Posts Tagged ‘project happiness’
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
In this second series of podcasts, I interview Nina Poe, the author of the blog “Reflection on Depression”
(at reflectionondepression.typepad.com). As readers of the Project Happiness Handbook know, there is no magic bullet for happiness and this is doubly true for those suffering from clinical depression. But as compassionate people — whether we are friends, parents, teachers or mentors — we can reach out to those struggling with depression and help connect them with the professional resources to heal. And if you are struggling with depression, reach out to those around you and start down the road to happiness and wellness that Nina talks about here.
Click HERE for Reflecting on Struggle: Podcast 1
And here’s a list of Nina’s favorite resources for depression:
- http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome — Mood Gym is a cognitive behavioral therapy site. It’s free, consists of several different modules, and walks the participant through CBT techniques. It’s not a replacement for live therapy, but it’s a good start.
- http://www.narsad.org/ – NARSAD is my favorite mental health charity, and always gets me excited about the scientific and medical progress we are making in understanding mental health disorders. Also, 100% of donations go to research.
Books on Depression
Tags: adolescent, adversity, clinical depression, depression, depression resources, education, happiness, project happiness, resilience, youth
| 1 Comment »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
An update on happychild.com.au’s Yvette Vignando: she managed to secure herself a visit with the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, during which she made her case for more Project-Happiness-type social and emotional learning in Australia’s schools. Go to http://ow.ly/1A292 to hear an interview about her visit with the prime minister on ABC Newcastle. We at Project Happiness are so grateful for her tireless work on behalf of Australia’s students — go, Yvette!
Happier Kids in Australia - Coming Soon!
Tags: australia, curriculum, education, happiness, happychild, kevin rudd, project happiness, SEL, social and emotional learning, teaching, yvette vignando
| No Comments »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
In this installment, Dr. Brooks helps teachers tame the elephant in the classroom: fear of making mistakes and being humiliated. This fear is so strong that it can severely interfere with learning. Dr. Brooks offers a proactive resilient approach in which teachers address these fears directly and lead students in problem-solving to make the classroom a safe space. He also gives some tips on true discipline as discipleship/teaching: using his latest book (‘Raising a Self-Disciplined Child‘) as a touch point, he talks about how discipline can engender resilience, not resentment:
Click here for Robert Brooks, Part 5
After listening, think about what a safe and nurturing classroom space feels like to you. Take a look at this website for some welcoming and open classroom designs. And then share some ideas for your dream classroom on Twitter — how would you makes space for that elephant with unlimited time and budget?
Tags: classroom, discipline, dr. robert brooks, education, fear, happiness, happiness curriculum, humiliation, mentoring, mistakes, nurturing, parenting, Podcast, problem solving, project happiness, raising a self-disciplined child, resilience, safe space, teaching
| No Comments »
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
Here Dr. Brooks and I finally make the connection between resilience and happiness. Some of the key components of resilience — identifying and displaying your strengths, helping others, and solving problems — are also things that bring satisfaction and long-term happiness.
Project Podcast: Take-Aways for Parents and Teachers
After listening to the podcast, fill out our ‘Mentoring Resilience & Happiness’ questionnaire. And keep working on appreciating your gifts and appreciating children’s gifts. Compassion for yourself and the kids in your life can only make you and those around you happier and more resilient.
Tags: dr. robert brooks, education, gifts, happiness, happiness curriculum, mentoring, parenting, Podcast, positive psychology, problem solving, project happiness, resilience, strength-based, strengths, teaching, volunteering
| No Comments »
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Swimming for Our Islands of Competence
*******
In the third installment of our resilience podcast series, Dr. Brooks explains his powerful metaphor, islands of competence (see this article on his site for a powerful story about a parent applying islands of competence in her life). As a strength-based model of psychology was starting to emerge, Dr. Brooks began to think about helping parents and children in terms of leading them out of the “sea of self-perceived inadequacy” onto an “island of competence.”
Dr. Brooks’ Podcast on “Islands of Competence”
Project Podcast: Take-Aways for Teachers and Parents
After listening, ask yourself:
- What are my islands of competence? How can I change what I’m doing at home/in the classroom to highlight these strengths?
- What are my kids’/students’ islands of competence? How can I change what I’m doing at home/in the classroom to highlight these strengths?
- Share your ideas and plans for finding your and your kids’/students’ islands of competence through the “comments” function below and we can all learn from each other
Tags: adversity, dr. robert brooks, education, happiness, islands of competence, parenting, Podcast, positive psychology, project happiness, resilience, strength-based, strengths, teaching
| No Comments »
Monday, March 29th, 2010
In this second installment of our podcast series on resilience, Dr. Brooks and I discuss the importance of the “charismatic adult” in a child’s life (a term coined by Dr. Julius Segal — see this article or check out his Amazon bibliography for more info): that adult who believes in and stands by a child through adversity. Dr. Brooks traces his career path as he began to ask, “Why do some children who grow up under poverty and racism, undergo trauma, or face some other kind of adversity do well while others don’t?” In other words, he was shaping the science of resilience.
Click HERE for podcast: brookssecondinstallment
Project Podcast: Take-Aways for Teachers and Parents
After listening to the podcast, take a moment to ask yourself these questions:
- Who was the charismatic adult in your life? A parent? A teacher? A family friend? Several adults?
- Are you a charismatic adult for the children in your life? Do you say and do things that make children feel stronger or depleted?
- Have you observed — like Dr. Brooks — kids who have undergone adversity yet remain happy and well? How can you help other children in your life develop those traits of resilience?
For more in-depth discussion of how to raise resilient children, check out this article on Dr. Brooks’ website!
Tags: adversity, charismatic adult, dr. robert brooks, education, happiness, julius segal, parenting, Podcast, project happiness, resilience, teaching
| No Comments »
Friday, March 26th, 2010
Welcome to our very first podcast. This series of podcasts will give parents and educators tips for leading a happier, healthier life. And we’re starting with Dr. Robert Brooks (see his website for an archive of helpful articles, info on speaking engagements, and lots of resources for parents and teachers), a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, a world-renowned expert in childhood resilience, a national and international lecturer, and respected author of some extremely helpful and hopeful books (which you should check out!). Here Dr. Brooks talks a bit about his definition of resilience and why it is available not only to those who have been through traumatic events, but to everyone.
Project Podcast: Take-Aways for Teachers and Parents
(more…)
Tags: children, dr. robert brooks, mindset, parenting, Podcast, project happiness, resilience, teachers
| No Comments »
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
To accomodate interested parents’ schedules, we have switched the workshop to FRIDAY MORNING. E-mail abby@projecthappiness.com and get signed up for a fun and innovative program!
WHAT’S AHEAD: How are a resilient child and resilient flooring similar and how can Project Happiness help parents increase kids’ happiness and health? Here’s a blog about our upcoming parent workshop (See above) and advocating the ‘linoleum-ization’ of our children!
When I was a kid, linoleum must have experienced some giant technical breakthrough because I remember my mom and her friends talking about how good it looked and how resilient it was as they all remodeled their kitchens. Until coming to work for Project Happiness, that was my experience of resilience: really sturdy flooring.
But how quickly we all get used to the language of our surroundings! Because as we were designing our upcoming parent workshop I didn’t even question the use of ‘resilience’ to describe healthy, happy, kids who have the tools to overcome life’s obstacles. It took a few confused looks as we distributed the flyer to remind me that many parents might think we were advocating preparing kids for heavy foot traffic and frequent spills.
In some odd sense though, we are advocating the linoleum-ization of our children. Compare these 2 definitions of resilience from Dr. Brooks’ and Dr. Goldstein’s Raising Resilient Children site (check out their resilient parents quiz!) and the wiseGEEK flooring site respectively:
- Resilience: “A quality…that facilitates the ability to overcome adversity.”
- Resilience: “…designed to be durable, resistant to stains and water, and comfortable to stand and work on.”
Perhaps it’s the blizzard raging outside here in Maryland, but the 2 definitions of resilience here complement each other nicely:
- Resilience is a quality, something inherent in a person, but it’s a quality that the person has to design, to engineer, to create in herself. And we all want to help our children design that quality for themselves.
- Resilience facilitates getting through tough experiences, making one durable and resistant to the potential harm these experiences can bring (like big spots left over from spilled milk). But it doesn’t make someone bulletproof. And we don’t want that for our kids – we want experiences to get through to the inner core. Because that means the good experiences get in there, too.
- Resilience means the ability to overcome adversity while remaining comfortable to stand and work [on]. Okay, so this last one needs a tweak, removing the ‘on.’ Overcoming adversity is getting back to a comfortable standing and working state. To be resilient is to eventually get out of bed and go back to being comfortable in your day-to-day life after a devastating experience.
Resilience is a key component of both long-lasting happiness and long-lasting flooring and parents are in a unique position to be able to help their kids develop this quality.
If you’re interested in parent workshops on happiness, resilience, mindfulness, plasticity, either look into attending the upcoming workshop or download a brochure outlining how to bring Project Happiness into your school.
Tags: adolescent, happiness, parent, parent training, parent workshop, project happiness, resilience, resilient, robert brooks, sam goldstein, SEL, social and emotional learning, teenager
| 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
TRUE APPRECIATION: CELEBRATING THE NEW HANDBOOK'S ARRIVAL!
So, no surprise that on Thanksgiving, as on any other day, I was caught up in the language of the occasion. In particular, I began wondering about the name of the holiday itself, Thanksgiving. Even someone without a degree in linguistics could tell you that it comes from giving thanks. But the general public might not know how much complex appreciative action is hidden inside this humble noun (in addition the action of removing toddler-sized cranberry sauce prints from your sweater, of course…):
First, there is the action of giving, giving thanks. And hidden in there somewhere is someone or something that you’re giving that thanks to – perhaps your parents, your friends, your partner, your religious institution, or maybe the universe. Either way, there is a hidden recipient in there that bears pondering.
Second, there is the action of thanking. And, again, there is a missing recipient – thanking someone or something. Further, there is a hidden cause for thanks in there: you are thanking someone for something – health, friends, family, laughter, etc., etc. As I hope many Project Happiness students are learning this year, engaging in the action of thanking – appreciating – actually changes your brain, turning it towards the positive. So this action isn’t really new for Project Happiness fans.
Finally, there are, oddly, some historical connections of the word thank to the actions of thinking and feeling. These may seem far removed from thanking, but they are all what some linguists refer to as mental processes: things that go on inside your head (or heart!). These same linguists often chunk mental actions up even further into the actions of perceiving, thinking and feeling. I would argue that thanking involves all 3 of these. To thank we must first practice mindfulness so that we can perceive the things around us we appreciate. Then we need to grapple with understanding these things using our intellect and, finally, we must hold them in our hearts to experience the feeling of thankfulness.
All in all, then, the noun thanksgiving is action-packed. This week, as you pursue your own mindfulness practice and encourage the mindfulness practices of your students, children, friends and colleagues, think about some of the actions hidden in the nouns in your lives:
School –> to school
Whom? In what?
Food –> to feed
What part of yourself? With what?
Friend –> to friend/to befriend
Whom? How?
Work –> to work
With what materials? By what methods?
Class –> to classify
Whom? By what standards?
Homework –> to work at home
On what? To what end?
So here’s my challenge: verbify the positive things in your world. Take just 5 minutes out of class, a busy work week, or a homework session with your kids. Ask your students/colleagues/kids to name some of the most important things in their lives – the things they value. Then work together for a couple minutes working out some of the actions behind those things, using the columns above as a starting point. Share some of those verbified values as comments on the blog and perhaps together we can come up with a grammar of appreciation.
Giving thanks for all the amazing people in my life who have given me the occasion to create a grammar of gratefulness,
Abby
- Giving is a present participle (or a gerund…it depends…)
- Participles come from verbs but they, themselves, are officially nouns
- The verb to give takes 2 objects: the thing given and the person who’s receiving
- The second object of give (the receiver) is missing in Thanksgiving
- Thanks is itself derived originally from a verb, to thank
- To thank originally comes from a waaaay old form, tong (this form is Proto-Indo European if you really want to impress people at parties)
- Tong originally meant to think or to feel, not to thank
Okay, I could give you a lot more linguistic tidbits, but if I did that, there wouldn’t be anything else for linguists to do!
Tags: appreciation, linguistics, mental process, parenting, project happiness, SEL, social and emotional learning, teaching, thanksgiving
| No Comments »
In this second series of podcasts, I interview Nina Poe, the author of the blog “Reflection on Depression”
