What do you want out of life?
What are your goals as parents?
Happiness. And we relate it to a better life. We all do
And we go on a Pursuit of Happiness
My daughter draws rainbows everyday
She dances anywhere whenever there is a beat of music
She sits on her slide and brushes her hair
I look at her and wonder, was I this happy when I was young?
So where has it gone?
Happiness is a skill
What makes you happy
What does it mean to you?
Do you feel like you’re contributing something to the world? Do you feel like you’re doing something that’s greater than yourself?
Do you feel like you have a purpose?
There is a movie/documentary on Happy. Filmmaker Roko Belic travels to more than a dozen countries, searching for the meaning of happiness.
What makes people happy? HAPPY explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion.
What they found is purpose, meaning and being connected to other people is happiness. In this documentary, money is way down but I am not going to debate here on that.
What makes me happy?
I love Reading Books, sharing stories
I love Writing blogs
I love Sharing life stories and supporting other parents
I love Vaishnavi’s hugs. Everytime we meet, everytime we feel sad, everytime we are feeling all over the place, everytime we feel super excited, anytime of the day, we HUG. We don’t just simply hug, We hug for as long as our heart’s still transferring energy. We both can feel that energy.
Try touching a tree today. It’s the nonverbal connection that is what I love.
Decreasing what is going wrong is different from increasing what is going right.
Focusing on our strengths. Instead of focusing on what you or your child is not good at yet.
In Brainbow, we focus on children’s strength, not general labels like clever, smart, beautiful.
We really get into the details. We practice strength based problem solving.
You can do a strength survey at https://www.viacharacter.org/ VIA Character Strengths.Inventory is one of the most popular and fundamental ways to measure your personal strengths. It is based on their 24 character strengths, around the six virtues.
Why aren’t we developing things that are naturally coming to us or already in us?
Are parents in continual search of developing their children’s weakness instead of strength?
It’s effortless. It’s their natural ability. Why not become better at something that we are already good at?
What’s your strength?
Determined (we usually call it stubbornness)
Practical (we call it lazy, shortcuts)
Self-confidence (we call it show off?)
Imaginative (we call it Dreamer)
Can you imagine how we miss out on all the strengths with negative biases?
We live in the age of quantification.
We are so focused on how many likes we got for a latest tik tok video which took 10 hours to produce. Or What’s my weight after I exercised for 3 days?
You can look at the progress later. You can’t keep looking at it and measuring it
I turn 39 this Saturday. I have never been happier. I feel happy to wake up every morning. I feel happy with everyone around me. I feel happy for all the achievements and disappointments as the messages are my teachers. My husband and daughter asked me what I want for my birthday. I said Strawberry tarts I had in Barcelona and Lemon Pie I used to eat in Kinokuniya cafe every week when I used to have my lunch in Kinokuniya Cafe. Happiness is not where you are physically. Happiness is where you are mentally.
For me, being happy is being at peace.
We help children grow emotionally resilient through art and craft. Get Brainbow Box today www.brainbow-kids.com
