Parent TOGs: Be Happy!
Research shows that our experiences in life reshape our brains and change our nervous systems. The problem is that we are wired to respond more to negative than positive experiences. As psychologist Rick Hanson says, "The mind is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones." Negative experiences are actually stored in a different way than we typically store positive influences. But recent research shows that if we train ourselves, we can focus more on positive experiences, building them up to counterbalance this "negativity bias."We can do this by noticing the positive events more (rather than just letting them slip by), savoring them (by staying with the positive emotions for more than just a few seconds), and letting these positive experiences become a part of us. These steps help embed the positive and change the structure of our nervous system for the better!
Two books for encouraging us to follow these three steps are Rachel Kempster and Meg Leder's The Happy Book: A Journal to Celebrate What Makes You Happy and Barbara Ann Kipfer's Field Guide to Happiness.
The Happy Book is a little bit silly and fairly visual (one page asks you to go outside the box and draw a picture of a crazy animal hybrid (a rabbihippo, bearicorn, catigator, etc.), another exhorts you to plan a "perfect kid's day menu" for yourself.) The exercises are fun and creative and will definitely stretch those positive thinking skills!
The Field Guide to Happiness is a slightly more structured program for noticing and savoring positive things in life. It has sections for making lists of things that make you happy, with helpful prompts and clear explanations of the point of the exercises. It calls on you to think deeply about what inspires and delights you, which takes some effort but will also pay you back by embedding these positive emotions even more deeply.An additional Parent TOG that we just have to share is Christine Carter's new class, based on her book and one of our all-time favorite TOGs, Raising Happiness. This online class starts next week and promises to teach:
- Practical skills for raising kids who are happy now and in the future
- Greater happiness yourself—both as a parent and an individual
- Ways to raise children’s emotional intelligence and school performance
- Strategies for dealing with life’s difficulties, such as: divorce, sibling rivalry, brattiness and entitlement, and big changes, such as moving or a death.
We are so excited about this class and hope to see some of you in the virtual classroom! Click here for more info.
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