• Designed to teach the principles of Dr. William Glasser’s Control Theory and Reality Therapy, this updated, revised edition incorporates Dr. Glasser’s Quality School and Quality World concepts and includes additional activities to help parents and educators teach children to be happy.
• A place for book-lovers to read different genres of fictions; A community that helps writers to publish their works.

• Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Birthday
• Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Wishes
• Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Hour
• Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Birthday Wishes

The following are suggestions of what I play to teach our future children, about how to be happy. When you have nothing to hide in life, and walk with integrity no matter who is around, it is easier to be happy. When you have a healthy self-esteem, it helps you increase your happiness and be grateful for many things in life.

“Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There’s going to be stress in life, but it’s your choice whether you let it affect you or not.” — Valerie Bertinelli

If you ask anyone what they want out of life, most people will say that they want to be happy.

I bet that you want to be happy too.

In a recent survey Kathy Caprino found that happiness is the number one thing that people want out of life.

So, if happiness really is a choice…

and we all want to be happy…

why don’t we choose to be happy?

Can it be that we don’t know how to be happy?

Is happiness even a skill that we can learn?

I have found that one of the best way to learn a new skill is by reading books written by experts in the field, and I think is true for happiness too.

So, with that in mind here is my list of the seven best books to help you learn how to be happy.

1. The Happiness Project

Gretchen Rubin had an life changing realization one rainy afternoon on a city bus. She realized that she was not focusing on the things that mattered most.

This realization lead to her decision to spend the next year testing ideas about happiness from ancient times, the latest scientific research, popular culture, and common belief.

“Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.” ― Gretchen Rubin

What she found was that you don’t have to quit your day job and move to Thailand to be happy. Simply making a series of very small changes can make a big difference in your life and your level of happiness.

Everyone should read The Happiness Project — it will teach you how to be happier without making huge changes in your life.

2. The Art of Happiness

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a 1-on-1 conversation with the Dalai Lama. To be able to ask him the most pressing questions of your life.

Why are so many people unhappy?

Why don’t people choose to be happy?

How can you be happy with your life?

Well this is exactly what psychiatrist Howard Cutler did. In a series of interviews, he asked the Dalai Lama howhe achieved inner peace, calmness, and happiness.

“We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness”― Dalai Lama XIV

What the Dalai Lama taught him was that you need to learn to be happy with what you have and not want what you don’t have.

Happiness should be the purpose of your existence, and there is a definite path that you can follow to achieve it.

The key is to identify the things that lead to both your suffering and your happiness. Then, eliminate the things that cause your suffering and develop the things that lead to your happiness.

3. 10% Happier

A decade ago, Dan Harris was was an ABC News television anchor reporting from war zones and anchoring national broadcasts.

After a panic attack on national television, he decided that it was time to find some answers. This led to a long journey into the science of stress and mindfulness.

Along the way, he interviewed Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Jewish Buddhists, and even the Dalai Lama before reluctantly giving in and trying meditation.

Investigating meditation as a reporter, he studied the neurological research and learned that meditation was being used in both the corporate world and the military to improve focus and clarity.

Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Birthday

“There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.” ― Dan Harris

In this book, Dan shares his journey to find peace and balance through the power of meditation.If you have never tried meditation, this book is perfect for you.

It is a why to meditate and not a how to meditate that takes a purely scientific, down-to-earth approach to meditation and tells you why you should try it.

4. Stumbling on Happiness

Do you know what makes you happy?

Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you most likely would be wrong.

In this book, Gilbert, a Harvard professor, reveals how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imagination may get in the way of your ability to know what happiness is.

“People want to be happy, and all the other things they want are typically meant to be a means to that end.” ― Daniel M. Gilbert

In this 2006 New York Times bestseller, Gilbert tries to help you become more self-aware of these tricks your brain plays on you, so you can avoid them in the future and create your own happiness.

5. The Happiness Advantage

Conventional wisdom says that if you work hard, you will be more successful, and if you are more successful, then you’ll be happy.

The theory is that if you can find a great job, win a big promotion, and lose ten pounds, you will be happy. But recent research in the field of positive psychology shows that this formula is actually backward.

Happiness leads to success, not the other way around.

In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor uses data from his work with thousands of international executives to show you how you can reprogram your brain to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge in the world.

This book is a must-read for anyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity. It will teach you how to reap the rewards of a happier and more positive mind-set and to achieve extraordinary results in your live.

6. The Happiness Hypothesis

If you want to read only one book on this list — pick this one.

It is the most thorough analysis of how you can find happiness in our modern society, and it is backed by scientific research, real-life examples and it will even provide you with a formula for happiness.

Using the wisdom from the world’s greatest civilizations as a foundation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt comes to terms with 10 “Great Ideas,” and views them through a modern filter to learn how you can apply their lessons to your life.

I personally liked the metaphor of a wild elephant and the rider that he uses to describe how our brain works. In it, Haidt describes the limbic brain as a wild elephant, with your neocortex being the rider, trying to control the elephant.

Unhappiness comes from the rider and the elephant disagreeing, and Haidt uses this metaphor to show you what you can do to close the gap between the two. As a bonus, Haidt will show you how to find meaning in your own life.

7. The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck

Until now, I have only shared books with you that show you how to be happy based on positive psychology. This book is different. The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck does away with positive psychology and offers you a no BS approach to life.

Mark Mansonmanages to cut through the BS to show you that if you quit trying to be “positive,” you will actually become happier.

“F*ck positivity,” Mark Manson says. “Let’s be honest, shit is f*cked and we have to live with it.”

In his book, Manson advises you to get to know your limitations and accept them. Once you know your limitations, you can stop avoiding the painful truth and find the courage to improve your life.

Call To Action

If you want to be extraordinarily happy and create the life of your dreams, check out my checklist.

(P.S. I have included some Amazon affiliate links to help defray the ridiculously high cost of my daughter’s education)

This story first appeared on Medium.com

Well, right off the bat, I have to apologize…the title of this post is a bit misleading. Yes, I’m going to outline several ways to help our children learn how to be happy, but maybe not the way you might have thought.

The misconception is that happiness is some tangible end we achieve, and once we do, it’s ours forever. The reality is, happiness is something we have to work on consistently, every day. In other words, happiness isn’t a goal, it’s a way of life.

We would never want someone to walk around and periodically snap at us, “Smile!” “Be Happy!” and give us no allowance to feel sorrow, anger, frustration, or any other myriad of emotions. Similarly, we shouldn’t demand our children cast aside their relevant emotions and simply, be happy.

Instead, let us teach our children the tools they can use to process through emotions and overcome stumbling blocks that are preventing them from being happy. Thus, giving them the tools to be happy children, adolescents, and fully-functioning adults!

To teach your children how to be happy, teach them these 10 things.

1. Resiliency

Teaching our children to be resilient moves from saying, “dust yourself off” after they fall at the playground, to “Mistakes are proof that you are trying”, when they encounter other failures as they grow up.

The problem with teaching our children to adopt a growth mindset that allows them to learn from failures, is that we have to believe it ourselves. As parents, we all know (though we fiercely hope otherwise) that children can see through a lot. If we want our children to learn to be resilient and see failures as opportunities for learning and growth, we have to practice what we preach.

Adopting a growth mindset is vital in children. It prevents them from equating their self-worth with their performance—whether that be academic, physical, spiritual, etc. To teach this to our children, we must take pause with them in the midst of their disappointments and failings and ask them what they learned from the experience: How did they prepare? How did they perform? What have they learned in hindsight? What will they do differently next time?

Resist the urge to make these moments grueling—you are not the coach reviewing missed routes and tackles. Instead, carry with you a light-hearted spirit, humor, and above all, reassurance that your love is not conditional on their mistakes. This will allow their sorrows to heal and more quickly revert to happiness.

2. Gratitude

While Gratitude goes beyond just saying “thank you”, teaching kids to express thanks for everything is a great place to start. In a way, it is simultaneously teaching them to think more selflessly. When kids say, “thank you for driving me”, they are recognizing that you took time out of your schedule to perform an act of service for them.

Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Wishes

Gratitude acts like an avalanche: once we start recognizing small acts of service others perform for us (and expressing thanks for them), we find reasons to be grateful everywhere around us. When we see the world around us with a grateful heart, we are more likely to see reasons to be happy.

Teaching children—particularly teenagers—to count their blessings is also a great coping mechanism in times of sorrow, anger, or self-pity. Challenge your children to make a list of blessings before they fall asleep at night or first thing when they wake up in the morning. When I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, counting my blessings removes the feelings of self-pity, and immediately instills a happier, more positive outlook on life.

For smaller children, taking a moment to recognize just one thing they are grateful for helps re-establish the “proper perspective” when dealing with disappointments. While being disappointed is okay, dwelling on it until it grows into resentment, anger, or feelings of failure, is not. Redirect disappointments into learning experiences by teaching your children to counterbalance their disappointments with gratitude.

3. Self-love

I think we often think of teenagers when we think of issues of self-worth, but those holes in our self-esteem start much, much younger. (See my story about my 5-year old daughter here.)

There’s a video that’s recently gone viral about a little girl who has smashed her finger in a door, and the way that her mother coaches her through it is so beautiful it makes me wish I had seen it before I started parenting 20 years ago.

Some might question why the mother prompts her daughter to say, “I’m beautiful”, “I’m loved”, or “I’m worthy” after something as seemingly trivial as pinching her finger. What we should be asking ourselves is, why would we not take every opportunity we have to reinforce these beliefs in our children?

Self-love comes when our children understand that they are strong, capable, beautiful, loved, and most importantly, worthy. When they know this from inside their own heart and mind, they are protected from outside influences that would take advantage of them, abuse them, and destroy their happiness.

Do whatever you can each day to reinforce the understanding that they are worthy, and stop seeking validation and acceptance from others. That knowledge will insulate their hearts, protect their bodies, and ensure spiritual growth.

“None of us come to this earth to gain our worth; we brought it with us.”

4. Hard work & Service

During my youth, this area—hard work & service—must have been a source of repeated frustration for my parents. It’s not that I was a particularly lazy child, but these two things always made me feel happy, and yet, I continued to resist doing either of them!

Courtesy of Karma, I have been blessed with such a child, myself. My oldest son is a good worker. And when he works hard, he is so much happier than the times he sits by doing nothing. He is more energetic, his attitude towards others is kinder, and it’s contagious—he looks for opportunities to do more.

Not only that, but like all of us, he stands a little taller, taking pride when a job is well-done. In 20 years of parenting, I have observed that there is no faster way to help your children cast off negative feelings to such a degree that they are bursting with joy, than through service to others.

Like establishing good habits (in Part Two of this post), teaching children to value work requires a lot of patience from the parents. Our children might one day recognize that they feel happier after working hard and giving heartfelt service to others; or they might never admit it. The reward isn’t in the admission that we were right. It’s watching their happiness increase.

5. Contentment

It makes me sad that the “Fear of Missing Out” has become such a prevalent thing, we’ve given a name to it (FOMO). This fear tells us that we need to run around and chase after happiness. It says that happiness is elusive, and without the right experiences, people, and material possessions, we’re going to miss out!

Contentment is a forgotten virtue. Adversarial voices would try and convince us that being content is equal to being lazy; that contentedness equates to a lack of ambition. This is taking the truth and twisting it.

The truth is, we believe the lie that happiness exists in things or other tangibles, and when that thing doesn’t magically produce happiness, we convince ourselves we’ve made a mistake, and focus on acquiring the next thing—convinced that this one will do the trick! And so, the cycle continues.

“People tend to overvalue what they don’t have and undervalue what they do.”

To keep your children from chasing happiness, teach them two things. First, that happiness isn’t connected to stuff. Second, to value what they have. Gratitude and Contentment go hand-in-hand. When our children can look around and be grateful for what they already have, that will bring contentment.

When we are content with who we are, where we are, and what we have, we are blessed with a happiness that only peace can give us.

Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Hour

To Be Continued…

Part Two on Monday will continue with 5 more lessons we can teach our children–and review ourselves!

Teach To Be Happy Teach To Be Happy Birthday Wishes

Until then, I would love to hear the experiences you’ve had with your own children, helping them overcome their hurdles to happiness. Drop a comment below!