Hello,

As a co-founder of AHA, I am so grateful for the amazing talent that we have on the Board of Directors. We just completed our annual retreat and have fabulous plans to bring happiness to members, seniors, communities and children.

For those of you in the South Bay, It’s not too late to volunteer for our program “Spreading Happiness to Seniors.” Training begins December 12, 2009. Details can be found at http://americanhappiness.org/calendar.html. For those of you on the east coast, we’ll be taping this for a future national rollout, so please don’t feel left out.

Here are your happiness tips for November. Thank you for being a member of AHA. We are grateful for you.

It’s easy to be happy when everything is smooth and easy. Enter the holiday season, with its crowded malls, party schedule, and relatives staying for two weeks on top of your already booked schedule filled with soccer, school, work, and community obligations. How can you be happy with all that going on?

Just in time for holiday gatherings, we have some peace- and happiness-generating tools and tips for you.

1. Agree on ways to enjoy the holidays without running yourself ragged. Maybe everyone draws a name and buys one present instead of dozens. Maybe you don’t have to go to every single holiday party you’re invited to. Maybe you can get your friends and family to help with the decorating, shopping, and cooking instead of doing it all yourself.
2. Stay on your exercise schedule, no matter what. You’ll feel better and be happier.
3. Schedule in some personal time just for you, whether it’s a spa, meditation, or a walk in the woods.
4. Practice these happiness tools with your family:
   1. Dr. Coget’s triple-A is a favorite with the Board and workshop participants: Appreciation, Admiration, and Affection. Practice sharing appreciation, admiration, and affection with your loved ones: I appreciate you when… I admire you when… I love you.
   2. Start or continue your precious family rituals and routines. Rituals are such an important anchor for kids and provide them with an identity and a story to hold onto. Your ritual(s) can be anything from a candlelight ceremony to reading the same poem every year, to opening a present early, to going to Mass at midnight, to kissing under the mistletoe, to burning the gravy every year. Even better if they are happiness-related, such as a gratitude ceremony.
   3. Get out of your rut with your relatives, and ask them meaningful questions you may not know: 1-What was the happiest moment of their lives? 2-What were you passionate about when you were a teenager? 3-What is the change you want to see in the world?

If you do get into some squabbles, keep in mind the big picture view. They’re family and you love them. Make a bold statement like, “All I want is a relationship full of love, laughter, and light. How can we get back to that?”

These are just a few tools you can practice during the upcoming holiday get-togethers to make them more special and less stressful than ever. If you have ideas, send them to us and we’ll post them.

Can you imagine if we lived in a community where children (even first-graders) managed their own classrooms and set their own discipline instead of the teacher? Where children learned based on their strengths and not their weaknesses? Where children who got the lesson first taught the others who were slower so that no one got left behind? Where children who did act out were not rebuffed by the teacher but embraced with care and concern?

Where parents -- instead of telling children to be quiet, stop crying, and stuff their emotions -- encouraged their children to express their emotions in a loving, coaching style? Where caretakers such as day-care workers, babysitters, and nannies were taught the same, compassion-based parenting methods so that the child got a consistent message across the entire community?

These ideas have been implemented with amazing success in select schools around the world. AHA hopes to be the first organization in the world to help an entire community learn and implement compassion- and happiness-based parenting and teaching methods. In the school, the center of the project, we’ll be measuring metrics such as dropout rate, detention hours, classroom incidents, and grades to see what impact these tools will have in improving the lives of the children and changing this community for the better.

We’re hoping to partner with some forward-thinking leaders in the Bay area, so stay tuned for future updates.

Have you had your moment?

It happened to AHA Board member Dr. Laura Delizonna when she was 20. She was studying International Relations at the University of Salamanca in Spain when she decided to spend her spring break in Israel visiting a friend. She traveled to the Sinai desert in Egypt and hiked up Mount Sinai. At the peak she spent the night with some fellow backpackers and woke up to the most amazing sunrise she had ever seen.

From the top of Mt. Sinai, the highest peak in the desert, the view was golden, rocky, and barren. “It was beautiful and serene,” Laura recalls. “Everywhere I looked, there was a sea of golden mountaintops. In that moment, I saw an image of myself dancing through life.” She realized, however, that currently she didn't really feel like she was dancing on her current path. “It was more like trudging. I just knew I had more potential than that.”

In that moment she made a promise to herself and her higher power: "I vowed that I would find my way to true happiness and attain a deep sense of contentment--and when I did I would teach what she learned to others. At the time, I had no idea how I would do it, but as tears streamed down my face I absolutely, positively meant it with all my heart.” She felt a release, a joy, a lightness, and sealed the decision with a stack of rocks that symbolized her promise.

Later, in Jerusalem, Laura realized that her desire to work on world peace could be pursued not just through International Relations, but by focusing on the individuals who make up the nations of the world. She decided to change her focus from working with macro organizations to working at the micro level with one person at a time, and to do that, she would become a psychologist.

During her education and studies, Laura has had the privilege of working with Dr. Ellen Langer, the first woman to be tenured at Harvard University in the Psychology Department. Dr. Langer went on to become Chair of the Psychology Department at Harvard, and she and Laura just published two scientific research papers on mindfulness.

Today Dr. Laura Delizonna continues her life mission of having a positive social impact on the world and on individuals. She teaches a happiness class at Stanford and has a positive psychology and coaching practice where she has helped recent clients improve their marriages, move from a high-paying tech job into work that is more fulfilling and creative, and find strength to leave an unhealthy relationship.

You will hear Dr. Laura on our teleseminars and in our classrooms, and you can find out more about her at www.choosinghappiness.com .

So, have you had your moment? Have you had a moment where you have decided you would find your way to being truly content? Where you have declared that you will make happiness a priority? Where you have made the decision to be happy regardless of people, places, things, or events?

You might not even know you need to have that moment. The truth is, you do, if you want to be happy in the AHA-way. Sustainable, lasting happiness.

If you’ve had your happiness moment, please write us. We’d like to hear your story.

If you haven’t had that moment, you can have it any time. It’s a decision you have to make – one with far-reaching, life-changing impact.

If you want to know more, we’ll be making the opportunity available in the January teleseminar. So stay tuned!

If you plan to make a charitable donation this year, please consider the American Happiness Association. Your donations are fully tax deductible and support our outreach projects with children, seniors, and the unemployed. Here’s the link where you can donate directly online http://americanhappiness.org/donate.html

If you prefer to mail a check, our address is 3964 Rivermark Plaza, Suite 416, Santa Clara, CA 95054.

If you’re short on cash, you can still help us by earning money for us every time you shop and search the web. Visit our homepage and click on the GoodSearch box. Set your charity to American Happiness Association, and your searches or purchases at GoodShop will help us earn money. http://americanhappiness.org/

Thank you so much for considering us.

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*** Thanks for reading! ***

With happiness,
Sandi Smith
COO, American Happiness Association
408.971.1104
AmericanHappiness.org

Questions, comments, or suggestions about this newsletter?
Contact sandismith@AmericanHappiness.org

To cancel your subscription, follow the directions at the end of this newsletter. Or contact us by mail at 3964 Rivermark Plaza, Suite 416, Santa Clara, CA 95054, United States Copyright American Happiness Association 2009