Project Happiness Articles

Blog posts from happiness experts, covering everything from gratitude, mindfulness, social emotional learning, altruism and service, wellness, freedom, forgiveness, social connection, purpose, soul, self-love, compassion, and everything under the massive happiness umbrella. Browse our blog posts, or write for us!

Finding Happy (It’s easier than you think!)

If happiness is available to us at any moment through the power of our minds, why does it sometimes seem so hard to do? When our thoughts run amok, how do we choose better ones? We’ve all had those experiences (moments, hours, even days!) when finding a happier thought seemed nearly impossible. When endless loops of worry, frustration, overwhelm, etc. not only challenged our ability to find our happy place, they caused us to forget we even had the choice.

11 Ways to Cultivate Positive Environments That Elevates Happiness

Do your parents, significant others, friends, or even colleagues have tons of quotes and positive sayings around the house? Mine do. Everywhere I went in my childhood home, there was always some form of inspiration. From the guest bathroom to my mom's home office, there was never a moment where I didn’t see something positive.

This School Year Smash Stigma with Manic Monologues

“We want to reclaim the word ‘manic.’ The vagina monologues has done an incredible amount of work de-stigmatising female sexuality and we wanted to do the same thing with mental illness.” Zack and Elisa started off soliciting stories from Facebook and Sanford communities and put together 15 stories of mental illness, from sad and heartbreaking, to hilarious, uplifting and, powerful. Manic Monologues ran three sold out shows in May 2019 at Stanford and will run at UCLA in February 2020.

You Have the Power to Choose What You Feel

When I was a kid, I sort of mastered the art of lucid dreaming. Here’s how I did it: when I went to bed at night, I’d visualize a wheel cut into pizza pie slices. There was a type of revolving window on top of the wheel that I could turn to see “inside” each pizza slice. And each slice showed a different image. Perhaps one would be a forest, another a jungle. Maybe one would have music, another silence. I’d turn the wheel until I landed on an image that I liked, and then I’d enter that image—and that would focus my dreams. I don’t know if I still have that talent. I haven’t tried it in decades. But I...

Why We Need a Schedule for Eating (and Sleeping)

From an evolutionary perspective, we know that we have not experienced any meaningful genetic mutations from our Sapiens ancestors who roamed the planet some 70,000 years ago. Yet our culture and lifestyle are completely different now. Then, we used to be hunter-gatherers. We walked anywhere from 7km to 18km a day [1], we ate a balanced, healthy diet of whatever was available in one place – from fruits to edible roots, plants, and the odd animal – and we slept through the night.

10,000 Simple Steps to Finding Courage

It all starts in the head. Mindset is number one. Without a clear mindset, you cannot even take the first step toward what you would like to accomplish. It’s that famous quote by Henry Ford, “whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” It has always been one of my favorite quotes because it’s true. You have to trust yourself before you can trust a new environment. You have to trust your intuition and your instinct. This comes from practice. Trusting yourself can be saying “yes” before you’re ready. This is where the majority of my greatest opportunities have come from.

Dealing With Depression

Eventually, things began to slip through the cracks. They were minor, at first. A missed meeting here, a late deadline there, but as things began to add up it cost me many of the things I had taken for granted in my life. I lost relationships, friends, even my job. Sadly, none of that was enough to convince me to stop. I believed it was all replaceable, and that there were other factors besides my drinking that was to blame. It wasn’t until I woke up in the hospital after a night downtown, with no recollection of what happened, that I was forced to take a good, long look at myself. It was hard, but for the first time, I was able...

5 Tips to Deal with Anxiety

Acknowledge and Fight the Stigma – A recent NPR interview with Author and Professor Dr. Anthony Rostain discusses the burgeoning mental health epidemic on college campuses. A record number of students are feeling anxious and find it difficult to get help even though they know it is available. In some cases, students might even be adamantly against it. Why? Well, the reasons vary but one stands out – denial or procrastination. Only 1 in 4 students get the counseling.

What is Happiness, Anyway?

What does the word happiness mean to you? Though we all want the same thing, happiness, love, to live a meaningful life, to rise to our potential, there is no set formula – the path is different for each one of us. But one thing is sure: happiness is at the core. Our natural state is one of joy; we are here to feel alive. When we vibrate from a place of joy, we are attuned to who we really are. This allows life to open up to us, and allows us to meet that energy in ways we might not have previously imagined.

Five Ways to Act on our Aspirations

There's a lot to consider when we're passionate people feeling strongly about ten different things at once - motivation, resources, priorities, time management, etc. I know for me, I find it challenging to balance what's most important, what is calling me loudest and give it sufficient attention, without worrying about what's going to the wayside in the meantime. So lately, I've been thinking seriously about what exactly it is that I want to do. What is it that I want to be working on right now to be where I want to be.

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