much love to you. Thank you. Is helping people thrive part of your purpose? If so, visit our website, theflourishingcenter.com, and learn more about how we are training the change agents of the world to turn their passion for helping people into a career where they spread positive psychology through coaching, teaching, and consulting. Thanks for listening and have a flourishing day.
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Illustration of a brain with two sides.

Train Your Brain for Happiness

Last year, my daughters and I surprised my husband by gifting him with the cutest puppy you’ve ever seen. He was thrilled! The tiny fur ball was calm and snuggly and eager to please—for about a week. As she became more comfortable in the family, though, she began to test her boundaries. For those of you who have ever raised a puppy (or a child, for that matter), you will understand how shocking it can be when your perfect angel gets that first glint of mischief in his or her eye. The morning that this happened to me, I was running late for work (of course), and my puppy was taking an epic morning stroll, looking for the perfect spot to do her business. The moment she finished, I swooped in impatiently to pick her up, and my cuddly lump of fur looked me square in the eye and did a side-lunge-juke to evade me! Not only that, but she squeezed through my fence and dashed into my neighbor’s muddy garden with the joyful bound of a gazelle. I chased after her; I scolded her; I used my high-pitch-fake-happy voice; I even tried to trick her into coming with a treat. But in that moment, I realized with chagrin that I had never bothered to teach my puppy the all-important recall command “come,” as in, “come here right now, darn it!” Assuming that she would always be a pliable lump of snuggly fur, I had underestimated my puppy’s developing mind and the need for attention training. Our Puppy Brains Likewise, our brains can behave like untrained puppies at times. Sometimes, we fail to train our brains to “come” when called, assuming that our minds operate on autopilot and always act in our best interest. Yet, as we all know from personal experience, when challenges arise, our bodies aren’t always well trained to respond on command. Sometimes our bodies take over, resorting to a “fight or flight” response. And instead of behaving in our best interest, our mind begins acting like a mischievous puppy on the run. We haven’t taught our minds how to listen to us obediently because we either didn’t even know it was possible or had no idea how to do so. Fortunately, the last two decades of research in the field of positive psychology have revealed that training our brains is not only possible, but that doing so can actually change the shape and function of our brains by improving neural plasticity (you can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks); increase gray matter (the density of brain cells that drive how fast you can move, learn, and sense things around you); and strengthen neural networks (the pathways for our brain to talk to itself and the rest of the body). A recent study of mindfulness in the workplace found that the ability to step back from automatic, habitual reactions (those fight-or-flight responses) is highly predictive of work engagement and well-being. For instance, if you often feel your blood starting to boil when you hear a colleague down the hall talking too loudly on the phone, metacognition and mindfulness give you the power to choose a different reaction—perhaps taking a deep breath, using the opportunity to go for a walk, or listening to your favorite music. Mindfulness also creates positive job-related benefits, higher levels of engagement and increased psychological capital (hope, optimism, resiliency and self-efficacy), all of which may lead to more success at work. Specifically, a positive and engaged brain is 31 percent more productive, three times more creative and ten times more engaged. To reap these benefits, we need to actually train our brains for positivity. In the same way that you might go to the gym to exercise different muscle groups, so can you intentionally develop different skill sets that improve your overall sense of well-being and happiness. One of my favorite brain-training programs is called Happify.com (it’s free!). Happify uses colorful, fun games that are grounded in research to teach core positive psychology principles. Here are a few of my favorite brain-training activities on the platform: Need help focusing on the positive? A game called “Uplift” teaches your brain to scan the environment for the positive, thereby improving your mood and reducing negative thinking. As hot-air balloons float by, click on words like “joy” or “radiant” while ignoring words like “criticize” or “angry.” ‹ Searching for a way to relax? Choose the “Serenity Scene” activity. Perfect for someone feeling overwhelmed with‹a long to-do list, these guided relaxation tracks can help people unwind, feel less anxious, and get a fresh charge of energy (grounded in brain-scan research). ‹ Want games for your children to try? “Negative Knockout” is an Angry Birds–like game where you use a slingshot to destroy words that describe your biggest challenges that day. ‹Two months after regularly using the platform, 86 percent of users report feeling significantly happier. This impressive statistic highlights how technology can create positive change in our lives, enabling us to rise above our genes and environment to tap into our greater potential. ‹ Happify is one of the best comprehensive resources for brain training that I have found; however, there are numerous apps, gadgets and devices for brain training that are worth exploring as well. To download a full list of my favorite brain-training apps, gadgets and devices, amyblankson.com/braintrain. Training your brain is not just a hobby for overachievers; it’s a leadership strategy. Whether you are a CEO, summer intern, corporate employee, graduate student, athlete or parent, these training skill sets are the building blocks of positive habit change in your life. It’s time to start training our minds now—and just like with puppies, the sooner we can start training ourselves, the better. Read more by Amy Blankson: Let Technology Lift Your Life and The Internet of Things Brings the Future Home. Listen to our podcasts with Amy: How to Declutter With Digital Spring Cleaning and The Future of Happiness.
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Making Positive Thoughts a Bit Easier

Take a glimpse into the world of applied positive psychology with The Flourishing Center podcast. Each episode includes three sections giving you insights and hacks into living an authentically happy and flourishing life. What you'll learn in this podcast: Science Says—How to make thinking positive thoughts a bit easier. Life Hack—Learn how to control your mind chatter. Practitioner’s Corner—Meet Tara Kennedy Kline, the woman behind the new line of dolls and characters that are teaching positive psychology to children. Learn more aboutThe Flourishing Center Read the interview from the Practitioner's Corner: In a world where games and entertainment for children is going digital, Tara Kennedy Kline is building toys with purpose, meaning and positive psychology teachings! Tara Kennedy Kline is a graduate of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) Program. Residing in Philadelphia, PA, she is a parenting advocate, author and creator of the Within Me Now Series of positive psychology toys for children. Here’s our interview: Emiliya: Welcome Tara! Tell us more about what you’ve created and how you got started. Tara: I wanted to give parents and children positive experiences and positive mindsets about themselves. Initially, I thought we would just use the dolls to reinforce positive affirmations that what they needed was within them. Then I realized that within me now was more than just affirmations. Each character could represent a petal in the PERMA-V of the model of well-being that we learned about in the CAPP Program. So, for my graduation project I introduced the six characters: Penny (Positivity), Eva (Engagement), Rusty (Relationships), Max (Meaning), Amber (Achievement) and Violet (Vitality). Each is an 18-inch doll with its own storyboards. The goal was to create an experience for the parent and child, not just tell the story. We encourage the reader to put themselves into that scenario and ask what the person might be experiencing, thinking or feeling. How would they resolve the issue if they were in that person's shoes? My hope is that they will become a part of a Within Me Now Community and that each child will value themselves, recognize their strengths and learn the social and emotional skills that they need to thrive. The characters are diverse and they represent the challenges that children are facing in classrooms that may not have had much attention before. For Eve who represents engagement has Asperger's. So, one of the things that she struggles with is self-regulation and choice and decision making. Through Eva's experiences and scenarios, children can learn to make better choices and their flow. They learn resilience, acceptance and many other positive psychology lessons that help them tackle the real-life problems they experience in school and with their friends and just growing up in general. Emiliya: Wow, these are incredible. What are your dreams for Within Me Now? Tara: My team and I are building a six-week curriculum for Grades K-3 and hope to get the Within Me Now characters into the hands parents, teachers and children all over the world. They are also talking to some major networks about animating Within Me Now into a positive psychology related children's cartoon series. They're even working on a clothing line of T-shirts that say "All the love I need is within me now." Or, "All the courage I need is within me now." Backpacks, journals and many delightful mediums for getting the messages of these lovable and friendly characters into the hands of children. Emiliya: While I know that Within Me Now is a recent endeavor, you’ve been applying positive psychology in your own life and your family for nearly a decade. What are some of the strategies you’ve used? Tara: One of the first things I started to do with my family was a co-operative gratitude journal. Every night, when I would put my kids to bed, I would ask them a few questions and I would answer the questions too. By doing that we got to know each other on an intimate level which is what I think is the basis for all wonderful parenting and child development. We would talk about the five things that we were grateful for that day and then also ask a question about challenges such "what's something that went wrong today that I would do differently if I could do it over?" The ritual planted the seeds to their resilience and growth mindset. Emiliya: What's a message that you'd love to share with others who are passionate about learning and spreading positive psychology? Tara: There is something that's uniquely brilliant about you that will allow you to share it in a way that the people that need to hear it will hear, and it will be something they can only hear from you. So even if you're doubting yourself, or you think your dreams or too big, or not practical enough, go with your gifts. Go with what you love. Someone once told me, "If I'm preaching my message people will turn from me. But if I'm living my message people will follow me." Just live into this message and you will call to you the people that need to hear it from you in your way. Emiliya: What are the self-care practices that nourish you? Tara: I love daily exercise. Just getting on the treadmill every single day. It's something that I had gotten away from, but once I did the CAPP Program and realized the impact that exercise was making on my mood and my brain, I shifted my perspective on movement. I used to hold the belief that I had to exercise to get myself skinny or I had to exercise to make myself look a certain way. Now I exercise make my brain work. I have some of my best ideas when I'm on the treadmill or just walking outside. Also, changing the way that I eat. I can't say I didn't have a can of tortelini for breakfast this morning so it's not a perfect science, but I do find myself making better choices when I have choices to make. That has made a huge difference in my life. The final thing is surrounding myself with people who share my common belief for a more positive community and a more positive environment for my kids. For a long time in my life, I allowed myself to remain surrounded by some really negative people. Once I started doing the CAPP Program and realized how incredible it was to have a tribe of positive and supportive people, I realized how much that was lacking in my life. Before every On Site, I'd find myself so excited in anticipation to see everyone. I realized that I needed to get more of that in my everyday life. It's another reason I'm so passionate about bringing Within Me Now into classrooms. I want classrooms to feel what my classmates and I feel when we study and apply positive psychology. I want them to experience the types of conversations that my family and I have worked to create at our dinner table. And most importantly, I want them to feel the sense of connection to themselves and to one another as they learn life skills that give them strength from the inside out. that way for all students. I want every student in a public school classroom to feel the way we do when a whole bunch of positive psychology students are getting together in a classroom and maybe we don't all agree but we respectfully communicate with each other and we are all more focused on lifting each other up than we are on tearing each other down. Can you speak more about what those are and how you came about having family pillars like when I think about my upbringing I think my family had pillars that we never never actually voiced them. It's sort of like the unconscious family culture that was created but it sounds like you and your family have been conscious and purposeful about what you've created. Emiliya: Rumor has it that in your family, you have pillars that you live by. Can you speak more to how you created that and got your family on board? Tara: Yes absolutely. It's something that I created when my children were younger because I felt like I was constantly having to recite the rules. I think a lot of parents can empathize with that statement. We feel like we're not really role models as much as we are guards or drill sergeants. We spend all day saying, "We don't jump on the sofa," and "We don't poke our brother," and "We don't put things up our nose," and "We don't do this and we don't do that." Children don't set out to break our rules, it's just that we have too many of them. Everything suddenly becomes a rule when you have kids. So what we've established is our family pillars. For example: We are kind and we are respectful. We are honest and we are patient. We are gentle. So if someone was acting in a way that wasn't respectful, instead of saying, "You we don't call people that name," I can say, what you did wasn't respectful or it wasn't. We don't take things from people because that isn't kind, and that's not respectful. We don't yell at people because that's not gentle and that's not patient. Having these family pillars makes it a lot easier to follow the rules. Emiliya: I love that. These pillars also give you and your family an opportunity to recognize, celebrate and appreciate when the pillars are being upheld, instead of only providing feedback to your children when a rule is broken. It's just how we describe the difference between traditional psychology and positive psychology. Traditional psychology was trying to figure out what we shouldn't be doing or how do we treat or prevent disease. Positive psychology identifies what are the behaviors we want and how do we build mental health and well-being. Emiliya: What are some of your “words to live by”? Tara: I have two favorites. “Don’t complain about what you permit.” It’s one of my kick in the butt statements. And the other is, “Seek first to understand.” Emiliya: Any closing thoughts? Tara: Just that we spend most of our lives struggling and going over hurdles. When our kids reach their 30s or late 20s they start grappling with what their purpose is, or what’s going to bring them meaning. Some people tend to think that kids are too young to start asking these questions or that they may not get these types of skills. But they do and they love it. My wish is that we create more opportunities to show children how to find their strengths and their resourcefulness. That they see themselves as whole in their uniqueness and that parents, teachers and kids have vehicles for celebrating what’s right with eachother.
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Woman doing yoga in her home.

The Healing Power of Yoga

I was only 6 years old when I discovered what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to save people who were sick. I wanted to make them strong so that they could be their own heroes. Not the kind with capes and X-ray vision, but those who realize their power to take charge of their health and live their best lives. Those who make their health a priority and implement important life changes to achieve greater health and happiness. Health Heroes. I want to create a world full of them. It’s what drives me to this day. Two of the best ways to achieve a healthier life are through movement and spirituality. Each is an important tool in your fight against disease and premature death. That’s why yoga is such a powerful ally to any Health Hero; it serves as a bridge connecting your physical and mental well-being. Strengthen Your Body Practicing yoga can result in significant improvement to your physical health. As part of your daily routine, yoga will likely transform your body into one that is firmer, leaner and stronger. However, some of the most impressive benefits happen beneath the surface. When you practice regularly, you increase your chances for lower blood pressure, improved cardiovascular health, better flexibility, greater muscle strength, perfected posture, better pulmonary function, lower blood sugar, boosted immunity and improved bone health (critical to warding off osteoporosis). Transform Your Mind When people think “health,” they tend to think only about the body. But a Health Hero knows that your mind is your greatest power. What’s amazing is that the simple practice of cultivating your mind can actually improve your health and happiness and add years to your life! Think of yoga as a workout for your soul. You need to condition it, like a muscle, in order to develop and grow stronger. Because yoga clears your mind of distracting “noise,” it creates space in which new things can develop. You become empowered to discover yourself on a much more intimate level. Your personal strengths and desires become easier to identify. It becomes easier for you to focus and get creative. That alone leads you down a path to new ideas, solutions and purpose. We know that stress is a silent killer, but did you know that yoga is the ultimate stress reducer? When you begin to breathe deeply and focus on your poses, you reduce anxiety. You enter a more relaxed state and calm your nervous system, diminishing the fight-or-flight response. Yoga is believed to combat depression. In fact, a study published March 16 in PLOS ONE concludes that eight weeks of twice-weekly, 90-minute hatha yoga sessions can significantly reduce the severity of depressive symptoms. Even your romantic relationship can improve. When you’re centered and more connected with yourself, you’re able to be that same way with your partner. A Life Reimagined Imagine how your life could change if your body and mind transformed in these ways. What would you do differently with improved health, extra endurance, less anxiety, more focus and a greater sense of purpose? You’d probably be able to enjoy life in entirely new ways. My Prescriptions for a Healthy Body and Soul Make the commitment to move with purpose every day. Even a few minutes of yoga will do the trick. If you’re stuck at work or have limited time to yourself, opt for an easy yet effective yoga pose that can quickly be done at home or in the office (try cat pose, forward fold and seated twist, as shown in the accompanying illustrations). A chair or a place to stand is all you need. Practice yoga every day, and the repetition will intensify the physical and mental health benefits while creating an ever-deepening spiritual connection. I encourage you to use the power of yoga to improve your mind-body wellness and continue your journey toward a healthier and more purposeful life. Recognize that your health comes first and give yourself permission to make it a priority. When you give yourself this most important gift, you’ll be taking that first step to becoming a true Health Hero. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste. Read more: Become Your Own Health Hero Listen to our podcast: Health and Happiness With Dr. Partha Nandi DR. PARTHA NANDI is the creator and host of the internationally syndicated, award-winning medical lifestyle television show Ask. Dr. Nandi and author of the book Ask Dr. Nandi: 5 Steps to Becoming Your Own #HealthHero for Longevity, Well-Being, and a Joyful Life.
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Teenagers hanging out.

Know When to Intervene With Your Teen

Part of adolescent development involves gaining independence, making good choices and learning the skills required to successfully move into adulthood. As a therapist and parent of two older children, I have experienced—both personally and professionally—the dilemma of not knowing whether to intervene or stay away when a teen is having trouble. As parents we have a daunting challenge to strike a balance between hovering on the one hand and being too distant or disconnected on the other. From a psychological point of view, it is very important that we let our kids have the autonomy to make mistakes on their own. It will improve their self-esteem and ability to cope in the world and will increase their skills set to take on more difficult challenges in the future. That said, a hands-off approach can leave a teenager feeling lost, un-cared for, and can even leave them in situations that might be detrimental to their emotional or physical well-being. Parents often need to become detectives who gather information and awareness of what is taking place in their children's lives so that they can better decide if and when help is needed—and if it's needed, how much to give. Here are some guidelines to help you decide when, whether and how much to get involved. Read more: 4 Ways to Raise High-Achieving Kids 1. Know your teenager Take a moment to truly assess the type of teenager you have. Is she easily influenced? Oblivious to dangerous situations? A risk taker? Someone who doesn't often think through the consequences of her actions? If you have answered yes to any of these questions then it is important for you to be more aware of what's going on and more involved in your child's life. Invest time to learn the details of your child’s day-to-day activities. Look for these potential warning signs, but at the same time, teach her more life skills she may be lacking and look for signs of improvement and growth so that you can shift toward the positive when you interact. 2. Assess your relationship with your teenager Are the two of you close? Does he communicate with you on a regular basis and share details about his life? Do you have contact with his friends and feel as if you know what is going on? Or do you find that you are shut out and unaware of what is happening? The more open your relationship is with your child, the easier it is for you to assess your need for involvement and intervention. The less you know, the more that you might need to worry—so stay informed. This is an area where balance is critical: If you are too intrusive, he might become more secretive, but if you are too unaware you could miss important concerns. 3. Be aware of your teen’s environment What activities is your teen involved in, and who does he or she hang out with on a regular basis? Do you know her friends? If your teen is in situations that hold the potential for emotional, social, financial or physical danger, it is important for you to increase your level of involvement. (Often a parent will see potential danger where a teen sees none; that's part of the job.) A parental or trusted adult presence, be it emotional or physical, can be a strong deterrent for risky behaviors and can also provide a feeling of support. 4. Examine your own emotional well-being Even though we are older, wiser and more experienced than our children, emotional distress can make us vulnerable and impact our own decisions about when and whether or not to intervene with our kids’ lives. Look inside to see if your own difficult childhood, or simply something negative you are going through at the present time, might be affecting your involvement (or over-involvement or lack of involvement) in your teen’s life, and see if you might need to make corrections. Read more: Teen Angst or Teen Anguish? Read more: Make the Best of Your Empty Nest Stacy Kaiser is a licensed psychotherapist, author, relationship expert and media personality. She is also the author of the best-selling book How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know and an editor at large for Live Happy. Stacy is a frequent guest on television programs such as Today and Good Morning America.
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Ditty about summer

Practitioner’s Corner: Louisa Jewell

What does it mean to put the science of happiness and well-being into practice? Live Happy is excited to present a series of interviews from our partners, The Flourishing Center, that highlight practitioners making an extraordinary impact in the world by putting positive psychology into practice. As we present you with inspiring human stories, we also want to empower you to put these strategies into action in your own life. Today’s spotlight interview is Louisa Jewell. Louisa brings positive psychology to life through workshops, courses, podcasts and, most recently, her book, Wire Your Brain for Confidence: The Science of Conquering Self-Doubt. She is a facilitator of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) Program in Vancouver and Toronto. *** The Flourishing Center: Louisa, you’ve been teaching positive psychology for more than a decade. Many people look at you as a naturally happy and joyful person. Although you have so much happiness and fulfillment today, I know it hasn’t always been that way. Tell us more about what got you to this point. Louisa: About 16 years ago, I was in a very dark place. After four miscarriages, I found myself in a deep depression. My doctor put me on antidepressants, and I was seeing a psychologist. But, I knew if I ever wanted to take control of my own well-being and happiness I was going to need to learn what my psychologist knew. I started researching and discovered there was a scientific study of well-being called positive psychology. I started reading every book I could get my hands on, and I began to put what I was learning into practice. I went on to pursue my master’s degree in applied positive psychology (MAPP) at the University of Pennsylvania, where I studied with the field’s founding father, Dr. Martin Seligman, and many other prominent psychologists. I read hundreds of academic papers and applied everything I learned to myself and my family. The knowledge I gained transformed my life. I have never fallen into a depression since. Even through my most challenging years, I’ve been able to stay healthy with the resilience skills I learned. TFC: Thank you for sharing your journey and reminding us all that resilience is about continuing to move through the obstacles. From your time at the University of Pennsylvania, you went on to found the Canadian Positive Psychology Association (https://www.cppa.ca). How did that come to be? When I am struggling or going through a rough time, I always ask, ‘What would my best friend say to me right now?’ And then I speak to myself in those kind words.” Louisa: It was 2012 and I was one of only three Canadians in the whole country to hold a master’s in positive psychology. Many people had not heard of the field or had misconceptions about it. I wanted to spread the word that positive psychology isn’t just about happiness, it’s about being psychologically strong, reaching higher levels of performance, being resilient in the face of extreme challenges, persevering and bouncing back from failures, building willpower, managing daily moods and more. The CPPA mission is to disseminate the research and applications in positive psychology to all Canadians, to improve their mental well-being and promote positive mental health. Since founding the organization, with the dedicated support of my colleagues, we’ve run several conferences with speakers from around the globe. TFC: In addition to your work with the CPPA, you’ve written a new book. Tell us about it. Louisa: As I was reflecting on all the positive psychology tools I have gathered, the skills with the greatest impact on me were the ones that helped me overcome self-doubt and built my confidence. In time, I started pursuing everything I wanted to do, without feelings of failure or constant negative ruminations. I stopped self-sabotaging, and I embraced the things that challenged me. I realized there weren’t any books out there for the public on self-doubt that were fully research-based, so I wanted to share what I had learned with others who struggled with self-doubt. TFC: That sounds like a great help to people—teaching them to work with their doubts rather than being debilitated by them. Finally, do you have any advice from your new book that you’d like to share? Louisa: I do, and it comes from the concept of self-compassion. When I am struggling or going through a rough time, I always ask, “How would my best friend treat me right now?” or “What would my best friend say to me right now?” And then I treat myself and speak to myself in those kind words. Self-compassion is one of the most important tools you have. Wire Your Brain for Confidence: The Science of Conquering Self-Doubt, launches Sept. 21, along with workshops to help others manage their self-doubt and pursue their most desired goals. Find out more at LouisaJewell.com. Listen to our podcast: Wire Your Brain for Confidence With Louisa Jewell The Flourishing Center empowers people who are passionate about helping make the world a better place by putting the skills and tools of positive psychology into practice and creating sustainable work for themselves in the field. Find out more about the Certificate in Positive Psychology, offered in 12 cities and online.
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Live Happy's 15 Way to Stay Grounded

15 Ways to Stay Grounded

Walking along a trail through an ancient redwood forest deeply rooted into the rocks and cliffs of the Pacific Coast, I stop for a moment and inhale a deep, refreshing breath of earth, ocean and pine. The quiet that surrounds me is timeless. Sunlight pierces the forest canopy and moves down deeply grooved bark until it reaches the forest floor nearly 300 feet below. By the time it touches the moss and pine needles beneath my feet and sparkles across the brook that nourishes giant roots that seem to have grown since the beginning of time, the constant state of hypervigilance that seems part of my daily life has dropped away, the tension that keeps me ready to run at a moment’s notice has gone and the sense that—in an hour, a minute, a moment—the sky will surely fall has simply disappeared. Gently, I reach out to touch the bark of a tree nearly 1,400 years old, close my eyes and take a deep breath of the richly scented air that surrounds me. Here among the trees, I feel grounded. And I know that I can handle anything. The New Reality Today the sense of feeling deeply rooted, deeply centered and able to handle anything is a gift. Recent economic, social and political events may trigger changes that can come at us so quickly that we run in circles trying to figure out how our lives will be affected six months or a year down the line. Negative noise surrounds us as we become dependent on instant news, social media and plugging in. And that’s in addition to the tumult of everyday life—coping with moody teenagers, watching over aging parents and navigating workplace politics. In a 2017 national survey, the American Psychological Association (APA) reported that 57 percent of us view the current political state as a source of significant stress. “This is a crazy time,” says Catherine Mogil, Psy.D., director of training and intervention development for UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center and a consultant for the National Military Family Association Operation Purple Family Retreats. “Parents are stressed, kids are stressed,” she says. And, says Katherine C. Nordal, Ph.D., the APA’s executive director for professional practice, “We’re surrounded by conversations, news and social media that constantly remind us of the issues that are stressing us the most.” Searching for Solid Ground So what are we to do? How—when this fast-changing world seems bent on keeping us anxious and unsettled—do we work, feed the family, get Dad to his doctor’s appointment on time and still keep our own feet planted firmly on the ground? 1. Carve out your turf. Begin by showing yourself that you can make a difference in the world, suggests Catherine. Pick one single thing in your neighborhood, local school or community that needs fixing and figure out how you can carve out the time, talent and resources from your life to get it done. When Galit Reuben realized several years ago that people in Los Angeles were abandoning dogs on the streets in unprecedented numbers, for example, she began picking up the starving and often battered pups, and asking friends to keep them until she could find the dogs a home. Eleven years later, the Ojai, California, mom has built an organization with a network of foster homes and street corner adoption fairs that has led to the placement of more than 3,000 mutts in forever homes. Her passion to help these abused creatures—to make sure they are loved and cared for—has not only rescued dogs, but has also brought together an entire community of caring people to support one another. Read more: 17 Ways to Give Back According to Your Strengths 2. Ditch the online politics. A 2016 survey of more than 14,000 social media users from the Pew Research Center reveals that more than one-third of us are “worn out” by all the political comments we run into on Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the social media universe. What’s more—59 percent of us who engage in a political discussion with a social media friend with whom we disagree end up feeling stressed and frustrated. 3. Manage your phone. Assign a special ring tone to your children and others who depend on you for care and emergency help. Outside of work, ignore other calls that come in, but then set aside 30 minutes or so each day to return to them. And turn off notifications! Any device that pings, beeps, burps and plays the national anthem can drive you crazy. According to a 2016 study by researchers at the University of British Columbia, students who kept their notifications on for one week reported significantly higher levels of inattention and hyperactivity than students who kept their phones off. The researchers reported that the higher levels of inattention predicted lower levels of productivity and well-being. Read more: Are You a Phone Snubber? 4. Sink into the mud. When Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Carly Arenaz needs her own personal renewal after helping clients explore the unique challenges they experience every week, she’ll pack up her miniature Pomeranian—Philippe, aka “the mayor of Hollywood”—and head north to the mud baths of Napa Valley. “They’re unbelievable,” says Carly, as she closes her eyes in remembrance. “You sink into a tub full of warm mud,” and the mud—a combination of volcanic ash, peat and mineral water from a hot spring—gently pulls you down until you’re suspended in its warmth, totally weightless. “The world just floats away,” Carly says. 5. Ration your news. Pick two mainstream news outlets, each from a different political perspective, and subscribe to their news feeds online. Check them no more than twice a day, Catherine suggests, and for no more than 10 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. 6. Trace your roots. Few things ground us like family. Use online databases like ancestry.com to follow the wild and sometimes twisting adventures of your own. Interview distant relatives and get to know cousins 10 times removed. Aside from discovering where that cute little nose of yours came from—and your penchant for chocolate—you’ll hear story after story of a people who survived and thrived through war, famine, migration, ocean voyages, possibly even a plague of locusts. With that kind of a heritage, you know there’s nothing that can keep you from taking control of your own destiny. 7. Connect with older women. The older women in my community have been there, done that, bought the T-shirt and survived. I love to hang out with them. They’ve tended their children, nurtured their families and supported friends through good and bad times. Plus, no matter what their political proclivities, they marched, boycotted, advocated, visited their representatives in Congress, even wrote editorials for the local newspaper. They survived and they changed our world. Sipping tea under the trees with my 80-something-year-old friends Barbara and Elspeth is a joy. Stories flow, challenges are discussed, advice is given, laughter is rich, and I go home uplifted and ready to solve every one of my—and the world’s—problems. Read more: How to Be Happy at 90 8. Look for a few good warriors. Any service member who has served in a combat role abroad and survived has a lot to tell us about staying grounded during unpredictable events. Attending a community barbecue at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars in your town and sitting down to talk with veterans can be an eye-opening experience. It’s amazing what you can learn when you open your heart, open your mind and sit down to gnaw on some corn on the cob straight from the grill. 9. Ground yourself with meditation. Whenever you feel as though the world’s spinning out of control, sit down, plant your feet solidly on the earth and close your eyes, suggests Carly. Focus your attention on one part of your body after another for 15 minutes. Then open your eyes, stand up and stretch. You’ll feel calm, centered and ready to restart your day. 10. Reach out. “Connecting to other human beings can be so restorative,” says Catherine. So nurture those relationships. When your best friend—overwhelmed by job loss, soaring rent, or just the demands and decisions of daily life—curls up into a ball and cries, throw your arms around her, feed her chocolate, tell her husband to take her camping for the weekend and haul her kids over to your place for a sleepover with uplifting kid movies and taffy-making. The fact that you would do this for her will ground her. The fact that you did will ground you. 11. Look deep. Pick out a group of people on the nightly news who are yelling and screaming about one issue or another, then try to figure out who those people are, what makes them tick and why they’re so steamed. Patti Callahan, a retired psychiatric nurse who was house-sitting in Hawaii for friends last year, was puzzled by some of the presidential campaign talk about how there were still no jobs for huge numbers of people whose industries had been decimated in the last recession. “I wasn’t interested in all the lamenting, protesting and putting people down that was going on during the election,” Patti says bluntly, “but it seemed obvious that [I] had missed something. And I wanted to know what it was.” So, Patti stopped by the local library, ordered a bunch of books for her Kindle and started reading. First up was Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Ph.D., professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Arlie had experienced the same curiosity as Patti about why some American workers were angry, so she had gone on the road to Louisiana’s bayou country, a repository of American conservatism, hung out with people and listened to what they had to say. It wasn’t long before she learned of whole communities in which jobs had disappeared, homes had been lost and kids had been robbed of their futures. “I got a vivid and sickening picture of what’s happened to the land where they live and what they’re surrounded with,” Patti says. “It gave me a better understanding.” 12. Practice gratitude. We get so absorbed in bouncing from one crisis to another all day that we never focus on all the amazing things in our lives, says Catherine. So, make focusing on gratitude a daily practice. If you can take the time to say “I have my health, I have a loving relationship” for just two minutes every day, it will change your brain chemistry and allow you to move forward on solid ground. 13. Hold out a crayon. Reach out to children around the globe who have been forced to flee the horror of war and make a difference in their lives. You can donate time, money and talents to organizations like Save the Children. Or, like one couple from Santa Barbara, California, you can get even more directly involved. Robin and Robert Jones, who live part-time on the Greek island of Lesbos, were there when the rubber boats of Syrian refugees started hitting the shore. The entire island’s population turned out to help, but Robin, an art teacher, was concerned about the pain she saw in the children’s eyes. She went home, grabbed blankets and art supplies and took them to a transfer point at the beach. Within an hour of their arrival, she had children drawing and sketching their experiences, which gave them a voice to express their fear, confusion and pain—and a way to take the first step into a new life. 14. Weave a sense of Presence into your life. Pull together a book discussion group that encourages you to explore your inner spiritual life. Friends Mary Karp, Paul Harris, Polly Post and Maureen Glancy are four members of a local Quaker community in Santa Rosa, California, who meet every other week at Mary’s house to discuss A Testament of Devotion, the classic 1941 book of essays on the internal spiritual journey from Haverford College professor Thomas Kelly. The brief pause in their busy lives is an opportunity to rest in the inner stillness brought through a quiet attentiveness to that which is holy. 15. Retreat. Whether it’s a wicker chair on your front porch, a boulder in Yosemite National Park or the third pew on the left inside an empty cathedral anywhere in the world, regularly retreat to that one single place of quiet in which the world’s voices are hushed and your own can emerge strong and free. A long weekend, a day, even just a few hours is all it takes. A few yards from where I sit on my tiny porch surrounded by sunshine and jasmine, the narrow Santa Rosa Creek runs beneath a canopy of gnarled oaks and fresh California laurel. It begins as a great stream in the mountains to the north, but by the time it tumbles down the hills, over rocks and through lush vineyards into the valley where I live, it has gentled to a soft murmuring rhythm that soothes away all my edges. Here, the chatter of Twitter is absent, the minutia of life disappears, and the incessant voices that demand my attention don’t exist. My retreat only lasts an hour. But here I am grounded. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. And no matter how fast and furiously the world erupts in 10 directions at once, the ground under my feet is firm. Read more by Ellen Michaud: Living on Less to Give More Ellen Michaud, editor at large for Live Happy magazine, is an award-winning writer who lives in Northern California. She has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Better Homes and Gardens, Readers’ Digest, Ladies Home Journal and Prevention Magazine.
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#HappyFacts: Money Can Buy You Happiness

Each week, Live Happy Radio presents #HappyFacts designed to enlighten, educate and entertain you. Here’s a look at what we’re talking about this week: Can’t get no satisfaction? Go to a concert! If you need a quick pick-me-up, catching some live music can do the trick. But now researchers have found that going to live shows can make a lasting difference. In a study of 1,000 adults in Australia, those who regularly went to live music shows were found to have a greater sense of subjective well-being, or life satisfaction. While music in any form has been shown to have positive effects on our well-being, researchers found a notable difference between those who engage with others through live music events and those who listen to recorded music alone. Is it the social connection with other music lovers? The tendency of live music to encourage you to be in the moment? Researchers aren’t yet sure, but they are now convinced that a little live music is good for you in more ways than we have realized in the past. Banking on meditation Employers who want happier, more productive employees might want to invest in some meditation training. Around the globe, corporations have started using meditation as a way to soothe the stress of the workday and help employees become calmer and more productive. In the UK, the Bank of England began offering mindfulness and well-being courses as part of their “working life seminars” about four years ago. They, along with such companies as Unilever, KPMG and Goldman Sachs, offer meditation and mindfulness training, and regularly encourage employees to use guided meditations and apps to help them shake off the stress of the day. Science shows a direct correlation between happy, healthy employees and productivity. It improves creativity and collaboration between employees, creating a competitive advantage for businesses. Since mindfulness and meditation can help change the way employees think about and react to stress, it creates the healthy, happy employees needed for that winning edge. And both the employee and the company benefit from it! Money CAN buy happiness The old saying goes that money can’t buy happiness – but now it appears it can 
 if you know how to spend it right! In a world where we are increasingly pressed for time (and openly stressed out about it), being able to pay someone else to do a dreaded or time-consuming task may be the best way to spend a hard-earned buck or two. One recent study showed that the practice of “buying free time” could help ease the time famine felt by many people in today’s busy world. Those who spent money on purchases that saved time were happier than those who spent money on material goods. The exception came when people paid someone to do a task for them, but then spent that extra time working or doing something equally stressful. The key to making the most of the time you buy is to get out there and do something you enjoy. What is one thing you could pay someone to do that would increase your happiness?
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Quote about Intention

The Best of Intentions

We have to-do lists (take Benji to the vet; bring the car in for an oil change; complete the PowerPoint presentation). We have goals (run in a Turkey Trot; turn the garage into a workshop; get promoted in the next six months). We may even have a bucket list (deliver a TED Talk; visit every continent on the globe; earn a pilot’s license). But what’s missing for many of us, and may lead to a feeling that our days are being spent in a slapdash way, is intention: a constellation of purpose and values that gives direction and meaning to actions large and small. “I think of intention as the inner compass that sets us on our journey,” says Hugh Byrne, Ph.D., co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute of Washington, D.C., and author of The Here-and-Now Habit. “Without clear intentions, we drift, acting out old habits and patterns, like flotsam swept by the water.” Intentions help us channel our energy into what matters most to us, adds Tina Chadda, a Toronto psychiatrist and creator of the Akasha meditation app, which offers mini tutorials on subjects like “the mindfulness of mistakes” and “maintaining flow.” “More loosely, you could say intention is how we address the question, ‘What the heck are we doing with ourselves all day?’” she says. Tina offers an example of how this plays out in real life. “Your intention may be to give your best to the world,” she says. “And, sure, that sounds airy-fairy, but then you break it down, first to a value—I want to be of service to my community and then to a goal: By the end of this month I’m going to volunteer five hours of time to my local homeless shelter.” Intention can imbue with meaning small tasks that would otherwise be annoying (and easy to put off). “For me, I value my well-being and sense of serenity,” Tina says, “and that translates into the goal that by the end of next weekend, I’m going to unpack the boxes in the corner of my office.” You can even be intentional about wasting time, points out Mallika Chopra. Mallika is the founder and CEO of Intent.com, an online community where members support one another in moving from intention to actions. In her book Living With Intent: My Somewhat Messy Journey to Purpose, Peace, and Joy, Mallika describes how she learned to stop chastising herself for playing video games or checking in with friends on Facebook, things she found relaxing and pleasurable and that didn’t take time away  from her other priorities, like sleep. “What if I welcome activities into my life just because they’re fun and feel good?” she mused. “Just thinking about indulging in my ‘bad habits’ free of guilt makes me feel lighter and less stressed.” While goals are focused on future outcomes, intentions are about how we want to show up in our lives in the present. Jamie Price is the Los Angeles-based co-founder of Stop, Breathe & Think, a wellness app that offers brief guided meditations. Eight months pregnant as she chats, she says her overriding intention right now is “to nourish my child with food as well as with what I’m thinking and doing.” One way she fulfills that intention is by taking a nightly walk with her husband. “We’ve been married for five years and it’s easy to take someone’s presence for granted,” she says. “Instead, I’ve been trying to foster a kind, attentive and loving presence with my husband on a daily basis. After dinner we walk through the neighborhood together for 40 minutes, inhaling the smells of rose and jasmine or walking to a cliff above the ocean at sunset. Since I’ve been pregnant, we try to leave the devices at home so we can talk about our day or just hold hands and walk in silence.” How Intentions Help Us Learn and Perform Better When your yoga teacher asks you to set an intention before class, she’s actually inviting you to turn on parts of your brain that wouldn’t be activated if you just went through your sun salutations mindlessly. Intention, it turns out, is not some kumbaya concept; when we engage with intention it actually shows up in brain scans. Neuroscience research has demonstrated that when you watch someone else’s movements or actions with the intention of engaging in that same behavior yourself, neurons in your brain that make up the “action observation network” are stimulated. In one study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, students watched videos of another person putting together or disassembling a Tinkertoy structure. One group of students simply watched the video; another group was told that they’d have to construct that same object a few minutes later. Brain scans showed that students who were watching with intent had more activity occurring in a part of the brain called the intraparietal cortex. Another study, by language researcher and University of Ottawa, Ontario, professor Larry Vandergrift, Ph.D., confirmed the power of listening with intent. Working with undergraduates learning French as a second language, half the students were given guidance in active listening. Before the lesson began, they were instructed to mentally review what they already knew; to form an intention to “listen out for” what was important; to bring their attention back to the words being spoken by their instructor, if it wandered; and to take note of what they didn’t understand without allowing their focus to be undermined. The control group wasn’t given any instructions. The results: The students who listened with attention and intention significantly outscored the less skilled listeners in a test of comprehension. Whether it’s perfecting your eagle pose, your subjunctive French verbs or any other endeavor that’s important to you, engaging with intention will give you a performance boost. And science shows that’s just the beginning of how intentions can change your life. The Neuroscience of Intentions Shifting your perspective from goals to thoughtful intentions just might be the secret sauce in achieving your dreams. That’s according to some fascinating research that’s coming out of science labs, including that of social psychologist Elliot Berkman, Ph.D. Elliot is the director of the Social & Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oregon, and he and his team are studying a field called “motivation neuroscience.” They use neuroimaging tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to learn how our brains support setting, pursuing and eventually succeeding, or failing, in achieving behavioral changes like smoking cessation and dieting. The field has established that when people are thinking about core values or reflecting on the self, there’s activation of the “self-processing regions” of the brain, including the medial prefrontal cortex. If you can recruit this part of your brain, even difficult activities will seem less effortful, Elliot says, because you’re getting the signal that what you’re doing is the most important thing to you. You’re not paying what both psychologists and economists call an “opportunity cost,” forgoing the rewards you might have reaped if you were doing something else instead. Elliot wants to help people find a way to turn extrinsic goals—something they pursue because of external pressure, like their doctor advising them to lose weight to avoid diabetes—into intrinsic goals, ones they seek because they’re connected to their enduring passions and principles. In other words, Elliot says, identify why resisting that cookie shores up your values and beliefs and—bingo!—you’re in the arena of intention and you’ve ignited those powerful self-processing parts of the brain. “If you can find a way to put your goals into alignment with who you want to be in the broadest sense,” he says, “that will provide powerful and sustainable reinforcement for the changes you want to make.” Elliot calls this alignment “psychic chiropractic,” and he says the most effective way to practice it is through self-affirmations. Studies show that affirming values and beliefs is potent: It boosts self-control, lifts your mood, expands your sense of yourself and your capabilities, offers protection against stress and makes you more open to feedback and to persevering in the face of setbacks. In Elliot’s lab, self-affirmations begin with people choosing the two or three core values that are most important to them from a list of 10 or 12 that might include honesty, loyalty, family, honor, friendship, creativity, courage and love. Then the participants are asked to spend a couple of minutes writing about what each means to them. In an ongoing experiment, Elliot and his team parse these essays into brief snippets, such as, “Family is the most important thing to me.” Those affirmations are then sent to the writers two or three times a day. Here’s how you can apply this science to your life: If you wanted to lose 10 pounds, for example, you might connect with the intention, “I want to be a healthy and active parent,” or “I want to experience life with energy and vigor.” Then, you’d text yourself this avowal before you head out to dinner or the supermarket. (You can schedule texts with apps like TextItLater or Delayd.) Overcoming temptation—whether a molten chocolate pie, staying in bed instead of going to the gym or procrastinating when you have a difficult project to complete—is all about increasing the value of long-term, abstract rewards so they’re greater than the reward in front of you, Elliot says. The tipping point, he adds, is tapping into our “self-concept of who we are and who we want to be.” Intent Alert: Attention Required Staying aligned with our intentions takes effort and vigilance. Elliot uses the word “deliberate” to describe actions that are intentional. “Acting automatically is less costly in terms of energy than acting with deliberation,” he says. “Our brains evolved to be energy conserving, so unless we pay attention, they’ll default to habit and inertia. On a neuroscience level, being intentional is a bottleneck.” One reliable way to break that bottleneck is by maintaining a regular meditation practice. Committing to a daily practice of spending just a few moments in silence, cultivating a contemplative mindset, provides access, Mallika says, to “a deeper well of understanding, insight and awareness.” This heightened self-knowledge can also help you recognize why you feel drained and help you discover what fills you up. In this way, mindfulness functions as an early warning system when you begin to stray from your intentions. Hugh offers an example. A couple of years ago he was in the habit each evening of pouring himself a small glass of Dogfish Head, his favorite beer, and dishing out a scoop or two of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, then chilling in front of the TV. “It wasn’t a large amount of beer or ice cream,” he says, “but after a while it felt like something I was doing by rote, and I began to feel a little neediness and a lack of spaciousness and ease. It was getting in the way of my intention to be fully present and fully at ease.” Hugh now stops watching TV after 10:30 at night, and while he still has an occasional glass of beer or wine, he does so out of conscious choice and not habit. On the other hand, Sam Chase, who co-owns New York City’s Yoga to the People studio, sees no need to abandon his sometime habit of stopping in at a local pinball parlor for an hour of what he admits is “vegging out.” “It’s an immersive experience, and a way to decompress from a hard day, but it’s not high stakes,” Sam says. Bouncing steel balls off the flippers in a pinball game leaves him “recharged.” That sense of replenishment, Tina points out, is evidence that you’re nourishing your intentions. “When you’re using your energy in a healthy way you feel energized,” she says. “When you’re not, you feel depleted and empty.” Get to know yourself through meditation and you’ll easily cue into the difference between the pleasant fatigue that follows, say, an 8-mile run or an afternoon spent building sets for a community theater production, and the lethargy you experience after you’ve camped out on the sofa and aimlessly dawdled away two hours watching infomercials. How to Set Intentions Whether you come to it from a mind-body perspective or the mindset of a scientist, the guidelines on how to set intentions have the same starting point: Devote some quiet time to clarifying what matters most to you. Hugh suggests asking yourself the question: What’s my deepest longing for the world and myself? (The answer for him is “peace, loving relationships and a more compassionate world.”) Next, says Hugh, “identify habits that prevent you from living out these intentions, and commit to take action to change those habits.” Then, begin to align your moment-to-moment thoughts and actions with the qualities you want to cultivate. Ask yourself, Hugh suggests, “Does this thought/ action/response serve happiness? Does it support my deepest aspirations?” Mallika is a big fan of what she calls “microintents”—small steps that, she says, make our day-to-day lives happier and healthier and also help give clarity and momentum to long-term intentions. Mallika’s microintents included starting a book club with some friends and meeting a close pal for walks in nature instead of their usual breakfast or lunch date. “With these small changes, my whole life shifted,” Mallika says. “For me, intentions are soulful. They’re the expression of who we aspire to be physically, emotionally and spiritually. When we ask ourselves, what is going to make me feel happy, more connected, healthy and of purpose, we plant the seeds of what we yearn for in our lives.” Read more about intention: 4 Ways to Live Each Day With Intention Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles and editor at large for Live Happy. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, People, SUCCESS and more.
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