The Habits of Happy People – April & May 2022

Schedule

Recorded video and resources

Session 1

Morning Poem, by Mary Oliver.

Assignment: Pick a time of day to have a 5 minute reflection at the same time every day. Rate your day (1-10) and ask yourself what made it happy and what made it less happy. Be specific. Pick one small thing you can do differently tomorrow.

Session 2

Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

Assignment: Once a day, write down three things you are grateful for. Also be aware of thought patterns that are not a friend of your happiness.

Flourish by Martin Seligman is a suggested reference book.

Session 3

This week’s poem is written by John Izzo

As the fog lifts off the tree topped mountains

A heaviness falls on my soul

Why are you unhappy? I ask

Why are you unhappy

When the birds, trees and grass sing

The only song they know how to sing

Just on the horizon whales breach

Breathing deeply out into the element

They know to be theirs

Maybe, maybe

All this noise, constantly going on inside you

Is merely drowning out the one voice

That already knows who you are

And why you are here

Have you ever wondered

What might happen if you

Simply breathed into everything you already know

Maybe, the conversation itself

Is the source of your misery

Assignment: Be aware of the meditative mindset, the noise, the resistance to something happening that you can’t change, your thinking about the future in a non-productive way.

Session 4

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Assignment: Work on integrating one of the new practices. Take The Five Thieves of Happiness quiz before next week

Session 5

Five Mantras

I choose to be in the present moment and to embrace whatever is. Happiness is not the outcome I seek.

I am connected to all that is; and if I can contribute to the good of the whole, happiness will find me.

Life is not a contest. I will be grateful for what I have and who I am. I will celebrate the success if others; for when I celebrate for others, I am happy.

I can choose happiness and contentment right now. It is a product of my mind, not a result of what is happening. Right now I will choose happiness.

I am not my patterns. Just because this is my habitual channel, it does not mean it serves me. I can choose a new path.

This week’s poem is written by John Izzo

Two days left to walk

And the way has not answered

The questions you came to ask

What if, when you arrive

All you have are sore feet, aching knees and the same nagging riddles

That drove you to walk in the first place

Consider for a moment The gentle quiet calm of every stream you crossed

The steady stately pose of every tree that granted you shade

The way each bird sang for you Their one true song

And all the weathered smiling faces that wished you well as you strode along

Each stream knew its source and destination

Every tree stood on its own solid ground

No bird longed to fly in some new formation

The answer was never in arrival

But in the walk itself

The way each day you found yourself walking more deeply into the world How each step became itself a lifetime

not merely movement towards a hoped for destination

The way in each face you met a part of the God

you came here to remember

In each moment alive to the world without struggle,

open to everything that might arrive

Two days left to walk and the way had changed the questions you came to ask

Assignment: Choose the best practice for you and do it every day this week.

Session 6

I will not die an unlived life by Dawn Markova

Suggested reading:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande