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Go Viral by Sharing Smart

The following is an excerpt from the book Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Changeby Live Happy columnist Michelle Gielan—available online and at stores near you.You are a broadcaster, whether you realize it or not. And the messages you choose to broadcast as a parent, colleague, manager or friend change how others see their potential to overcome challenges and create positive change. Broadcasting stresses, hassles and complaints limits the human brain’s potential. Focusing on the meaning in the work we do, things we are grateful for, and recent success fuels us and those round us to be even happier and more motivated. And if we activate others to spread those positive messages, we deepen our network and our influence. The key is to pick the right messages and get them to continue to spread in a ripple effect—to go viral.The most viral stories raise the status of the broadcaster who shares them. Everyone secretly wants to be in the club: The more intelligent, knowledgeable, or socially connected someone is perceived to be, often the more valuable the person is within his or her network. Therefore, the information broadcasters share is not only a reflection on them—it also builds or decreases their social capital with others.Status in "the tribe"If you give people in your network top-quality, useful information to share, you’ll not only be highly regarded by the people in your tribe—you’ll give them the material needed to enhance their status with their audience as well.Provide your network with smart, unique stories that help raise their status as being people “in the know.” It makes them experts—with high social capital—as they share information with their networks. And the best part is the cycle will continue as the people they share your message with, in turn, share the news with others, making them experts in their own right.Therefore, putting your high-value stories in the hands of other potential broadcasters not only makes you and them look good, it gets your story out. The key is to include information that makes your activated broadcasters look smart. Find a story no one has heard before and share it with people who curate and broadcast to move it forward.Passing the story alongWhile consulting on a project for the Zappos’ Downtown Project Think Tank on Education, I worked alongside a school administrator who armed her teachers with smart data to share each week with students. She believes that when students start their day off learning something new and positive about the world, their minds are better primed to learn.Every Monday morning she gave her teachers a positive message to broadcast to students in writing—preferably with pictures. She always tried to make the teachers look like rock stars in front of their classes by finding cool stories for them to share. Examples included: fun facts about the brain, a story about kids in India cleaning up their community using graffiti art, and the ways teens had become amazing at a sport or skill.The stories were all positive and told in a fun way. But here is how the idea was really genius: The administrator, via the teachers, encouraged the students to then broadcast the story to a parent or caregiver that night. Parents were asked to sign a sheet with the story highlights to confirm the students had passed on the story.Primed for positivityThe administrator’s strategy was brilliant for many reasons. First, it primed the students for positivity first thing in the morning. Second, students had the opportunity to be broadcasters by sharing positive information and practicing their presentation skills. And third, it gave students a story that put them “in the know” and gave them a forum around the dinner table as everyone else quieted down to listen to it. What started as positive stories that caught the attention of one administrator ended up going viral around her school and the wider community.Creators, curators and consumersBoth online and off, there are three types of people who deal in the currency of content: creators, curators, and consumers. Whether it’s on social media or around the watercooler, most individuals are predominantly one of the three. During this stage in my life as an author, I spend most of my time as a creator as I write this book and other articles and conduct research studies.For a shorter part of my day, I am a curator, as I collect what I perceive as valuable content to share on social media, and I am definitely a consumer as I peruse news sites in the morning and my Facebook feed at night.Typically people spend the majority of their time as consumers. The way you turn consumers into curators (and therefore broadcasters to spread your message) is by creating content for them to share with their networks. And the content that will spread the farthest and fastest is smart content that’s fresh and new.Strengthen your networkThe best part is that if you raise someone’s status by providing something smart or valuable to share, you boost that person’s signal as an effective curator or, as Malcolm Gladwell calls them, mavens. People will usually keep coming back to hear what mavens say, which effectively deepens and strengthens your own network. Therefore, one of the best ways to get your messages to go viral is to make other people look good when sharing them.MICHELLE GIELAN is an expert on the science of positive communication and how to use it to fuel success. She holds a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and is co-founder of the happiness research and consulting groupGoodthink Inc.This essay is an excerpt from her new book,Broadcasting Happiness,published by BenBellaBooks.

News & Trends

Bullying’s Ripple Effect

Teenage bullies can inflict emotional and physical pain on their victims in countless ways—calling kids names on the playground, flipping books out of their arms in school hallways or flaming them in cyberspace. Researchers have long known that bullying can trigger depression in adolescents. British researchers now suggest that depression can reach at least into early adulthood. The findings have educators renewing calls for more effective programs to curb bullying and its effects.From bullying to depressionAt the University of Oxford, a team led by Professor Lucy Bowes, Ph.D., found that nearly a third of early adult depression cases could stem from bullying in teenage years. Her team also found that kids who were frequently bullied at age 13 are more than twice as likely to be depressed at 18 as those who were not bullied. Their study results were reported in The BMJ (British Medical Journal).“We had anticipated that we would find a link between peer victimization in the teenage years and clinical depression,” Lucy told Reuters. “What was surprising was the proportion of depression that might be explained by peer victimization if this really is a causal relationship—nearly 30 percent in our sample.”Read More: Teen Angst or Teen Anguish?Age 13, the most vulnerable timeHer team analyzed bullying and depression data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a long-term look at 14,500 families in the Bristol, England area. Nearly 7,000 kids reported bullying at age 13, when they were asked whether and how often they had experienced peer victimization including exclusion, rumor spreading or physical violence.At age 18, they returned to complete assessments that identified people with depression. Of the 683 teenagers who reported bullying at more than once a week over six months at age 13, 14.8 percent were depressed at age 18. Of the 1,446 teenagers bullied one to three times over six months at age 13, 7.1 percent were depressed at 18. Only 5.5 percent of young teenagers who did not experience bullying were depressed at 18.What can be done about it“There are many school-based interventions targeting bullying, but these need to be more rigorously evaluated so we can understand which are most effective at reducing bullying and support schools in implementing these,” Lucy says.In an editorial that accompanied Lucy’s research, Maria M. Ttofi, Ph.D., a University of Cambridge psychological criminology lecturer who has also studied youth victimization, says, “societies need to take measures to protect vulnerable young people…Bowes and colleagues’ work offers clear anti-bullying messages that should be endorsed by parents, school authorities and practitioners internationally.”For more on bullying and how it can be prevented, look for the October 2015 issue of Live Happy magazine.Jim Gold is a veteran journalist who divides his time between Seattle and the Bay Area.

science

Upping Your Downtime

We’ve all been there: We spend weeks and even months anticipating that dream vacation, only to return to work afterward feeling like we need a few days off. Even our weekends, which are supposed to help us relax and rejuvenate, often leave us feeling exhausted. So if downtime is supposed to make us happier and healthier, then why do so many of us feel depleted by it? “People today are doing more with less, and there are tremendous levels of burnout,” says Jamie Gruman, Ph.D., associate professor of organizational behavior at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. “People really need to figure out how to decompress in their leisure time”. Cut the cord One way to make better use of time away from the office is to actually leave it behind. People who leave work at work tend to be more satisfied with their lives and experience fewer symptoms of psychological strain than those who bring it home. What’s more, a study published in Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that “psychological detachment” during the weekend may even improve our job performance during the workweek. Read More: How to Be Present Still plugged in “It’s not enough to just physically leave the office,” Jamie says. “You have to mentally leave the office. Very few people do this.” Sure, you might be sitting by the pool, but your mind might still be parked at your desk. “If you’re checking your email every half hour, if you’re not turning off your head and allowing yourself to enjoy the moment, you’re psychologically attached to your obligations,” he says. Technology has made it easier than ever to check in with work, which in turn has made it that much harder to check out mentally. Jamie recommends giving high-tech the heave-ho as much as possible. That could mean turning off email notifications on your cell phone or creating an out-of-office auto-reply so you don’t feel the need to respond immediately. Even better, have two cell phones—one for work and another for personal use—allowing you to turn off the work phone on nights, weekends and vacations. Read More: Unplugged Learn to detach Of course, turning off devices is easier than turning off thoughts. If you’re the type who broods about what happened at work or worries about what might happen, you may need to change how you spend your free time. A study by Sabine Sonnentag, Ph.D., called “Psychological Detachment from Work During Leisure Time: The Benefits of Mentally Disengaging from Work,” published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, found that meaningful activities like volunteering and mindfulness practices such as meditation can help us detach from work. You’ll stand a better chance of detaching if you bring tasks to completion before clocking out, notes Sabine, a leading researcher in organizational psychology and a professor at University of Mannheim in Germany. She’s published a number of studies showing that a heavy workload and high time pressure are the strongest predictors of low detachment from work. That’s why it’s wise to take vacations during slow periods at work or on the heels of a big deadline. And, if you absolutely must do some work on evenings, weekends or a vacation, set aside a specific time for it—and don’t allow yourself to dwell on it before or afterward. Read More: 6 Steps to Mindful Meditation How long is enough? No matter how well-timed the vacation, work will likely pile up in your absence. That’s just one of the reasons Jamie and other experts recommend taking frequent short vacations instead of infrequent long ones. Less time away means less catch-up and stress when you return; shorter vacations also require less preparation, which reduces stress in the days beforehand. “It’s not the [amount of] time but the quality of the time that matters,” Jamie says. “Research shows that three-day weekends can be as replenishing as longer vacations.” In his study “Vacationers Happier, but Most Not Happier after a Vacation,” published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, Jeroen Nawijn, Ph.D., found that vacation length does not affect post-vacation happiness and confirmed previous findings that a vacation’s positive effects are short-lived. However, we can prolong our getaways’ positive effects by looking at photos, telling friends about the trip and otherwise keeping vacation memories alive, says Jeroen, a lecturer at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Both he and Jamie advise building in some “recovery time” between time off and returning to work. Read More: 5 Tips for an Energy Boosting Vacation Cut down on lag time “People think the way to get the most out of their vacation is to spend the most time away. It’s logical, but it’s a mistake,” Jamie says. Instead, leave time for laundry, grocery shopping and even recovering from jetlag when you return home, he says. And rather than getting home late Sunday night and going back to work Monday morning, consider coming home Saturday night—or at least early in the day on Sunday—to give yourself time to re-enter your world. Do downtime differently While relaxation is important to well-being, the way we relax could be keeping us from optimal happiness. “We’re not very creative in our downtime,” Jamie says. “We just do whatever is our habit.” He advises taking time to assess the effects of your habits. Does TV time relax you and improve your mood? If you go for a walk before you sit down to watch TV, do you feel better? Do the people you spend time with bring out the best in you? Ask yourself if there’s something you used to love doing that you aren’t doing anymore, and then start doing it again. “Doing something you enjoy is key to getting a boost out of downtime,” Jamie says. “We play a role in how happy we’re going to feel.” Read More: Tripped Up

work

1 Minute to Begin It

If we told you there is an action you can take in one minute that improves your ability to focus, lowers your stress, has no negative side effects and doesn’t cost a dime, would you be intrigued? If you’re like most people we work with, you’re thinking, “What is it and where can I get it?!” The answer may surprise you. It’s meditation. The missing piece One of our coaching clients, Monica, was moving forward in her career, doing well on the family front, and in strong shape physically. But she felt like she was rushing from one responsibility to the next. She wanted a clear path to find her next level as a manager and leader. “I want to not be rattled by small work stressors, like I am now,” she said. “I’ve thought about meditating, but I don’t know how to get started.” We suggested Monica start by doing something incredibly small, just one minute a day, but she was skeptical. “Just try it and notice what happens,” Senia encouraged her. Just one minute? Two weeks later, Monica reported that she had meditated for exactly one minute nearly every day. The results surprised her. “I feel like I’m making better decisions on the days that I meditate,” she said. “That’s great,” Senia replied. “How can you continue to build this practice? After some experimentation, she moved her meditation to right before bedtime, accompanied by soothing music. She eventually extended it to five minutes every evening. After about two months of consistent practice, she reported that she was able to weather work storms much more serenely. What was going on? Researchers now say that Monica was methodically changing the circuitry in her brain by developing improved stress-response habits, greater resilience and greater mental clarity. Our colleague Jackie Johnson, a leadership coach and meditation teacher, says, “Recent research by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard shows that most of us spend up to 50 percent of our time caught up in thoughts, usually replaying events of the past or worrying about an imagined future, both contributing to unhappiness. Mindful practice allows us to engage with the present with greater clarity and ease.” Given the benefits, why not try it? How about just one minute, right now? Read More: 6 Steps to Mindful Meditation Margaret H. Greenberg and Senia Maymin, are organizational consultants and executive coaches, and authors of Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business. For more information about Senia and Margaret, go to ProfitFromThePositive.com.

Practice

Start a Journal, Change Your Life

A journal is far more than a blank book—it’s more of a blank canvas on which parts of your life can unfold. A journal can be a safe, non-judgmental place to exhale and explore your thoughts, emotions and experiences. Reflecting upon your life and writing down your thoughts can be a cathartic process that increases self-awareness, alleviates stress and leads to personal growth.If the prospect of keeping a journal sounds overwhelming (who has the time?) you might be surprised to learn that there are many different kinds of journals to keep, and some require very little time. Find the type of journal that resonates most with you.1.Gratitude or Positivity JournalWrite down three things you are grateful for about your day (tiny things count like your cup of coffee, or a great phone call with a friend) or three best moments of your day, and after just a few weeks you will experience a definite boost in your well-being. The effects have been so well documented by happiness researchers from Martin Seligman to Shawn Achor that we may soon see gratitude journals prescribed by our doctors like aspirin for the mood.Read More: 8 Easy Practices to Enhance Gratitude2.Morning Pages JournalJulia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, recommends keeping a morning pages journal—three pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing. There are no rules, you just wake up and write. According to Julia, morning pages are about “anything and everything that crosses your mind, and they are for your eyes only.” Morning pages “provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand.” The concept of keeping morning pages, and the way in which these pages spark and provoke a current of creativity, are at the heart of The Artist’s Way, and a major part of what makes the book so special.3.Dream JournalCapture the stories your mind creates at night by keeping a dream journal at your bedside. Collect the details of your dream right after you wake up as dreams fade fast from our consciousness. You may not be able to decipher your dream precisely, but you can take notice of patterns or reoccurring worries, which you may be able to address later in your waking life.4.Idea JournalDo your ideas come to you in the middle of the night, while you’re on the subway, or anywhere that’s inconvenient and you don’t have a pen. Make sure you’re always ready to write down that million-dollar idea for a screenplay, a business … Grab your idea journal as soon as brilliance hits you and get your idea in ink. Capture thoughts for your home decor, bucket list, first book, or entrepreneurial pursuit. No more scribbles on a napkin for you.Click here to see Live Happy's beautiful Sunshine Journal.5.One-Sentence JournalHappiness expert Gretchen Rubin found the idea of keeping a journal daunting, so she came up with the idea of the one-sentence journal to record memories and appreciate her life more. She credits her one-sentence journal for keeping happy memories vivid and happy memories crisp in order to pass them along to her children.6.Baby JournalYes, you are sleep deprived and super-busy in the first year of your baby’s life, but when you get some sleep in a few years, you will be so glad that you took the time to capture the milestones, like the precious first baby giggle, of your infant’s first year. Photos are a major bonus here.7.Personal Development/Self-improvement JournalIf you love to read books about how to make your life better, consider keeping a personal development journal where you capture the best bits of insight and advice. Write down favorite quotes and gems of wisdom from books, speeches and websites. A personal development journal can be like a study-guide for a better life. Use it to write down and track your personal goals, too.8.Travel JournalEver go on a cruise and you stop at so many different tropical places that you can’t recall them a year later? Keep a travel journal to document the places you go. Write down favorite travel memories, countries, cities and towns. Take a glue stick with you and paste in little mementoes like tickets and menus, if you wish. When you reread your travel journey you can relive special family trips and savor your memories.Read More: What's the connection between travel and happiness?9. Visual JournalMaybe you process the world through pictures rather than words. Some of the most beautiful and meaningful journals are visual—filled with doodles, sketches, portraits of people, often alongside names, places and quotes. A visual journal could also be a travel or baby journal. If you are more an artist than a writer, by all means, record your moments using this amazing strength.10.Everything JournalIf you are more of a creative free-spirit, keeping a journal where you do some or all of the above might appeal to you. Don’t restrict yourself with the type of journal you keep, just doodle, capture quotes, write down memories or go for stream of consciousness writing. You can write every day or once a month.The simple practice of writing forces you to slow down from the frenetic pace of life and connect with who you are and what you’re up to. Reap the benefits of keeping a journal by staying attuned to your life.Read More: 31 Days of WellnessSandra Bienkowski worked as the national columns editor forSuccess magazine for three years, and is widely published in print and on the web. See more about Sandra atThe Media Concierge.

Practice

Sustainable Happiness [Video]

Catherine O’Brien, Ph.D., a professor at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, discovered the link between sustainable living and happiness while working on her doctorate at Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India, in the mid-1990s. That thought became the basis for her concept of Sustainable Happiness, which she teaches in a popular course at the university, combining principles of positive psychology with a sustainability mindset. Learn more about this fascinating topic by listening to our free podcast, where Catherine will discuss "Sustainable Happiness and Well-Being." Take a look at a portion of one of Catherine's hands-on classes: Read more about Catherine in our feature story, "Can Happiness Save the Planet."

Practice

Healthy From the Inside Out: 5 Tips to Get Fit

I’ve spent too much of my life thinking about how much I weigh. My weight bounced up and down in my 20s and 30s. I used food to celebrate and to escape. Food was my comfort and company. I’ve always loved exercise, but I didn’t pay attention to what I ate. Eventually I learned that my weight had more to do with what was eating at me. The more my self-esteem went up, the more my weight went down. The turning point I’d look at fit women and wish I looked like them, but I was more talk than action when it came to actually changing my behavior. Then one day when I was in my 30s, I saw a picture of myself sitting on a beach in Cape Cod, and my face, arms and stomach looked huge. I cringed. How I saw myself in my mind, and how I looked, didn’t match. This overweight girl staring back at me wasn’t who I wanted to be. The pain of staying the same was suddenly far worse than my fear of failing at losing weight. I immediately decided I at least had to try. Now 45, I lost 40 pounds over the course of many years and am the fittest I’ve ever been in my life. As I learned to embrace a healthy lifestyle, I’ve gained a lot of hard-earned knowledge along the way: 1. Take up an exercise you love I remember my first jog because it lasted about a minute. It was awful. I could barely breathe. I’d jog for a bit and then walk. What shocked me is how quickly I built up endurance (it took just a couple of months between that first run and a 5K). Now I can run out the front door and keep running for an hour. I can’t live without running. When you are red-faced, dripping with sweat and you have a sense of exhilaration, there’s no doubt you just worked your body. And I love that feeling. When you love an exercise, you don’t have to convince yourself to actually do it. Your love might be Zumba, yoga, stand-up paddle-boarding or biking. Try out different forms until you land on a form of exercise you can’t live without. 2. Hang around people who have similar goals Surrounding myself with people who also want a healthy lifestyle makes keeping mine up so much easier. My husband is totally on board with clean eating. He wants healthy smoothies for breakfast and he watches his sugar intake. He’s a one-glass-of-wine kind of guy. His healthy habits help influence mine. Our associations really do impact our behavior. I spend a lot of time with a friend and neighbor who is a total fitness enthusiast. We both wear fitness trackers and have a friendly competition about who takes more steps. We run races together, walk our dogs on the trails, and go to strength training classes twice a week. 3. Tell yourself you can have anything Forget diets; diets are about deprivation. If I told myself I couldn't have donuts, do you know what I’d want? Yep, donuts. I tell myself I can have whatever I want, just not all the time. This quiets the impulsive, defiant side of me, and now I only eat a donut when I really, really want one. Indulgences are now planned instead of impulse-based. 4. Set rules you can follow My guiding rule is to eat healthy most of the time. It’s an easy rule to follow. I center my family’s meals around veggies first and then lean proteins. I keep water nearby all day, every day. I give myself one day a week to skip working out. I plan a healthier dessert for an evening treat because that’s the time of day I like to snack the most. I relax all my rules on the weekends. 5. Make food prep fun Being busy can be the downfall of healthy eating because it’s easy to eat without thinking or grab something quick when you don’t have anything planned. Each weekend I schedule our meals for the week and shop for that meal plan. With Pinterest and healthy websites that promote clean eating, it’s easy to find new recipes to try. I often make breakfast (overnight oats) the night before so it’s ready to go. And I often make healthy salads that we can eat for a few days in a row. Planning our meals for the week opens us up to try new recipes, and it keeps us on course. The best part about being fit and healthy is that I can stop my incessant thinking about my weight. My healthy behaviors have evolved into habits, and now I can spend more time thinking about what my body can do and less about what I look like or what I weigh. A healthy lifestyle means freedom to me. I think about the long-term; perhaps the greatest benefit of my lifestyle, as I plan for the future, is that it will definitely increase my chances sticking around as long as possible to enjoy life with my twin daughters and my husband—and for that I am very thankful.

Self-Care

5 Tips to Find Your Own Happy Place

“The world is too much with us,” the poet William Wordsworth wrote. We’ve all been there: overwhelmed by never-ending to-do lists, overflowing inboxes, the demands of work and home life, the friends we adore and the organizations we support. When we feel chaos is closing in, we need to retreat to our happy place. “Everyone should have a place where you can go to feel safe and happy,” says Nancy Mramor, Ph.D., a Pittsburgh psychologist who leads workshops on achieving happiness. “It may be a place you can physically visit or, at times, even just imagine, but it must be a respite that recharges you.” Here are some tips for finding that special place in the world: 1. Recall places where you've appreciated the sounds Birds chirping, a brook babbling, beautiful music, people’s voices. 2. Summon up the places where you've enjoyed visual images An open view of the sky or sea, pleasing colors and shapes, inspiring art or architecture. 3. Choose a place where you can experience the elements that contribute to happiness Exercise, social contact with happy people, creative flow, laughter. Your happy place, says Nancy, may also be a “low-stimulation environment with little of the above. Quiet stillness can offer a feeling of being at peace that can last for a long time.” 4. Remember where you were when you experienced deep contentment and meaning It could be the playground where you took your children when they were young; the animal shelter or food pantry where you volunteer; the café where you met your future spouse. 5. Stay open-minded Studies in the Journal of Environmental Psychology show that spending just 20 minutes in nature boosts vitality levels significantly. Others may prefer a favorite spa, an indoor Zen retreat with candles and soothing music or a kitchenware store filled with gleaming pots and exotic ingredients. “Some people, especially those who work alone,” Nancy says, “get a happiness lift just by going to their local coffee bar and plugging in their laptops.” In another article we explore the concept of the "happy place"—a space where you can find joy and meaning in a chaotic world. Here we explain how to identify your own happy place, in case you haven't done so already! Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist based in Southern California.

Travel

Transformative Travel

Altruism boosts happiness. Traveling not only increases happiness but also opens our horizons to new cultures and ideas. Combine the two and you’ve got transformative travel.Volunteer opportunities have widened in the last few years, from “surf and serve” programs in Peru to pulling radishes from the earth at organic farms in Japan to exploring the inky depths of Belize’s Barrier Reef.WAVES for DevelopmentThe destination: Lobitos, Peru“Go to surf, stay to serve” is the motto of WAVES for Development, which hosts surf voluntourism trips in Peru. Launched by a group of local and international surfers in Peru in 2004, the program is rooted in the belief that “access to and conservation of water is a necessity for the future of humanity.”The program is ideal for solo or group travelers, with an inviting, communal atmosphere—rooms and meals are shared, everyone goes surfing together. The volunteer work is equally stimulating, including environmental education, social entrepreneurship, teaching English, surf classes and community outreach. And, of course, the bonus is your location: The tiny surf village of Lobitos, population 1,000, on the sun-warmed northern coast of Peru.The information: wavesfordevelopment.orgAppalachian Trail ConservancyThe destination:Across 14 states in the U.S., from Georgia to MaineThe Appalachian Trail is more than hiking. For many, it's a test of self. Numerous hikers have been inspired by the A.T.: In 2010, Mike Hanson was one of the first blind hikers to traverse the 2,180-mile trail; in 1998, travel writer Bill Bryson became (in his words) the laziest person to trek the trail, overcoming his“waddlesomesloth”; and in 2011, JenniferPharrDavis, a long-distance hiker and author, nabbed the record for fastest thru-hike of the trail (46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes).But there would be no trail without the volunteers: The trail is maintained throughout the year by over 6,000 volunteers, and they're always looking for more. Sign up and you’ll do everything from helping protect the land surrounding the footpath to supporting teachers in the Trail to Every Classroom program. Best of all: The trail is vast, as is the surrounding wilderness, which means you can often have large swathes of it to yourself – with just some local woodpeckers, moose and the occasional black bear for company.The information:appalachiantrail.orgOceanic SocietyThe destination: The Cayes, BelizeBelize may be tiny, but it claims this impressive superlative: the longest Barrier Reef in the Western Hemisphere. From the inky depths of the Great Blue Hole to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, which is swimming with nurse sharks and stingrays, the Barrier Reef has one of planet’s richest marine ecosystems.The Oceanic Society offers travelers the chance to not just snorkel the waters, but to sustain it. The nonprofit Oceanic Society, founded in 1969, has eight-day “volunteer vacations” where you can work side-by-side with researchers to monitor the health of Turneffe Atoll’s coral reefs, including gathering data on water quality and reef inhabitants.Solo travelers are well catered to—you’ll stay in rustic beachfront cabanas, and after the sun goes down, presentations are given on everything from marine ecosystems to reef history. Top off the night with a Belikin beer (or three) on the beach under the bright moon.Belize’s legacy of conservation is also evident inland, particularly at the Manatee and Primate Rehabilitation Center in Sarteneja, in Northern Belize, where volunteers assist with rehabilitation strategies for three species—the West Indian manatee, the Yucatan black howler monkey and Geoffrey’s spider monkey.The information: oceanicsociety.org and wildtracksbelize.orgRead More: 33 Ideas for Happy TravelsWWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms)The destination: Worldwide, from Portugal to JapanPrune olive trees in Portugal. Milk cows in Denmark. Get dirt under your fingernails pulling daikon radishes from the earth in Japan. WWOOF offers volunteer opportunities, from a couple of days to a several months, on organic farms and smallholdings across the globe.Though it’s now a hugely successful initiative, WWOOF had humble beginnings: It was launched in 1971 by Sue Coppard, a secretary working in London, who didn’t have “the means or the opportunity to access the countryside and support the organic movement.” More than 40 years later, WWOOF continues to be especially popular with solo urbanites, who are looking to escape the big city (and canned food) by sweating over a hoe for the weekend, followed by dinner while overlooking the fields that provided it.Most importantly, every volunteer effort helps ensure that organic fruits and veggies will continue to show up in the bins of your corner grocery store. Perhaps the greatest proof of WWOOf's accomplishment? It has now entered into volunteer lexicon as a verb: "I'm going to WWOOF this weekend…"The information: wwoof.netRead More: What does travel have to do with happiness?AnneLise Sorensen is a travel journalist based in New York City.

Reading

Strengths in Numbers

With the growth of the positive psychology movement, most of us are becoming more familiar with the idea of character strengths. As classified by the VIA Institute on Character,character strengths are 24 specific positive traits and qualities that make us unique. They help shape our interests and abilities, and include such things as creativity, gratitude, perseverance, honesty, teamwork, leadership and humor. VIA's assessment of strengths helps users identify which qualities are most prevalent in their own lives. Knowing which of the 24 character strengths are most present in your personality can help in virtually all areas of your life, from the playground to the boardroom. When you identify the traits that make you unique and then learn how to tap into what drives you, it can help you feel more engaged and excited in what you do. Insight between two covers With the release of the book Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life, editors Shannon Polly, MAPP, and Kathryn Britton, MAPP, have assembled an all-star lineup of positive psychology experts to take a closer look at character strengths. While many books have explained character strengths and their value, this volume goes one step further and provides actionable ways to apply your own strengths. Each chapter focuses in detail on a different strength. Written by a different expert, every chapter includes shortarticles that show how this character strength may be used in everyday life and suggestions on ways to help build that strength. The chapters end with a few paragraphs that can be read aloud to help reinforce that strength for you. Having many authors gives the book the feeling of a conversation among friends offering sage advice. (The one constant voice in each chapter is Tayyib Rashid’s “Five Actions,” which are his suggestions for ways to build each particular character strength in your own life.) Bite-size Learning “Character Strengths Matter” isn’t the kind of book you’ll necessarily sit down and read cover to cover. The editors suggest choosing your personal strengths and finding out more about them by reading the corresponding chapter; you’ll learn new ways to apply and develop that strength. Or, if there’s an area you’re interested in learning more about —perhaps an area where you’d like to improve—select that for your initial reading. Part of the beauty of this book is that each chapter is designed as a self-contained unit, and that allows the reader much more flexibility in how to approach and apply its contents. While the first section of the book explores character strengths, Part 2 is aptly titled “Taking Action” and delves deeper into how to better apply this newfound understanding of character strengths. Read more: Put Your Strengths to Work Using your strengths The approachable writing tone and many suggestions for how to better utilize character strengths make this feel like a cross between a workbook and a roadmap for better living. For anyone looking to better understand the value of character strengths – or to cultivate those strengths in his or her own life – “Character Strengths Matter” provides valuable insights. Whether you’re new to the study of character strengths, or are just looking for different ways to use your strengths, this book matters.

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