Our brains are wired to look for trouble. While this is important in certain situations, it can be hard to overcome the habit of spending more time and energy imagining the negative outcomes of everyday situations than focusing on the positive. We are surrounded by news and media that constantly show us an unbalanced view of the world, which can reinforce the idea that we live in frightening times. The good news is that during adolescence it is possible to help shape our brain’s natural tendencies toward fear by looking to the positive parts of our lives with intent.
Recognizing that we are in control of how we see and react to the things around us gives us a sense of power. The more we practice looking for possibilities, the easier it is to see them, and while that doesn’t mean ignoring challenges, it can make them more palatable. There is a great deal of evidence that people who are resilient are also grateful and optimistic, so developing techniques and practices for positivity can also help us recover from setbacks more quickly and learn more from them.
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.”—Richard Bach
Objective: Students will learn that being generous and kind to others is a great way to cultivate happiness in their own lives. They will explore big and small acts of altruism that they can do every day.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Bookend Your Day activity (10 minutes)
• Sharing Joy meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: The Dictionary.com definition of altruism is “the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others.” There are many ways to do this, and it needn’t involve a huge sacrifice on our part. Scientific studies show that generosity makes us feel better, especially when we do something without expecting any kind of recognition or payback. When we see a need that we can fill, no matter how small, and we make an effort to do it, that’s altruism. True acts of generosity have a huge positive effect on our self-esteem.
Discussion Questions:
• Have students share everyday examples of altruism from their own lives and talk about how it felt—paying for a younger sibling’s ice cream or helping them with their homework or doing a chore at home without being asked. (Try not to give any examples at first and see whether they can identify some on their own.)
• Now talk about something big they did for someone else—maybe walked a 5K to support diabetes research or donated their birthday money to a local charity. How did that feel? Is there a difference between “big” and “little” acts of generosity?
• Ask students whether there is such a thing as an act of generosity that is too small, or does offering a warm smile to a homeless person or a bullied student count? Have them think of ways they can incorporate more acts of altruism into their lives, and challenge them to keep track of such acts for a week to see what that is like.
Activity: Bookend Your Day (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Sharing Joy
Be sure to pause several times throughout the meditation to give students some time to really sit and imagine the ideas in their heads. Ideally, it will last about five minutes.
From time to time, it’s important to just stop for a minute and conjure up some happiness. This time, we’ll go slowly and sit for about five minutes as we learn how to do this, but anytime during the day when you’re feeling low or stressed or catch yourself getting angry, you can take a deep breath and close your eyes for a minute and repeat it quickly. Right now, though, let’s close our eyes and breathe deeply a few times to clear our thoughts out.
Now, imagine something that makes you smile—a basket full of puppies, a kitten rolling off the couch, a baby giggling, an actor doing something outrageous on TV, whatever. Once you feel a smile twitching at the corners of your mouth, you’ve got it.
Without making any noise, I want you to focus on what that feeling is like. Do you feel it in your belly—a laugh getting ready to erupt? Is it warm in your chest or around your mouth? That’s happiness.
Next, I want you to imagine that feeling of happiness rippling out into the room, covering everyone and everything in its wake. It might have a color or a sound, or it might just be a wave of energy, but it is powerful, and it radiates out as far as you can see in whatever room you’re in. Take a moment to behold its power. You have just shared a joy bomb.
Open your eyes and continue on about your day. Anytime you are feeling a little low, just remember what it felt like to spread that happiness around. Relax and smile for a moment.
“Joy is the kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”—David Steindl-Rast
Objective: Students will learn that they are always deserving of happiness, regardless of the circumstances of their lives or the choices they’ve made. They will learn how to give themselves permission to experience joy at any time they choose to.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes for discussion)
• Finding Purpose and Meaning activity (10 minutes)
• Cheesecloth/Giant Strainer meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Our brains are primed to notice and expect negative, potentially harmful things more than positive things. We remember the bad times in our lives more clearly, and we expect bad things to happen far more often than good things. Especially during our teen years, when the amygdala (controller of the fight/flight/fear response) is in charge.
Often, when something good happens to us, our happy feeling is quickly followed up by a feeling of dread—that either we will lose that thing we just got that makes us happy or that the universe will somehow need to pay us back with something bad to even things out.
Other times, when we feel joy or realize that things are going pretty well for us right now, a sense of guilt seeps in. Who are we to be happy when babies are starving, floodwaters are raging, or friends are suffering?
Sometimes, if we’ve had trauma in our lives, there is a feeling that we deserve happiness, that we have somehow paid our dues by struggling. While that can feel good, it’s pretty sad to imagine that we have to earn joy by having difficult times in our lives. Moreover, if you happen to have a pretty chill, pretty happy life right now, it’s horrible to think you might pay for it later with lots of trauma.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students if they have ever worried about being “too happy.” Talk about how often they enter a new situation expecting the best outcome as opposed to the worst-case scenario.
• Has anyone ever felt guilty when they were happy because others were unhappy or suffering even if the suffering wasn’t something they could control? Discuss that idea. Is it rational?
• Talk about the notion of “deserving joy.” Do some people deserve joy more than others? Does your joy take away from someone else’s? Is joy like a pie with only a certain amount?
• Talk about the idea of earning joy. What do students think about that? What about joyful little kids—do they have to struggle to earn joy in their lives?
Activity: Finding Purpose and Meaning (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Cheesecloth/Giant Strainer
Explain to students that this meditation is designed to help them release negative energy they have unconsciously collected throughout the day. Whether we are aware of it or not, every time we are around others, we receive their energy. When you walk into a room where two people are arguing, you can feel the tension. We absorb this energy without even realizing it—from the barista who screwed up our drink to the poor homeless man we pass every day on the way to school, the fight we had with a teacher over a missing assignment, or our younger sibling’s meltdown right before school. All of this collects in our minds and bodies and weighs us down, but it’s not ours to carry. Make sure to pause often and let students imagine the cleansing effect of this meditation.
Close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths to settle in. Imagine a giant piece of cheesecloth (or a giant metal strainer) hovering above your head, and as you breathe slowly and deeply, visualize it making its way through your body, starting at the top of your head and moving down. As it goes, all of the black, sticky negative energy gets caught in it. By the time it has made its way through your neck and arms, torso, hips, legs, and exited the soles of your feet, this strainer is full of every bit of negative energy it found in you. As it moves through your body, you just notice it gathering the negativity—you don’t have to catalog every little thing; just let it go, and notice how much lighter and freer you feel as it takes them away. By the end, the only energy left in you is yours, and it looks like a bright, golden light.
If it has been a particularly challenging day, you can shake off the black bits and run the cheesecloth/strainer back up through your feet and body and out the top of your head, collecting any remaining stray bits. Because it is energy and it belongs somewhere, at this point, I tie it up in a bundle and imagine flinging it back out into the universe, where it will find its owner or it is recycled back into something else.
“When we talk about the glass being half-full or half-empty, we sometimes forget that it’s refillable.”—Unknown
Objective: Students will explore the idea that joy is something that is always present and learn ways to practice looking for positivity and opportunities to be optimistic.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Gratitude Practice activity (10 minutes)
• Wallowing in Happiness meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Most of us believe that if we practice certain kinds of things, we can get better at them. Whether it’s shooting free throws every day, going over our multiplication tables until we can’t stand it anymore, or hitting the skate park after school to work on tricks, we can develop abilities and strengths by doing something over and over again.
What we sometimes have a hard time believing is that the same phenomenon holds true with our brain wiring and emotional health. There is scientific evidence that shows that if you have the same kinds of thoughts and reactions over and over again, it actually begins to shape the pathways of your brain, and when you’re a teenager, your brain’s ability to be molded in certain ways is stronger than almost any other time in your life.
Gloria Steinem has said, “If you want ‘X’ at the end of your journey, you have to have ‘X’ all along the way, too.”1
What she means is that if you don’t live your life in a certain way, by the time you get to your goal, you won’t know how to live that way. If you want happiness, you have to practice being happy, you have to walk through life finding the good. Many of the people who find great success in their career do so because they enjoyed not only the end result but also the path that got them there as well.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to think about things that might be happening in the world right now that would put a smile on their face. Somewhere, there might be puppies wrestling on the floor or a child tasting ice cream for the first time. How does it feel to think about those things?
• Ask students to think about focusing attention on positive things instead of negative ones, even when difficult situations arise. What would it be like if our default setting was happy instead of being on guard for negative experiences?
• What are things they can practice in their lives that could lead to more happiness? Does it make sense to think that you can’t have joy at the end if you don’t have joy along the way?
Activity: Gratitude Practice (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Wallowing in Happiness
Find a comfortable seat, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out to settle in. Let your mind release any nagging thoughts or concerns for right now and relax.
Think of a time when you were at peace. Maybe you were sitting on a riverbank fishing with someone you like or lying in bed on a Saturday morning knowing that you didn’t have to get up right away. There could be any number of times, but I want you to picture one, and see if you can feel what that felt like. Imagine the air all around you is the perfect temperature, not too cold or too warm. Your seat is comfortable, or perhaps you’re floating on the water. Wherever you are, it is just perfect. Hold that feeling and freeze time. You are the only thing that moves in this moment of happiness and contentment.
Experiment by wiggling your fingers or toes. Shake a leg or an arm and see how the air or the water shimmies around you, enveloping you in this moment of happiness. If you feel like it, let a smile grow on your face and move around more—wallow in this feeling like a pig in mud. This is your moment, your happiness, do what you want with it. Maybe you want to scoop up handfuls and toss them in the air. Perhaps you want to put your face in it and blow bubbles like a kid in the bathtub. Roll around in it, dance in it, play. Spend a few minutes just exploring this expansive feeling of joy however you want to.
When you’re done playing, come back to your body here and now and breathe deeply. Remember that feeling of being surrounded by happiness, and imagine it settling into a special place in your brain for the memory. You can access that feeling any time you want to, and you can add to the memories there. The next time you feel content and happy, close your eyes for a moment and tuck that away in your brain. You can find happiness anywhere.
Take one more deep breath, and open your eyes slowly.
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Objective: People who have more social connections are happier and less likely to struggle with anxiety and depression. Students will learn to think critically about the relationships they choose and the impact those relationships have on them.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5 minutes of introduction, 30+ minutes of discussion)
• The Rule of Five activity (10 minutes)
• Part of the Whole meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Solid, healthy relationships are formed between people who feel seen, heard, valued, and not judged. Hopefully, we can all identify people in our lives who treat us that way, and it is important for us to cultivate those relationships in our lives, both by being those people and being around those people. One piece of advice that is often given in regard to developing strong, genuine connections asks us to:
Do Less, Say Less
Listen More, Feel More
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to take an inventory of the people in their lives who really value them and listen to them. Does it feel as if there are more of these kinds of relationships in their life than other, more shallow ones?
• Encourage students to discuss how often judgment and assumption show up in their close relationships. What does that say about the nature of those connections?
• Ask students to imagine what the most difficult part of practicing the relationship advice discussed here in their existing relationships might be. Are there people with whom it will be easier than others?
• Are there other “rules” or patterns they see when they examine their closest, safest relationships and compare them to others that don’t feel genuine or solid?
Activity: The Rule of Five (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Part of the Whole
The text of this meditation is fairly short, so be sure to pause often and leave lots of time for students to reflect as they listen.
Find a comfortable sitting position, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths to settle in, and clear your mind of any random thoughts. As you relax, picture a computer keyboard in your mind. Can you see all of the letters and numbers and symbols? Even if the keys all have the same basic shape and their job is similar, they look a little different and have different functions. Each letter of the alphabet and each number, each key that holds a punctuation mark, is important on its own, and really powerful when it is used with the other symbols.
Imagine that you are one of those symbols—you can decide which one if you want to. Think about how your school papers and emails and text messages would be different if that symbol weren’t there. Think about how important each one of them is as a part of the bigger picture.
Now think about each of your friends, classmates, and relatives as a unique symbol. Together, you make up a community that is rich and diverse, not because you are all the same, but because you are all different. Think about how each individual plays a key role and how you all function on your own, with your own ideas and beliefs, and how you function together.
Reflect on how vital it is to have each of you performing your own special role, and be grateful for the unique qualities you bring to the table. We are, each of us, important in our own right and part of something larger that both needs us and nourishes us.
When you are ready, take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”—Gloria Steinem
Objective: Students will explore ideas of competition and self-motivation and talk about the importance of values as they identify their goals and work toward them.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Goal-Setting activity (10–20 minutes)
• Saltwater meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Steve Wilkinson was a very talented, incredibly successful tennis coach who built a philosophy of coaching on something he called “the three crowns.” He explained it like this: “The three crowns focus on things that we can control. The three crowns bring us a stillness of mind.” It was perhaps that stillness of mind that led him to such success, even though it didn’t focus on scores or a win-loss record but instead the values each player lived by. The crowns are these:
• Commit to a positive attitude and celebrate what you did well. Before you ever set foot on the court or in the classroom or anywhere else, promise yourself that you will be positive. You will go in with an open mind, assume that others will have good intentions, and expect a happy outcome. Even if you don’t get the outcome you anticipated, look for the strengths. What did you do that demonstrated your skills? Find something positive in your performance.
• Commit to full effort until the end. Even if you’re going up against an opponent or getting into a situation that you think might be an uphill battle, promise yourself that you will continue to work until it’s over. Play as hard as you can until the final buzzer rings. Stay focused on finishing what you started. Even if you’re getting blown away, if what you came to do was take this class or play this match or learn this skill, remember to keep working your hardest until it’s done.
• Honor your opponent and be a good sport. Whether you won or lost, enjoyed the experience or not, there are things you can learn from others. If it was a sporting event, perhaps the other team or player had some moves or techniques you could try. If it was a class, whether you felt like you didn’t connect with the instructor personally or you already knew a lot of the material, there is something in there that was valuable. Find it and appreciate it, and be grateful for the opportunity to learn. It is natural to be disappointed if your expectations weren’t met, but that doesn’t mean it was a waste. Find the good.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to recall a time when a game or event didn’t go according to plan. Can they look back and determine the redeeming value of that experience? Perhaps there is more to it than they originally took away from it.
• Talk with students about what it looks like to quit and what it looks like to continue with full effort until the end. Are there situations where this is not possible or worth it?
• Ask students to imagine committing to a positive attitude every single time they try something new (including a sporting event, a school assignment, starting a job, etc.). What are the kinds of things they currently say to themselves in these situations? What kind of a shift in energy and self-talk would it take to be conscious of the three crowns instead?
Remind students that the three crowns are about recognizing what we get to be in control of in any situation. We can’t predict or control anyone else’s behavior, so to perform at our best and learn from our experiences, we need to focus our attention on what we can do. This philosophy is what led Steve Wilkinson to the all-time best winning record of any tennis coach despite the fact that he never told his players that the goal was to win.
Activity: Goal-Setting (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Saltwater
Sometimes it is hard for us to have perspective on just how a bad day or a rough patch fits into the larger puzzle of our lives. This meditation is designed to give us a little bit of breathing room when we are focused on something negative. Find a comfortable sitting position, and close your eyes. Take a few long, deep breaths in and out to clear any stray thoughts you’re having.
When you’re ready, I want you to picture a glass of water and a shaker of salt sitting on a counter. The glass of water represents today, and the salt is something unexpected or unhappy. Pick up the salt shaker, and dump some of the salt into the water. Watch as it swirls around and falls to the bottom. Some of it will dissolve, but much of it remains visible in the water. Shake some more in there. Pick up the glass, and twist it back and forth to see the salt move around in the water. Think about how awful it would taste if you took a drink right now. This is what it’s like when we are unhappy with the way our day is going.
Take a deep breath and look out a window. You will see a lake outside. Fresh, clean, pure, surrounded by trees. The surface of the lake is still and reflective, and there is a small bench sitting next to it. Pick up the salt shaker and an empty glass, and head out to the bench. Sit down for a minute, and just look at the beautiful lake. The lake is your life. Look at the clear water. Shake some salt into the lake. Watch as it swirls around and falls. Reach in, and stir the water a bit. Wait for it to settle a bit, and dip your glass into the lake to fill it. Hold the glass up to the light and look to see whether you can see any salt crystals in it.
When we are only paying attention to something unhappy that is going on, we are looking at the salt water in the glass. However, if we take the time to remember that the tiny amount of salt doesn’t change much when it is compared to a vast lake, we can begin to get perspective on our lives. When I’m having a hard day, I like to remember this quote:
“On particularly rough days when I’m sure I can’t possibly endure, I like to remind myself that my track record for getting through bad days so far is 100 percent, and that’s pretty good.”—Vinny Genovesi
When you’re ready, take a deep breath in, and open your eyes.
“The only way you can make yourself happy is to create a story that will make you happy. . . . You cannot control what is happening around you, but you can control the way you tell the story.”—Unknown
Objective: Students will be asked to identify people they look up to and think about the characteristics they have. They will use this to determine which aspects of people’s personalities and behavior are important to them and which they aspire to as a way to think about living a meaningful life.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Living a Life of Intent activity (10+ minutes)
• Growth and Change meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: There are many studies that show that when we don’t feel as though we have a purpose or some greater goal, we are more likely to suffer from depression. Animal studies show that they would rather eat food that they have to work for than eat food that is passively available. There is evidence that we value things we make more than we value things that we buy.
It is also important to human beings that our contributions are acknowledged by others. Many of us struggle to define what our purpose might be, and there are some who think that we don’t have just one but that throughout our lifetimes we may find many different things meaningful and important.
Ultimately, the life choices we make are guided by the things we find value in. While our activities might change over time, we generally hold on to a similar set of morals throughout our lives, and all of us want to be challenged on some level and feel as though we are doing work that makes a difference to those around us.
Discussion Questions:
• Have students talk about the people they look up to the most. Do those people seem to live with some higher purpose in mind? If there are multiple people a student looks up to, do those people all share some key characteristics?
• What makes a goal “meaningful”? Moreover, how does having a meaningful goal change your attitude toward it, if at all?
• Does anyone currently feel as though they have ideas about what their purpose in life is? Does anyone know how to find that?
Activity: Living a Life of Intent (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Growth and Change
We tend to believe that we can grow and change in certain ways but not in others. For example, you might think that you can get better at baseball or soccer but that you’ll always struggle with math or science. The truth is, we are always changing and growing, and as Dr. Shauna Shapiro says, “What you practice grows.”2 This meditation is great for reminding us that we can choose how we see our own growth and that we can always continue to push ourselves to be better at anything.
Sit in a comfortable position, and close your eyes. Breathe deeply in and out a few times to settle in and clear your mind. Picture yourself as a strong, beautiful serpent. Take a minute to look at yourself, note the colors of your scales and the long, strong body. As you breathe deeply, I want you to notice that your current skin is feeling a little too tight, a little restrictive.
Breathe slowly and imagine moving forward, slowly beginning to slither out of that skin and leaving it behind. As you move, sense the restriction easing a bit. Keep progressing a little at a time, and feel the space you have to expand, to become something more, to fully inhabit your new skin.
Once you’ve fully made your way out of the old shell, look back, and acknowledge how much you’ve grown. That old skin protected you and shielded you and gave you some of your color for a while, but it’s time for you to move on now. You are moving about in the world in a bigger way, with more impact and responsibility. It is normal to feel a little vulnerable before your new skin hardens fully, but you can focus on the freedom and power you have just given yourself. You can choose to shed your old skin anytime it becomes too small. You can move toward the goals you set for yourself, even if it feels frightening, because you deserve to have room to breathe.
NOTES
1. Steinem, Gloria. October 2014. “Wisdom Sharing: A Deepening Retreat.” Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.
2. Shapiro, Shauna. March 10, 2017. “The Power of Mindfulness: What you Practice Grows Stronger.” Video retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeblJdB2-Vo.