An Exercise In Happiness

In his best selling book, Emotional Intelligence, Why it can matter more than IQ (Bantam Books © 1995) Daniel Goleman explains how a window of opportunity exists to instill emotional intelligence, which begins to close as children approach late adolescent years.  Thoughts, emotions and beliefs dictate how a person’s life unfolds and these thoughts, feelings and beliefs will either empower a person to live their life to its fullest and go for their dreams or place limits on the kind of life they will live.  To master anything in life first requires a basic understanding of how the thing we choose to master actually works.

An Exercise in Happiness™ is designed to give children a basic understanding of how their thoughts, emotional and belief systems work and how to gain control over them.  One of the biggest problems grown-ups face with leading a happy and fulfilling life is a lack of understanding of what actually makes them happy.

Research over the past two decades in the fields of Positive Psychology and Subjective Well being have revealed there truly is a science to leading a happy and rewarding life and that happiness is not always found where we think it is.

An Exercise in Happiness helps kids determine what really makes them feel happy and how happiness can become a habitual way of being.  When we think good thoughts about ourselves, the world we live in and about our future, we feel good, and when we feel good we do well by taking action on our good thoughts and feelings.

The lessons within An Exercise in Happiness will not only give children the knowledge and understanding of HOW to live a happy life, but provides them with the action tools to MAKE IT HAPPEN. Children also develop the understanding that we need to feel the range of emotions we all experience at one time or another and that it is okay to feel sad, angry and scared sometimes.

Personal growth and the knowledge of how to lead a fulfilling and happy life should not be reserved for the adult population because our children deserve it too, now more than ever before.  With rates of childhood depression at epidemic levels and more than 9 percent of American adolescents diagnosed clinically depressed annually, and this number is on the rise, coupled with suicide being the third largest cause of death among our teenagers, we their parents and teachers need to take action to ensure the emotional well being of our kids.

However, because “what we think about comes about” An Exercise in Happiness was designed to focus on what is right in our children and cultivate more of it, rather than to focus on what is wrong with them in an attempt to fix it.  The basis of all learning is through repetition and concentrated focus of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions, which is why An Exercise in Happiness™ was designed as a 30 day program that will help children develop a habitual way of thinking and feeling that will empower and motivate them to be all they can be and to do what it takes to live the life they truly want to live and the benefits of this program will last a child a lifetime.