Imagine a school where children were taught the awareness, knowledge and skills that would help them feel happier in the present and greatly improve their chances for lifelong happiness. Picture children learning mental techniques and practices that significantly relieve emotional stress and distress and reduce the power of fear and anger to possess them. Consider the possibility of most children feeling peace, joy and love deeper, longer and more often. Contemplate what discovering their passions early in life and being encouraged to follow them could add to the subjective quality of children’s lives.
Robust evidence shows that what kids learn to become happier and more in control of their feelings also enhances their social skills and the quality of their relationships, markedly improves their academic and goal achievement, minimizes behavioral problems, and makes them both mentally and physically healthier. The evidence also shows that happiness is contagious; a happy person can bring light into many lives, which makes the stakes of happiness education even higher.
Research shows that the necessary awareness, knowledge and skills can be successfully taught in schools with all these remarkable outcomes. Teaching them promises to make a profound and lasting difference in the lives of most children. Yet few schools as yet devote any time and resources to teaching them.
It’s not surprising, of course. What I call heart skills are barely a blip on the radar of public discourse about education. They are not included in accountability tests and the mandates of departments of education. They are not embedded in any of the traditional subjects taught in schools. Apparently, happiness knowledge and skills are not considered important to making a living and growing the economy, which seems to be the main concern in public debate about the ends and means of K-12 education. The gap between what schools could make in the subjective quality of students’ lives and the difference they do make at present is Pacific Ocean wide. If we can spread awareness of the promise of happiness education, hearts will open and minds–and education systems–will change. For the sake of all children, please help me spread this awareness.
THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF FEELINGS
I propose that the experiential value of any experience in the moment you experience it lies in what you feel in that moment. An experience may have future value in what you learn from it, but even then, the experiential gain of learning will lie in the feelings experienced in future moments.
To understand this, imagine a robotic state of no feeling. You still receive and interpret the data of your senses, you still have the capacity of reason and interpretation, but you wouldn’t care about your perceptions and the information they provide because caring is a feeling. You may react based on programmed instinct as an advanced robot might, but you would lack the motive force that only feelings provide. Feelings move us, the reasoning mind absent feelings does not. The reasoning mind helps identify possible goals and paths of action, but the desire to attain goals is what moves us to pursue them.
No feeling, no experiential value. Feeling is the core value of experience, the treasure we seek in trying to arrange what we prefer to experience and without which experience would be no more than acknowledging sensory data without purpose and therefore without meaning in the sense of value.
Of course, we prefer some feelings and wish to avoid others. This preference is what moves us. We are moved to change what we are experiencing in the hope it will make us feel better than we do at present. This is why most feelings are aptly called emotions: they move us. Emotions are those feelings that move us to change our circumstances in hope of experiencing more preferred feelings. Fear, anger, sadness, yearning and boredom are among these. What we do to experience what we prefer to feel is a practical understanding of the pursuit of happiness.
Not all feelings move us to seek to change present experience, though. Some feelings are experientially rewarding enough that we don’t want to change what we’re presently feeling. Joy, peace, love, contentment, and gratitude are among the feelings we might wish to keep feeling. Our most cherished feelings are self-sufficient in this sense. Such feelings may move us to externally express them, but not to seek to change them. I therefore make a distinction between feelings that move us to change our experience—emotions—and self-sufficient feelings.
Feelings in a larger sense includes both emotions and self-sufficient feelings. In this sense, they are respectively the primary motive force of our lives as well as the primary goal of our striving. The reasoning mind may be a useful servant in our pursuit, but the heart determines the ultimate goal of our striving. The heart is thus the true master.
The subjective quality of our lives lies in the quality of our feelings in terms of our individual preferences. Our experiences are inherently subjective, so we can simply say that the quality of our lives is the quality of our feelings. Feelings are not mere aspects of life; they are literally the heart of life. To repeat, feelings are the experiential value of living, of experiencing life.
The common word for the feeling or feelings we most prefer is “happiness.” The insight that feelings are the experiential value of any and every experience provides at least some useful parameters for understanding the nature of happiness. Of course, people differ in regard to what feelings they prefer, at least on a superficial level. Though this hinders a more precise general understanding of happiness, it narrows the search to discovering what you most want to feel and how to feel as you choose.
The implications of the insight of the supreme importance of feelings for education are profound. It means the primary value of education is what it contributes to children’s ability to feel as they choose.
THE SOURCES OF HAPPINESS
Since happiness is one or more feelings, we must look to the sources of feelings to discover the sources of happiness. The sources of feelings are what causes them. Most people seem to believe that feelings are largely caused by something in their external environment. They look to external circumstances, occurrences and acquisitions as the sources of their feelings. That’s why they tend to focus on changing their external environment as the main means to change what they feel. But, except for some instinctual reactions, the raw data of perceptions, the data received through our senses, has no meaning until our minds give it meaning. Our minds interpret the data and give it meaning in terms of our own understandings, experiences, beliefs and preferences.
The feelings we believe are caused by external circumstances and events are actually caused by the meaning we give our perceptions, by our interpretations and judgments of them. The raw data of perceptions do not directly cause feelings as they do not supply their own meaning. We interpret the data of our senses and on some level of consciousness judge it in terms of good, bad or neutral, which gives rise to corresponding feelings. Our judgments are the primary cause of our feelings. Of course, we do not need external perceptions to feel, as feelings are also responses to the judgments woven into our thoughts.
Understanding that all but your most instinctual feelings are determined within rather than without is profoundly important to your pursuit of happiness. As difficult as it may seem to manage thoughts and judgments, it is easier than trying to make the world around you conform to your desires. And even if you could control the people, circumstances and events of your external environment, you would still confront the fact that external perceptions do not directly cause feelings. You would still have to manage your thoughts and judgments to feel as you wish.
This is true, at least, of emotions—feelings that move us to feel differently. Many believe and claim direct experience that self-sufficient feelings such as peace, joy and love lie at the core of our being and are naturally experienced when we relinquish thought and judgment. In this view, our thoughts and judgments do not cause such feelings, rather they obscure awareness of them. This is a minority view at present, but I believe there is good, practical reason to differentiate between the cause of emotions and the source of self-sufficient feelings. Positive thoughts in the sense of positive judgments do indeed make you feel better, but may not suffice to reach the higher reaches of self-sufficient feelings.
Interpretations and judgments are not only the proximate cause of emotions, they are the primary cause. Changes in attitude and beliefs change the interpretive filter of perceptions and thereby change the associated feelings. Judgments are not mandated by external perceptions, they are learned through interpretation of experience, socialization and teaching. At some level of mind, interpretations and judgments are chosen and are not only subject to change, most are fated to change as life brings new experiences and understandings.
Judgments are subjective; they are not dictated by objective reality. Whether you judge an experience good, bad, or indifferent depends on your memories, beliefs, attitude, and perspectives. To the extent you can influence the interpretive filters that influence your judgments, you have the ability to influence what you feel. This is a crucially important understanding. It is an obvious wisdom taught through the ages, but people often don’t heed it when they focus on what they believe are external sources of happiness. As I said, changing your mindset is a lot more doable than trying to control external circumstances. And ultimately it is the only means to attain the higher reaches of happiness.
We also have control over the information that reaches our consciousness through the focus of attention. Attention determines, amplifies, and orders the information we consider presently important. Where we focus our attention looms large in our minds. This is crucial to understand because when you focus on what you deem negative, negative feelings such as fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, irritation, etc. dominate your experience of the moment. The contrary—focus on what you deem positive—allows more pleasant feelings to brighten your momentary experience. Learning to more purposely choose your focus is key to feeling better than otherwise.
Intention, or will, is the standard by which we judge perceptions. What you feel about an aspect of a current experience mostly depends on whether you think it enhances, hinders, or threatens your prospects for realizing what you want. Seeing it start to rain when you intend to go for a walk colors your feelings about the rain. Intention, of course, is basically synonymous with purpose. Purpose plays a dominant role in shaping your experience of life. It gives direction and a measure of progress.
To repeat, all but the most instinctual feelings are ultimately determined by your judgment-making mind. The keys to feeling as you choose—and sustaining the feeling—are found within. Guiding students to discover and practice techniques based on these keys should therefore be the foundational focus of happiness education. Many internal obstacles such as conditioning, beliefs, habits and the wiles of the ego stand in the way. That’s why ongoing practice is essential. If it were easy, we’d live in a much happier world.
Yet, every subject taught in schools is just the beginning of a long road to mastery. Guiding students on the journey to mastering the internal keys to happiness promises far greater rewards both in the short and long term than the factual knowledge-centric focus of contemporary education. And feeling better in the short term suggests more enthusiasm to learn and practice, a prospect supported by research on happiness-related techniques in classrooms. Research shows that when teachers show interest in students’ happiness, classroom dynamics dramatically improve. Students are better behaved, more interested and focused, and more participatory. It’s a win-win situation. Nothing of real importance would be sacrificed if education were devoted to students’ happiness. What we all stand to gain is beyond measure.
TRAINING THE MIND TO SERVE THE HEART
The keys to the heart are in the mind. Since the beliefs, thoughts and judgments of the mind are the primary source of emotions and perhaps the main obstacles to awareness of self-sufficient feelings, the core means to feel as one chooses involve mind training. The mind must be trained to serve the heart rather than the ego. The first step of such training is awareness of what is going on in the mind and body.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the hub of the wheel of the most effective practices to feel more peace, joy and love and less fear, anger, and grievance. Mindfulness is present-moment awareness without judgment. You can be mindful while engaging in the world and be mindful of what is occurring in mind and body. The latter is inner awareness, which is crucial to happiness education.
The benefits of practicing mindfulness are profound. Mindfulness has been taught and practiced in classrooms for decades and the benefits in terms of learning, classroom participation, enthusiasm, reduction of disruptive behavior, and emotional stability outside the classroom are well-established in research. As early as kindergarten, kids seem to really take to it according to those who teach it. Many teachers at all grade levels attest that practicing mindfulness in their classrooms was sometimes transformative, especially for some of the more challenged and troubled kids.
The how of teaching and practicing mindfulness in classrooms varies, as it should. Experimentation and personal experience are the fertile soil for improving standard practices. I emphasize, though, that awareness of feelings, causes of feelings, and preferability of feelings should be the heart of teaching and practicing mindfulness in schools. Learning how to feel better than otherwise, to feel happier than otherwise, is the primary goal of happiness education.
Inner awareness is the master key to the heart as it allows more focused awareness of feelings and the thoughts and judgments that seem to be causing them. Greater awareness of feelings enables greater discernment of which feelings you prefer and which you don’t. This in turn opens the door to conscious choice of feelings as you learn and practice the means to influence what you feel. Mindfulness does not involve resisting feelings, as what you resist persists. Rather you observe feelings without judgment. which greatly reduces the power of negative feelings to possess your mind and allows them to pass through your body and out of awareness.
In time kids can learn to practice inner awareness anywhere in any situation, but they should start with sitting quietly with minimal distractions while focused on slowly breathing in, holding, and exhaling. At first, they should close their eyes. This is actually a form of meditation. The most obvious indicator of feelings is how the body feels. Feelings are most easily detected in the body, primarily in the contraction or relaxation of the torso and neck. Feelings also have mental attributes. Some narrow and darken your mental focus, others widen and lighten your mental focus. Some seem heavy and compelling and difficult to escape. Pleasant feelings often seem lighter but more difficult to hold onto. But the body is the most obvious and reliable indicator of feelings. People can kid themselves about the relative desirability of a feeling, but the body is a more honest indicator.
Children should be taught to just be aware of the tightness or relaxation of their neck and chest. They should just sit with this awareness without judging, without resisting it, for several minutes. Then they should focus on the thoughts passing in and out of their minds, and how they affect the body. They should not try to stop or change thoughts at first, just be aware of them. The trick is to learn to observe thoughts and feelings at the same time without judging or engaging them. We mostly subconsciously get sucked into thoughts and feel somewhat compelled to follow a line of thought that seems almost automatic, on auto-control. That’s one reason it is crucial to keep awareness of body feelings as you observe thoughts. Thoughts seem less automatic when you’re also paying attention to their effects. This also brings awareness of the connection between thoughts and feelings and the power of thoughts to determine how you feel. Repeated practice of such awareness shines light on your power to choose what you feel, a superpower in terms of your pursuit of happiness.
From the beginning stage of quiet meditation, children should be asked to be aware of their feelings and thoughts numerous times during the day, during all sorts of activity or pauses between listening and doing. The aim is to make thought/feeling awareness habitual to prepare for the next stage of learning how to change the tenor of thoughts to change feelings, which I address in the section called Change of Focus.
A program called Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) taught kids awareness and exploration of feelings in thousands of schools for decades and continues to do so. Having students share and talk about their feelings is a key practice of the program, and I believe it should definitely be part of any grade school happiness curriculum. But I encourage going deeper into exploring different types of feelings to help inform students’ choice of which are most worthwhile to pursue. With the practice of thought/feeling awareness in place, teachers should guide students on an inner journey to explore the attributes of categories of feelings.
To understand the main difference between these categories in terms of the comparative desirability of feelings, it is best to begin with some insight into the inherent limitations of externally-oriented desires and ego-gratifications. These greatly overshadow most people’s pursuit of happiness and shining some light on them can make their pursuit less blind. Making the pursuit clearer and brighter is a core aim of happiness education.
Change of Focus
Of course, the point of becoming aware of the thought/feeling connection and the types and attributes of feelings is to enhance students’ ability to feel better than otherwise. It is to use this awareness to reduce, mitigate or replace thoughts associated with negative feelings and invite thoughts or states of mind more conducive to positive feelings. The primary means to change the tenor of your thoughts is to change your mental focus, to change where you place your attention. Where you place your focus looms large in your mind and greatly influences what you think and therefore feel. What follows is a list and explanations of prominent strategies to divert your mind to a more positive mental focus. I believe children should learn and practice all of them to some extent in the early years of their education as a means of trying them out. In later years, students should simply be encouraged to practice what works best for them.
I do not include beliefs in this list though beliefs are a primary source of the parameters of our thoughts. Beliefs not only shape our judgments of all we perceive and think, they actually create perceptual filters to what we perceive. Schools should not be pushing beliefs in a free society. Yet I strongly advocate presenting an array of contending beliefs on the core questions of our lives in the latter six years of K12 education. Major themes include the Nature of Reality, the Nature of Knowledge, the Nature of the Good Life, and the Nature of the Social Good. More specific themes include the nature of happiness and the natures of such ideals as freedom, justice and equality.
Engaging students in an exploration of what I call the Big Questions of life would not only deepen their understanding of themselves and the human condition; it would make their freedom more meaningful. After all, freedom to choose doesn’t mean much if you aren’t aware of the choices. Such an exploration would deepen students’ awareness of what they actually believe, which often goes unexamined. This, in turn, would open the door to greater awareness of the connection between their beliefs and what they feel. The ability to consciously choose beliefs aligned with the aspiration of your heart is a plausible fruit of what Socrates called the examined life.
Appreciation
I suggested earlier that appreciation is part of the essential nature of love. Appreciation implies valuing someone or something. The essential feeling of appreciation is enjoyment or, more simply, joy. Learning to become more consciously aware of what you enjoy from moment to moment allows joy to loom larger in your mind and therefore in your experience of life. Becoming more aware of enjoyments starts with choosing to be more aware. It starts with choosing to be more mindful of everything that brings a smile to your heart. Big or small, fleeting or longer lasting, any enjoyment qualifies because where you place your attention looms larger in your mind and therefore in your heart. The more often you “stop to smell the roses,” so to speak, the more habitual it becomes and the more prominent the experience of joy becomes in your life.
You can start your day by appreciating the light coming through your window, how good your shower feels, how tasty your breakfast is, how much you love your dog or cat. Through the day, be open to any kind gesture, any smile, any laughter, any friendly chatter, any expressions of excitement, any loving expression. Be aware of pleasing aspects of nature, of expressions or displays of creativity, of the hum of life. When an irritation or grievance pops into your mind, look for something you find pleasing or soothing. This is a continuation of mindfulness practice with the specific focus on appreciation. Kids who already learned to practice mindfulness through the day are well prepared to practice appreciation mindfulness.
Children should be guided to notice what they like and make lists of their “likes.” They should practice awareness of things they enjoy about a particular person and people in general, about animals and nature, about food and drinks, about music and art, about games and pastimes, about social activities and conversations, etc. Kids should be asked to be mindful of when they’re feeling good and stop and think about why. When they complain about what they don’t like, ask them to balance their thoughts by thinking about something they do like. Students should be asked to remember that when they’re feeling good about something, they’re feeling good because they’re allowing themselves to feel good. They learn they have the power to choose how they feel, a superpower in terms of what matters in life. The more often children focus on feeling good about something, the better they will feel in general. The little things in life aren’t little to the heart when you mindfully appreciate them.
With few exceptions, other people usually have the strongest impact on our feelings, both positive and negative. I address relationships in the next chapter, but here I emphasize the essential task of guiding students to a deeper appreciation of other people. This is an aim of the SEL program, which has students share feelings in groups. This helps them realize how similar the inner lives of others are to their own. This realization reduces their fear of others and awakens their natural sympathy and feelings of kinship. The more aware they are of what they share with others, the more open they are to appreciating others, which is essentially loving them. Kids thereby gain not only the joy of appreciation; they gain the deep rewards of the heart closer relationships can bring.
I told students in my Happiness class that if they understood love as appreciation, they would start to see expressions of love all around them. By teaching students to be more aware of what they appreciate, they would be more aware of the love that abides in their hearts. The more aware we and our children are of our own love, the more we will see it expressed in the world. Now there’s a happy thought!
Gratitude
I don’t see much difference between appreciation and gratitude in terms of the core nature of the feelings. To my mind, they are essentially the same feeling with a somewhat different focus. You can appreciate something without awareness of being thankful for it. Gratitude is more an appreciation of something with awareness of being thankful for its presence in your life.
Engaging students in gratitude practices is quickly becoming a staple in many schools, at least among teachers who independently choose to include such practices in their classrooms. Likely the main reason for this is the large number of studies that verify the emotional benefits of regularly bringing to mind what you are grateful for in your life. This usually involves having students write at least weekly lists of what they are grateful for and sometimes having them share some of the items on their list with the class. Some teachers have a daily practice of having students recall some of the items on their lists.
Gratitude, like appreciation, like love, feels good. Regularly bringing what you are grateful for to mind is a means of increasing your focus on the positive with all its affective benefits. One of these benefits is counterbalancing the tendency to dwell on all that is wrong in your life, an all-too-common affliction. Having students stop and be aware of how being grateful for something feels in their body can add to the motivation. I suggest that students also be made aware that some of the things they don’t like at present can one day be something they’re grateful for when they realize they learned something valuable from it. “Thank you, life, for giving me the lessons I needed to learn to be happier.”
Forgiveness
Forgiveness and the means to practice it is a major focus of research in the field of positive psychology. Quite a few websites are devoted to the benefits and means of forgiveness. Though the adult practices of forgiveness aren’t well-suited for young children, more age-appropriate practices have been introduced in many classrooms. I believe learning to forgive others for their perceived infliction of emotional pain is absolutely essential to achieving the higher reaches of happiness. What we gain from accentuating the positive is always imperiled by the grievances that tenaciously haunt our minds and feelings, always threatening to surface from unconsciousness to inflict us with fear, anger, jealousy, resentment and all manner of unpleasant feelings. Our egos are inherently insecure and prone to see threat to our sense of worth and wellbeing everywhere. Thus, our positive states of mind, of feeling, are ever precarious. Forgiveness in one form or another is the only plausible way to reduce the emotional harm of judgment. No happiness curriculum should neglect teaching children the means and practice of forgiveness.
The first step in almost all adult strategies for learning how to forgive is fostering motive. A person should become aware of how much is at stake, of how emotionally corrosive clinging to grievance is and the relief he or she can gain by learning how to release such judgments. Children led to practice mindful awareness of the connection between thoughts and feelings for years are well-primed for such awareness. The ability to consciously release a sense of grievance is a bit of a stretch for a child, but they have the advantage of living more in the now and not yet having experienced holding onto grievances for years and decades. Frequently experiencing how much better it feels to focus on positive rather than negative thoughts at a young age is a huge advantage. Imagine how much of a difference such an awareness during your tender years might have made in your life. Among all the other benefits, it renders the soil where we sow the seeds of the art of forgiveness in schools more fertile.
Both research and personal experience reveal how much kids love to feel some control over their lives. Control over external aspects of their lives has natural limits, of course, but such limits do not apply to internal aspects. We should frequently remind kids that the ability to feel as they choose is a kind of superpower. Since happiness is the goal of everything we do, of the exercise of every ability we have, being able to feel happy at will would be the ultimate superpower. Learning how to let go of bad feelings by learning how to forgive helps them grow that power.
Young kids learn mostly by example, by watching and modelling adults and older kids. Stories, children’s books and films also impress them. Research shows that modeling love, kindness and forgiveness and reinforcing this with appropriate media inclines them toward being more loving and forgiving. Modeling and appropriate media in schools, along with teaching mindfulness and sharing feelings are key to guiding kids toward the practice of forgiveness in the younger years.
At ages six and seven, children begin to understand the causes and effects of behavior better. They are more open to ideas such as everyone has worth and everyone is better off when they’re nice to each other. Everyone’s unique and that’s good! The theme of forgiveness should be introduced in stories, discussions and media. Throughout the primary school ages, children should be led to repeatedly experience, through mindfulness, that being angry and holding grudges doesn’t feel very good while learning how to let go feels better. As I noted, they will already be primed for this.
Of course, they should learn that forgiveness does not mean condoning unkind behavior or submitting to bullying. Forgiving does not mean condoning, as almost all teachers of forgiveness emphasize. You are not rewarding bad behavior; you are freeing yourself from the internal effects of it. If the offender intended to gain some power over you with insults and threats, forgiving them shows them, and you, that they failed. Forgiveness is actually a means of protection in this sense.
I believe an essential aspect of teaching children to forgive is changing how they see other people, how they feel about others in general. Having students share feelings helps in this regard, but I believe we can go further by helping awaken their awareness of all they share with all human beings. We can lower the barriers to students’ awareness of their own natural empathy and compassion. This will aid their ability to forgive. I suggest some ways we might do this in the next chapter.
Learning to forgive themselves becomes increasingly important as they age. Many techniques exist to help with this, and some should be tailored to teach in schools. Students should repeatedly hear that guilt, blame and regret for past behavior do nothing to heal the past or improve the present. They should hear that feeling more love and acceptance for themselves does improve the present, both for themselves and others. They should hear that they are not their past, they are their now.
Adult methods of learning and practicing forgiveness tend to focus on deeper personal insults and harm. But negative judgments in terms of things we experience or learn about that do not directly affect us is a common refrain in our daily lives. All these judgments pollute our feelings. Teaching awareness of all negative judgments and the practice of general acceptance of what is in the moment belongs to teaching forgiveness. Accepting what is now does not preclude seeking to improve conditions for the future. It simply means accepting what you can’t change now—which is inherently true of what already is—for the benefit of your current happiness. Then when you focus on what might be improved for the future, you can do so with positive, creative thoughts. As I frequently told my sons, focus on the solution, not the problem. Not only does this encourage a more positive state of mind and feelings, it makes solutions a lot more likely.
Attitude
Attitude plays a role in all strategies to focus on positive rather than negative thoughts, but here I refer to the conscious decision to look on the bright side of all you perceive. A positive attitude includes thinking positive in general, of course, but more specifically, it refers to the propensity to interpret positively. Two people stand before an abstract painting. One sees the darkness, the other the light. Two people are travelling through a jungle. One sees threat everywhere, feeling apprehensive or alarmed with every sound. The other feels a sense of adventure and discovery, marveling at the rich abundance of life. Attitude in this sense is an interpretive filter we can—with will and training—change. Helping clients change their interpretive filters is a staple of psychotherapy. Psychologists and psychiatrists employ a number of methods to do so, of course. Some teachers borrow some of these or invent their own to encourage positive attitudes in their classrooms.
In a future where students practice thought/feeling mindfulness from the get-go, the motive to develop a positive attitude will be strong. Among the many creative ways to get students to learn the how of it, I suggest to start with exercises where a particular scenario is described, a scenario with which kids can readily identify. It could be a school-based scenario of something that happens in class, in the cafeteria, on the playground, or on an outing. Or it could be family, neighborhood or shopping-based. Or a scene depicted in a book, movie or video. Have the students imagine how the scenario might be seen in a negative light or given a more positive interpretation. You might call it the Finding-the-Silver-Lining exercise.
Students can also be asked to remember how something that happened in the past that they thought was bad turned out to have a positive ending, or they at least learned something useful from it. You might call it the Reinterpretation Exercise. Teachers can also have kids share stories of something good that happened to them or someone else as a regular class practice. You might call it the Pollyanna Exercise.
Experts who help people with depression teach them to be aware of how one negative thought leads to another in a negative feedback loop. Such experts teach clients techniques to break the loop with positive thoughts, interpretations, affirmations, etc. One technique is called Angel’s Advocate. When filled with guilt and/or thoughts of inferiority, make a list of all the good things about yourself, of what you appreciate about yourself. Have your Angel make an argument that the positives about you outweigh the negatives. This is just one of many techniques to focus on the bright side of you. Learning how to change your attitude about yourself can work wonders in improving your feelings about yourself and life in general.
Perspective
Changing your perspective of a current problem or trying situation is related to changing your attitude. In essence, changing perspective is mentally standing back from the looming mountain of a current challenge to see it in a larger context that helps reduce it to a speed bump on the road of life. Few of our troubles are as serious as they seem when your mind is focused on them to the exclusion of the larger picture. Reaching for the perspective of the larger picture helps reverse the process. This is also called “reframing” and is a staple of modern psychotherapy and wisdom teachings through the ages.
As a professor, many students came to my office to share their troubles. If they were minor troubles, I would sometimes use humor to lighten their perspective. Things like “I hope the recruiter didn’t tell you this was a vacation planet when you signed up to come here.” On a more serious note, I’d say things like: “Have you noticed that all the big problems and troubles of the past that seemed so serious at the time worked out in the end?” I also explained that adversity can have a silver lining in the form of lessons to remind them of what is truly important in life, which could help them pull out of the rut of superficial pursuits and live a deeper, more meaningful life. On rare occasions, I’d say: “You are unique in the universe. There never was someone exactly like you and never will be.”
Of course, what might be appropriate for adult students is often not suitable for children. No problem in finding suitable techniques, though. I discovered many insightful, creative ways to teach reframing to children in my research for Educating Angels. Schools and educators who wish to teach reframing will find many tried-and-tested ways to do so. Here I add my own thoughts on how we might encourage young students to first become aware of the practice and then internalize it.
The foundation is laid by enhancing students’ awareness of how much their inner lives is shared by other children and most everyone else on the planet. They become increasingly aware they are by no means alone in experiencing the troubles of the heart, or in sharing the joys of the heart. It will help children lower the protective barricades around their vulnerable hearts and let more of their innate love shine into their minds and to the world. I already shared some thoughts on enhancing awareness of shared inner lives, including the methods of SEL and have more to say on this in the next chapter.
On a parallel track, students should see, hear and read many testimonials and stories of overcoming serious childhood adversity to find a life of greater love, joy, and happiness. The emotional impact would likely be greater with the testimonials of older children rather than adults because it’s easier for them to relate to someone closer to their age. I would emphasize heart success stories over worldly achievement stories. After all, desired feelings are the point of all we do and hope to achieve and kids should repeatedly hear this. Many who find it difficult to imagine worldly success will find comfort in knowing it’s inner success that counts. So many kids experience emotional trauma, and not feeling trauma is their greatest aspiration of the moment.
Examples of heart success stories include stories of the trauma of the death of parents and siblings, of abuse, of bitter divorces, of serious illness and mental and physical disabilities, of violent or discriminatory social environments, of deep poverty and hunger, of neglect due to the drug addictions of parents. The success part of the stories would be how the person found the strength to overcome and find shelter from the storm of circumstances, to find the love of others and their own love that helped change their lives, to accept and forgive and thereby release his or her emotional burdens. The underlying message of these stories is there is always reason for hope, always prospect for greater security, peace, and love. Hearing or reading the testimonies of others also elicits compassion. The greater the emotional impact, the more likely the message will be internalized.
Learning to look at the bigger picture is essential because the looming mountain of a current problem can make it very difficult to effectively use the other techniques of positive focus. Sometimes you have to know how to shrink the mountain first.
Visualization
Visualization is a quick and easy technique for finding a temporary haven from stress and distress. It is essentially an exercise of imagination. For instance, you can mentally revisit the most peaceful, most happy moment you can recall. Or you can visualize a pleasant place and situation that helps calm your nerves or provides a restful pause. We all daydream, of course, but daydreaming is usually a less intentional escape. Intention is important to the results of visualizing. In daydreaming we often follow our thoughts rather than direct them. Intentional visualization is a means to consciously direct thoughts toward a desired feeling. Such visualizations soften the edges of hard experiences and allow a brief mental respite to catch your emotional breath, so to speak. Visualization or “mental imaging” has been found to be an effective means to deal with physical pain as well. Most people likely use some form of such mental devices, and they can be easily and effectively taught to children.
I asked students in my Happiness class to think of a scene or situation they find calming. After giving them time to think about it, I asked each of them to describe their chosen situation. Many chose places near bodies of water such as the beach or a placid lake. Water is known for its calming properties, of course. Some chose woods and gardens. Nature has always been a source of calm and solace for humanity. Some found warm and relaxing memories with friends or family. Some chose a room in a house where they felt the freest, safest and most comfortable. A few chose city streets or even rock concerts. Hey, whatever works for you.
In basic army training, I envisioned myself on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at sunset. It really helped on long marches and when standing in formation for long periods of time. I didn’t know about visualization as a technique then; I just turned to it naturally. Now that I do know, I envision walks in the woods and forest meadows with babbling brooks running through them. Or a mountain-top view of a landscape that seems to go on forever.
Kids really need a quick and easy way to get a break from stress and distress. Just knowing some relief is easily available can round the edges of unpleasant feelings. And knowing they can conjure at least temporary shelter from an emotional storm at will helps build confidence.
Some may need time to think about a place and situation they find calm and pleasing. They might need pictures to peruse to find one that works best. Many will have trouble learning how to visualize at first and may need prompts like pictures and objects at hand. Once they learn how, they should be frequently asked to practice it. For instance, teachers can ask students to “go to your favorite place” during pauses in class activities or when emotions start to run high. My guess is that many students will really learn to appreciate the technique.
Humor
Laughing is heart magic. Laugh and tension, worry, and gloom disappear for the duration. For a moment you can rise above any situation and feel a sort of joy. Laughing often is scientifically linked to improved mental and physical health. There are plenty of ways to introduce more positive humor in schools; some teachers already make a habit of it. But I suggest we encourage kids to make their own habit of it. Some people start their day with reading a joke or two or watching a funny YouTube video. Kids can put “joke of the day for kids” in their search engine and find an endless supply of suitable jokes. Opportunities to share such jokes could be part of the school day. Perhaps some classrooms could have a wall pinboard dedicated to jokes of the day. Once encouraging humor is adopted as an aim in schools, I’d suggest turning the how of it over to the kids. I predict an eye-opening explosion of creative ideas. Many of them will probably make you laugh.
Inspiration
Many people start or end their day with a source of inspiration. They seek a positive state of mind above the busyness, distractions and stresses of daily life. Many read Bible verses or passages from other revered religious and spiritual books. Some have favorite poems, look at idyllic pictures, or listen to soothing, inspirational music. YouTube has an abundance of short inspirational videos. Some people hang a poster of a wise saying or inspiring vista on their bedroom wall. Gaining a calm mind and a higher perspective in the morning can set the tone for the whole day. Of course, students should find their own source of daily inspiration and choose when or if they would attend to it. Schools can just suggest trying it out, they can’t assign it, of course.
Affirmations
Spoken affirmations of your highest concept of self and what you wish to experience also set the tone for the day. Such declarations as “I am loved!” or “Today will be a good day!” or “All is well in truth!” are effective means of mind training. They set a tone of positive outlook and expectation that develops into a baseline of belief with frequent repetition. The technique of frequent repetition is used in advertising and propaganda because it works. That is why personal affirmations are not some silly New Age whimsy, but a way to turn the mind and its thoughts in a more positive direction for long periods of time. It is used in psychotherapy, so it has a solid scientific basis. Schools can suggest some possible affirmations used in psychotherapy and advise the students to come up with their own. There’s no dearth of suggestions on the internet. Students should adopt those that most resonate should they choose to use the technique.
Avoiding Sources of Negativity
All the foregoing means of focusing the mind on positive thoughts to gain positive feelings have a nemesis in technology addiction and emotionally toxic entertainments. There is great concern, even alarm, about their effects on children and young adults. The scientific evidence of the emotional damage they can cause is definitive. But what can schools do about it? They can’t forbid what kids do outside of school, and they would be inviting trouble from parents, officials and corporations if they strongly advised children to stay away from addictive technology and toxic entertainments. After all, many of their parents have similar addictions.
What schools can do, though, is advise students to use their growing powers of inner awareness to discern what serves feeling better and what doesn’t. Teachers should encourage them to be aware of what they’re feeling when playing video games, reading sniping social media posts, and being constantly absorbed in reading and responding to messages on their devices. And they should be made aware of all the positive alternatives. Watching funny videos of cute animal interactions or playing nonviolent games involving online social interaction are among the countless feel-better alternatives. Encouraging students to develop the habit of taking space-out breaks from their phones might also help them start unplugging from the matrix. Sticks won’t work, but carrots might.
Technology isn’t the only source of negativity, of course. Relationships can obviously be emotionally toxic as well. Kids and teenagers feel a powerful need to fit in with a group of others their age. Once again, forbidding and admonishing won’t work, but emotional awareness might. Students should hear the wisdom that choosing positive friends over hanging with popular judgmental schoolmates promises more positive feelings.
Meditation
The foregoing means to gain a more positive focus in order to feel more positive feelings engage the mind to some extent. Some forms of meditation engage the mind as well, but the form of meditation I recommend here aims to disengage the mind. That’s why I don’t include it in the focus category of mind training. A common form of meditation involves focusing on breathing, but the purpose of this focus is to allow mind chatter to subside and the mind to become ever more quiet, more still. Some call this unfocused awareness of Being.
Practitioners speak of seeing oneself as the sky that remains quiet and unchanged as the clouds, winds and storms of thoughts and feelings pass through it. The aim is to reach a stillness where the essential nature of your being—love, joy and peace—can rise into awareness. Few achieve the higher reaches of this awareness, but the benefits of ongoing practice of this form of meditation are truly impressive. Research shows that it actually rewires our brains in the sense of creating new neural pathways. That’s right: you can actually rewire your brain! Mental and physical health can improve dramatically.
Teaching kids how to practice such meditation opens the door to a deeper experience of love, joy and peace than the positive-focus methods I just described. The reason is that anything that involves thought awareness fails to remove all the veils to pure heart awareness where our essential nature resides. The understanding that love, joy and peace are our essential nature has been professed by dedicated practitioners and those accounted “enlightened” through the ages. A great many people claim direct, unequivocal experience of this.
There is a big difference between feeling love for someone or something and the experience of full awareness that you are love. And peace? The truth is nothing in the world or in our thoughts can give us true peace. We may find some circumstances and environments conducive to feeling more peace than usual, but that is because we allow the mind chatter and judgements to abate somewhat when we experience what we consider peaceful. Deep peace arises with the complete absence of judgment, expectation, fear and desire that anything be other than it is in the moment. Nothing in the world can cause this state. No thought can cause it. Eckhart Tolle echoes the wisdom of ages when he says, pure love, joy and peace are experienced only in the absence of thought. Of course, experiencing the absence of thought for any extent of time is a very tall order for most of us. Meditation offers a path, but we have walk it. Yet, students have much to gain from being aware of the path and how to walk it.
Actually, you don’t need an extent of no-thought time to experience the benefits. “Just breathe and be” in any situation, advise the wise. Pay attention to breathing and nothing else for a while wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. This puts your focus on the present and away from thinking. Conscious breathing has almost magical benefits in terms of respite from stress and distress and even physical wellbeing. It’s easier and quicker than visualization, and offers more benefits because it doesn’t require mind focus: you don’t need to think to breathe.
Can meditation be taught to kids in school? It is being taught to kids in school. More and more educators are aware of the profound benefits, and a great deal of them claim most kids really take to it. Not surprisingly, some kids don’t care much for sitting still for longer lengths of time. “Walking meditation” and other techniques might suit them better. I think a larger obstacle, given how education is currently structured, is providing time and an appropriately quiet place for kids to practice meditation on their own. I believe properly monitored and furnished meditation rooms should be set aside for this purpose. Guided meditations and meditation walks are appropriate in some classes.
Meditating and participating in group meditations should be voluntary. What would be the point if they weren’t? But the evidence so far suggests lack of participation won’t be a problem. Whether or not a student chooses to meditate, reminding them to “breathe and be” offers some of the benefits.
EXTERNAL ENGAGEMENT
The means of mind training mostly involve an internal focus. But the conventional pursuit of happiness focuses mostly on the world without. Feelings are determined within, so nothing we see and do without is the direct cause of happy feelings per se. We engage with others and express ourselves in the world in expectation of feeling better, but our state of mind determines whether or not we succeed. Most people invest a great deal of time and effort in trying to feel as they wish by doing, unaware that the source of what they seek lies within. Yet engaging and expressing in the world is a means of helping us conjure a more conducive state of mind. The means of happiness therefore include ways to engage and express in the world to improve our chances of feeling as we prefer. This chapter explores what we might teach students in this regard to improve their chances for feeling happier.
The quality of a person’s relationships with other people is one of the best predictors of levels of perceived happiness according to happiness research. Relationship exists in mere acknowledgement of someone or something in a sense, but relationships that involve interaction engage our minds and hearts more deeply. Feeling wanted and included is an inherent human need, but even casual interactions with strangers can inspire feelings of kinship and sharing. Ongoing relationships where you feel assured of love despite the ups and downs of life are among those that contribute most to the perceived quality of life.
The quality and quantity of your relationships do not seem entirely up to you, of course, but the appreciation and enjoyment of the relationships you do have is something within your ability to determine. We can’t prescribe what and how many relationships students should have, but we can encourage attitudes and behaviors that improve the quality of their relationships and their enjoyment of them. We can help open the gates to their awareness of love—especially their own love.
The key is lowering the barricades of fear they, and most everyone else on the planet, erect to protect their tender, vulnerable hearts in a world seemingly ruled by ego. Ours is a rather bruising world for unprotected hearts. These barricades must be lowered slowly to allow insight to grow and trust to build. We tend to have a visceral reaction of caution to people who seem different from us. Alienness might be interesting, but it is unpredictable and therefore untrustworthy. These days we want kids to accept and celebrate differences, but they will not truly internalize such attitudes until they experience and feel the compatibility of hearts. Acceptance of difference and appreciation grow with recognition that others share the same hopes and fears, the same wish for love and the heartache when love seems denied, the same joys of connection, adventure, and wonder. People are essentially the same in their basic needs, hopes and desires.
Social and Emotional Learning programs where feelings are regularly shared in small groups are designed not only to make kids more aware of their own feelings, but also make them aware that other kids are essentially the same at heart regardless of external differences. I believe we must expand and further develop strategies to serve these ends.
If we could enhance children’s awareness of the supremely desirable feelings associated with appreciative love, we would profoundly inform their pursuit of happiness, more effectively motivate them to regard and treat others well, and strengthen their commitment to respect human dignity. This requires fostering appreciation.
There are many ways to do this. Some are infrequently used in our schools and others need to be made more central, explicit, robust, and consistent. Among the relatively rare are those that acknowledge the oft-repeated observation that thinking ill of others has starkly different affective consequences—feeling consequences—than thinking well of them. The more aware you are of your feelings, the more aware you are of just how stark this difference is. The multi-year endeavor to foster awareness of the link between feelings and thoughts outlined in the preceding chapter is well-suited to encourage awareness of the difference.
This calls for exercises to either elicit or recall moments of ill will and moments of appreciation. Evoking feelings is a highly developed art in literature, film, and other media. And storytelling far predates civilization as a means to inspire feelings. Students should be led to focus on specific people and situations and to observe what feelings arise as well as the reactions of their bodies. Beyond structured exercises in awareness, students should be asked to focus on what they feel when a teacher notices expressions of anger, mirth, or joy. The hope is that students will learn to do this on their own and continue the practice for the benefits it brings.
As practice advances, students should be led on ever more extensive explorations of anger, grievance, resentment and associated feelings on the one hand and feelings of love, appreciation and gratitude on the other. They should learn to recognize and analyze their judgments both experientially and conceptually. For example, students can be asked to pick a target of their anger and to try to identify the apparent causes by observing what they feel when they think about different aspects of the person. They can be asked to try to understand the motives of the person by recalling when they themselves acted similarly and why.
Finding the motives of others in your own heart is a good way to gain perspective and the resonance of empathy. It helps temper rationalizations and mitigate the pangs of judgment. It is a way to become aware of the attitudinal lens through which you see others and learn to adjust it. A change in attitude can change both your perceptions and the responses of your heart. A new perspective on someone can correct your judgment of them by opening a new venue of understanding. Prejudice dissipates with the gaze of understanding; superficial images of people transform with the evidence of unsuspected depths.
If the conceptual lenses through which our children see others can be changed, their judgments of others would change as well. The conceptual lens most likely to elicit the attraction of the heart is one that is focused on the hearts of others, for there the commonality of humanity is far more pronounced than our diversity. Differences may appeal to our imagination, curiosity, and sense of adventure, but the feelings of attraction are evoked by perceived similarities. Perceptions of “otherness” are interpreted as “alienness,” which is more likely to evoke fear than appreciation. Those whose behavior and motives we do not understand tend to make us feel uneasy.
It is easier to appreciate others when you recognize yourself in them, because it is then easier to understand them. Some aspects of common educational practice help promote such recognition. The shared environment and interaction of groups of students provide opportunities for broadening and deepening mutual understanding, especially when they are arenas of cooperation rather than competition, intimidation and embarrassment. Hearing other students talk about their feelings and associated thoughts leads to a realization of just how similar their own inner experience is to the inner experience of classmates.
Yet fostering appreciation of others is currently more a side effect than a conscious purpose of these aspects of education. I believe a more focused, coherent, and consistent aim would make a big difference in promoting students’ recognition of how much they share with their companions on the journey of life.
Fortunately, there are a number of apparently successful initiatives that aim to promote awareness of feelings and improve how kids see and treat others beyond SEL. For example, Marshall Rosenberg’s “Nonviolent Communication,” which aims to eliminate language that “blames, shames, criticizes, and demands,” is meant to reduce the judgments that lead to conflict.
The core methods of what practitioners call “relationship-based teaching and learning” involve awareness and expression of feelings and needs that promote understanding and reduce the sources of conflict. The program emphasizes awareness of the affective rewards of freely giving and receiving according to the particular talents of each student. Both the ends and means of the project are well-suited to fostering appreciation of others through understanding, recognition of commonalities, and awareness of the rewards of the heart.
Ian Morris describes exercises to build trust and reflect on what it means to trust. For example, a pair of students will take turns catching the other as they fall backwards. Or a circle of students catches a student standing in the middle as she lets herself fall, and return her to an upright position. Students are then asked to discuss their feelings about having to trust as they let themselves fall backwards.
Appreciation of others might also be reinforced by focusing on the recurring motivational themes of the human story. Such themes are found in history, literature, art, music, science, social studies, psychology, and philosophy. To discover an affinity of one’s own inner experiences with those of all humanity throughout time is to discover the bond that unites humanity in fate and aspiration. The better a student understands the thoughts and actions of people throughout time, the better she understands herself. The human story is ultimately her own story.
Another way to foster appreciation for others is to have people of all walks of life tell their stories. I suggest means that would introduce such storytelling by invited guests as part of the curriculum in the next chapter. Reading and assignments that place students in the shoes of others are also rather effective means to evoke sympathy according to research. Expressing gratitude verbally or in writing also helps students take the perspective of others and develops the capacity for empathy.
Many studies show that mindfulness fosters empathy. Deborah Schoeberlein recommends “kindness practice.” She and many others say that the experience of kindness tends to arise naturally from mindfulness, but the experience can be enhanced through focused intent during mindfulness practice.
We educators would also nurture the roots of appreciation in the hearts of our students by modeling appreciative, nonjudgmental, and kind attitudes in our treatment of them and each other. We reinforce the idea that people should be treated as ends in themselves rather than means to serve the purposes of others by treating them as ends. We are unlikely to convince students of the benefits of appreciation if we act as if we are uninterested in reaping the benefits ourselves. Rather, we are likely to undermine all we aspire to achieve in this regard if we do not walk the talk. Walking the talk, though, requires a major change in the values emphasized in schools and the authoritative mindset of administrators and many teachers.
Mastering our feelings confronts the formidable challenge of mastering our judgments. The first step to such mastery is the desire for it. Students need to consciously experience what is at stake. Earlier, I suggested mindfulness as a means to make students aware of the emotional effects of negative and positive thoughts. They should be frequently reminded to practice such awareness, but almost inevitably they will face both inner and outer resistance. Anger and resentment of perceived injury or threat of injury and condemnation of “sins” are protected by a pervasive understanding of right, of justice. One feels morally obliged to judge what he deems wrongful behavior.
Research reveals that we are far more prone to negative thoughts than positive thoughts. Negative judgments of people, events and circumstances is habitual and apparently addictive. Strengthening a student’s will to change the polarity of his or her thoughts is a very tall order. But the path to awareness of the joy and peace of appreciative love is blocked at some point unless we can interest students in what lies beyond the barricades of judgment and show them how to pass through them.
Forgiveness is the release of judgment, and exercises in forgiveness provide an opportunity to experience the relief of this release. Students will not be convinced otherwise. This helps strengthen the motive to forgive, but we should not underestimate the emotional resistance to forgiveness. This resistance is protected by the mind’s infinite capacity to rationalize long lists of exceptions. If we are to fortify students’ decision to lower the barriers to awareness of appreciative love, we must also get them to venture past their bristling defenses to examine their judgments with clear, assessing eyes. We must get them to examine not only the emotional costs but also the validity of their rationalizations.
Students should be taught to look closer at the question of motive when they perceive they have been wronged: Is the behavior of the person who made me feel angry, frustrated, or ashamed due to ill will toward me, or is it based on a different judgment of what is right and fair? Does their behavior have more to do with their own issues than with me? What emotions move them to act as they do? Do I sometimes act the same way? Would I judge them if I understood what they are feeling? And what am I feeling in response? Do I want revenge? Do I wish them harm? If so, are my motives really any better than theirs?
Educators should give students ample opportunity to look deeper into people’s motives by means of literature, films, storytelling, etc. Students should openly speculate about the motives of people in history. And when they are developmentally ready, they should see what psychological and sociological research has to say. They should be led to understand how often initial judgments about people appear less valid upon close inspection. And they should investigate claims that negative judgments have positive outcomes. Is condemnation really necessary to motivate better behavior? Is diminishing the worth of people by condemning them the best way to deter them from harming others? Does getting revenge really make you feel better? Pay close attention, because research shows the opposite is true.
Everyone we perceive is ourselves in the sense that we see only our interpretations, our own judgments. This is the law of perception. In the same sense, we are forgiving ourselves as we forgive others, we are freeing ourselves from the self-inflicted emotional wounds of judgment. Forgiveness might seem to be selfish in this light, as it frees ourselves before it frees those we judge. But in time it can help free them as well.
Students should learn about alternatives to judgment to gain freedom from insult and oppression. For example, Gandhi and Martin Luther King emphasized love and avoided condemnation and hatred to advance causes that inspired — and changed — the hearts of billions. They sought change by emphasizing the light rather than the darkness in people’s hearts. There are thousands of less famous examples of those who served causes without condemning those who opposed them even in the face of abuse. Both Gandhi and King said they aimed to free the oppressors as well as the oppressed. Oppression comes at great emotional cost; those who claim otherwise are kidding themselves. The cause of justice does not mandate condemnation, otherwise justice would be an enemy of happiness.
We should show students how looking for the light in the hearts of others can inspire people’s better angels. Lack of judgment can lower psychological defenses, open the door to sincere communication, and move people to examine their motives. It speaks to most people’s deep desire to see themselves as a good person. Students who internalize these lessons will see an alternative to revenge and condemnation that resonates with the deeper aspirations of their hearts. Imagine a society where this understanding is pervasive.
Schools can also offer teenagers some excellent relationship advice. First on the list is focusing on what you appreciate about someone. Focus less on their attributes and more on your own feelings of enjoying their company. Open to more awareness of such feelings. Focusing on attributes too easily lends itself to judgments, to assessments of what you like least as well as most. Paying attention to your enjoyment, which is the feeling of appreciation, need not engage judgment. Your ego isn’t involved in valuing others. Your ego is more focused on them valuing you.
Being less judgmental is second on the list. Complaints and annoyances are not forces of nature; they are ego-based habits of mind. Remember that negative thoughts necessarily yield negative feelings, so they come with immediate cost and dubious gain. And being judgmental strains relationships. Trying to shame a person into changing to fit your preferences for who and how they should be is unlikely to have a positive outcome. You can express your views and still honor their views in a way that neither shames nor condemns.
Third, see conversation as a creative activity in which you and your conversation partner are in a sort of dance of sharing views, information, wit, laughs and a gamut of feelings. It is a dance of sharing yourselves. While doing so, try to listen more and talk less. Your ego would rather talk, but feeding your ego starves your heart, and your ego is never satisfied for long. Being attentive feeds your heart with greater understanding, insight and appreciation. This goes hand in hand with being more curious about what is really going on inside your partner. A universe lies beyond the appearance and superficial aspects of personality of everyone you meet. Fourth, try to be aware of when ego kicks in to turn sharing into a competition for superiority. Even in a win-lose game, the point is to enjoy the game. Who wins doesn’t really matter after the game except to the ego, and I stress again that the ego is not your friend when it comes to happiness.
This also applies to arguments. What starts as sharing your viewpoint easily turns into a battle of viewpoints where “winning” is paramount. Verbal battling and winning an argument may give you a fleeting sense of ego satisfaction, a sense of upholding justice and/or superiority of wit and knowledge, but it comes at the cost of more desirable feelings of sharing, connection, joy, love and peace. The wisdom here is considering a question: “Would you rather be right or happy? When you’re aware that you’re sacrificing more than you’re getting by feeding your ego rather than your heart, you can choose to disengage: “I don’t see it that way, but would rather not argue.” Or “I’ll consider your viewpoint.” Then simply don’t respond until they stop arguing.
Fifth, be kind and helpful. Not only does this greatly enhance the quality of relationships, it feels good.
People also have deep and meaningful relationships with pets and other animals. Many kids experience deep love and a lot of entertainment with pets. Schools aren’t involved in this, of course, but some are involved in helping students find connection with animals. Beyond zoo visits, connection with animals is sometimes used in child therapy. Some advocate creating more opportunities for kids to connect with animals within the confines of school as well as without. Seeing kids’ spontaneous expressions of love around animals, I think finding more ways to arrange such contact is a very good idea.
Do Good to Feel Good
Benevolence feels good. We are blessed with an inherent, powerful motive to be kind and helpful. It truly, deeply feels good to do good. It feels good to think well of others. Having students consciously, frequently experience this can have a profound effect. Many articles, books and YouTube videos present the scientific evidence that kindness and helping not only make you feel better, but have amazing physical health benefits as well. Doing good serves both mental and physical health. Though I emphasized these personal benefits in my Happiness class, I also stressed the social benefits. The evidence supports the observation that an act of kindness can inspire the kindness of others who witness it, thus acts of kindness can expand exponentially. I told students they have it in their power to make the world a better place in the simple acts of their daily lives.
Schools can arrange opportunities to serve by participating in service projects and as volunteers in organizations that help the needy, infirm and lonely. I am intrigued by the stories of teachers who showed students videos that depict random acts of kindness and the chain-reaction of paying it forward and the students independently organized projects and clubs dedicated to such activities. Heighten awareness and open the door to serving others and students enthusiastically jump into action. A TEDx talk by a teacher really impressed me. She told students about a competition to raise money to rebuild schools for children in a war-torn country. The students enthusiastically embraced the idea of raising money for the cause and began organizing with rather unrealistic goals. With enthusiasm, perseverance, creativity and employing their different talents, they more than achieved their goal. The motto the students adopted: “We are not the future, we are right now!”
Such tales are becoming commonplace. I don’t know if it’s due to some mysterious generational change or simply heightened awareness of opportunity, but I see evidence that today’s youth will be the torchbearers of a more compassionate and caring future. I was getting a sense of this in my Happiness classes when I saw how many students were involved in service projects and volunteering with service organizations. Some are mentors and many stop to help when they see someone who can use it. Quite a few aimed for jobs in medicine, rehabilitation and education with service in mind. Even those who believed money is important to happiness often said that serving others is also high on their list of goals. When I emphasized the benefits of benevolence, I was preaching to the choir.
So much of what passes for teaching values is teaching rules of behavior. I strongly believe arranging for students to experience the intrinsic rewards of treating others well is by far a superior means to teach moral values. This runs counter to the ethos that goodness and morality require self-sacrifice, but this ethos is both counter-productive and untrue in the accounting of the heart. The heart of morality is treating others well, and the world will be a more moral as well as a happier place when we help young people repeatedly experience the intrinsic rewards of treating others well. This, I believe, should be the heart of teaching values in schools. And it certainly belongs in a happiness curriculum.
Creative Expression
Creativity is considered an innate human characteristic, an aspect of human nature. Speaking, writing, finding solutions to mundane problems, making complex choices, and navigating relationships are among the many activities that require some degree of creativity, of thinking, doing, and choosing something beyond the obvious in any particular moment. We associate creativity with the creative arts, of course, but puzzle solving, investigating, and trying something new are among the myriad activities that require a degree of creativity. Some claim creative expression is a fundamental human need. Richard Taylor believes that the exercise of creative intelligence is a primary source of happiness. Researchers discovered that activities that lead to “aha!” moments stimulated areas of the brain associated with feeling pleasure. Following your “passion,” usually means seeking pursuits and activities that engage your particular creative interests and abilities. The evidence that doing so contributes to perceived happiness is conclusive.
Pushing schools to focus on fostering students’ creativity, to help them discover where their passion lies, has become a serious movement. Unfortunately, accountability tests that measure knowledge in “core” areas and cutting back on offerings in the arts has schools galloping in the opposite direction. Dedicating kids’ education to enhancing their prospects for happiness calls for radically restructuring the assembly line model of education focused on memorization of factual knowledge and replacing it with a model that makes student-chosen creative activities, projects and training a major, essential part of education. Creative pursuit would replace acquisition of factual knowledge as a major focus of learning.
Let’s be honest. The internet made memorizing facts an anachronism. We have a whole universe of facts instantly available on our smart phones and computers. Considering the abysmal rates of long-term factual knowledge retention (2-3%), schools as purveyors of knowledge were and are miserable failures. For some reason, though, few see this flashing red light as a reason to stop and consider a more productive use of the some fifteen thousand hours of K12 schooling. Devoting most of these hours to enabling and encouraging creative pursuits would not be trading one valuable outcome for another. It would be trading a pretend outcome for a real one. And we would get rid of the accountability tests that almost exclusively measure memorization of factual knowledge with multiple-choice questions as harmful mandates to measure outcomes of little personal or even economic value and no value in terms of happiness.
Kids learn the basic skills of reading, writing and math mostly by repeatedly exercising these skills, and learn far faster and more completely by experiencing how useful and empowering these skills are to things they want to do. The key is to heighten their awareness of how these skills allow them to do things that interest them. Self-chosen games and creative projects that require these skills serve this purpose.
We want to broaden and deepen students’ awareness of the world. As I often said in defense of the value of liberal education, the world in which you consciously live is the world of which you are aware. Our awareness of the world is invariably attached to our feelings. The more an aspect of the world elicits a feeling, the more pronounced it is in awareness and the longer it abides in memory. History and facts about our environment come alive when we feel them. This requires something far more vivid and engaging than hearing them in a lecture and reading about them as an assignment rather than a matter of actual interest. Acting out scenarios, drawing and painting pictures, making photo displays, writing songs or poems, making models, etc. are far more effective ways to get students to learn and retain a bigger picture of the world in which they live. These activities engage feelings, which is the magic formula for gaining and retaining knowledge.
Students do learn a great deal about themselves and people in general through social interaction in school. Interactions that evoke feelings tend to be remembered, sometimes for a lifetime. When I meet former students, they usually don’t recall much of what I said in class, but they have vivid memories of what some other student said. What the other student said evoked emotion, so it stuck with them. So much of what is of real value to learn and remember in schools is taught through the heart, not the mind. This is one of many reasons that teaching by enabling and encouraging creative expression is by far a superior way to achieve almost all learning goals.
The evidence from schools and programs designed to foster kids’ creative expression is very impressive. Kids’ enthusiasm, desire to learn, and achievement go way up, problem behavior goes down. Long-term retention of knowledge goes up because they had an intrinsic motive to learn it and employed it as a means to serve their passion. Enabling and encouraging creative expression is crucial to happiness education. I explore ideas for reinventing education to achieve this in the next chapter.
Adventure
In the movie Dead Poets Society Robin Williams played a teacher who taught students Carpe Diem—Seize the Day! This is mainly an intent to see opportunities for experiencing adventure in everyday life and seizing them. Adventure is mainly an attitude, a way of seeing experiences as unusual and exciting, as explorations of the new. Many people prefer to avoid adventures, sharing Bilbo Baggins’ attitude: “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” Indeed, adventures can be uncomfortable and unpredictable, a risky gamble on the potentially hazardous unknown. But that’s part of the attraction for the adventurous soul. The piqued interest of curiosity, the wonder and excitement of discovery, the satisfaction of overcoming difficulties, the thrill of throwing caution to the wind and feeling free! Seeing opportunities for adventure in the mundane and seizing them can make life interesting and fun and provide the satisfaction of overcoming challenges.
Going off on adventures without parental permission and provision isn’t an available option for young students, of course. But the Dead Poets type of adventures can be an option for many students. Teachers can explain the attitude and give examples of how to live larger in everyday life. The attitude can brighten the experience of the mundane and make life more interesting. Helping students see life as an adventure is certainly a means to promote positive feelings. Hopefully it won’t make them late for dinner, but living with curiosity and passion is worth it even if it does.
Body Expression
The reason younger children love to run, climb, swing, dance and play motion games is that it feels good. They really enjoy body motion. This is also a reason why many kids of all ages enjoy sports. Adults may slow down a bit—okay, a lot—but many of us continue to enjoy walks, exercising, dancing, playing sports and maybe focused motions like yoga. It feels good in the body and in the mind. This is one area where current education is not failing. Most schools provide opportunities for movement with playgrounds, sports, and exercising. Recess and required gym classes are welcome nods in this direction. Teaching kids dancing, exercises, and various forms of yoga and providing space and opportunity to continue these practices on their own during school hours is a very good idea for many reasons. The mental and physical benefits are well established. Providing more space, equipment and daily opportunities for spontaneous physically-active play is highly advisable for students of all ages. Gym classes help, but more free-play opportunities would increase the benefits. I suspect it would help a lot of kids actually look forward to school.
Engaging with Nature
Nature has been the solace of humankind through all the millennia of our existence. Through all their fears and turmoil, their agony and despair, their sadness and loneliness, their hunger and pain, human beings found comfort in nature. Beauty, kinship, love, and abundance abide in the nature that gives our bodies life, our minds wonder, and our souls peace. Many experience a growing disconnection from nature as technology dominates more and more of our lives. Many kids’ lives are emotionally impoverished by this. They are deprived of a major source of wonder, beauty, enjoyment, adventure and peace; a source that can counter the pathologies associated with technology addiction. Abundant research shows frequent, extended exposure to nature promotes kids’ mental health and academic performance. Schools should make engagement with nature a major component of education. A large number of people advocate this and many educators are doing what they can in this regard.
Probably most schools already do this to some extent with school outings, gardening projects and related outside activities. Even field sports help. “Forest schools” make nature the classroom. Parents who choose this for their kids testify that the kids come home much happier than when they attended traditional schools. The number of forest schools or something resembling them is rapidly increasing. Covid probably gave them a big boost.
These efforts should be greatly expanded. Students should experience days, not just hours, in nature. They should experience wilderness as well as nature parks and gardens. The reason I say this is that the magic of nature isn’t fully experienced until a student’s mind has time to adjust to going cold turkey on technology and to what at first seem inconveniences and annoyances of deep nature. It takes time for the mind to slow down and appreciate the more peaceful feeling of trees, meadows, brooks, and sounds of wildlife. Many students seldom if ever experience real peace. A longer stay in nature gives them an opportunity. The memory of peace can nourish their desire to feel more of it more often.
Of course, students should also get their hands dirty in gardens and forests, their hands wet or sandy near natural bodies of water. Nature is an endlessly rich source of curiosity and discovery. Investigating it can be a genuine adventure. I believe there is a deep connection between the bounty of earth and our hearts. We greatly serve our children when we provide ample opportunity to experience it. Some children have parents who do this, many do not. Schools can narrow the gap.
Happiness Education 
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