Explanation of our upcoming week on "How to be Happy"

Welcome to our week of happiness based on the work of Harvard Professor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar and his book "Happier." Dr. Ben-Shahar teaches Harvard's most popular class--positive psychology, which is the science of happiness. While it is not a requirement own Dr. Ben-Shahar's book or to buy anything for that matter in order to participate and benefit from the week, we do believe that after you get a taste of what the book can offer that you will want to acquire it. "Happier" is available from all major book outlets and we have a direct link to its page on Amazon below. Even with all of the things we cover over this next week on happiness, it represents a very small portion of what is in the book. In short, we cannot recommend his book strongly enough.

We have assembled five lessons to educate you about happiness.

Day 1: From Happy to Happier Day 2: Hedonists and Rat Racers Day 3: Pleasure and Meaning Day 4: The Importance of Goals Day 5: Just Do It!

Each daily lesson also contains two exercises taken from "Happier." One is intended to help enlighten you about what really makes you happy. The second one is aimed at helping you implement what you just learned.

For the sixth day we will feature a comprehensive resource guide on happiness covering information that is available on LifeTwo as well as third-party sources.

Our seventh and closing post will be about Dr. Ben-Shahar himself, whose work both inspired and formed the basis of this entire week. We have a Podcast interview with him recorded just last week where he is able to elaborate on key points from his work. We will also have other information about him and the work he is doing.

When we first considered creating this week it seemed a little presumptuous of us to believe that in such a short time period we could help people become happier. But when we tried the book's exercises ourselves we became believers.

We then reached out to authors, columnists and bloggers of various related fields to see what they thought. Most were familiar with Dr. Ben-Shahar's work and some had just finished reading the book themselves. All of them agreed to work with us by sharing their experiences from the exercises to insure that this didn't become overly focused on our own stories, viewpoints, and biases.

Happiness Week participants include:

Gretchen Rubin (Happiness Project) Penelope Trunk (The Brazen Careerist) Jed Diamond (MenAlive) "Dating Goddess" (The Dating Goddess) Rhea Becker (Boomer Chronicles) Nicolette Beard (Man-o-Pause) Jackie Silver (AgingBackwards)

We will also feature a guest column about the implications of "Brain Training" for happiness from SharpBrains about the common brain-based obstacles to being happy and how you apply the latest brain science developments in your own quest to be happier.

Amazon link: Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment

Update: We would like to express our gratitude to those blogs who have written about LifeTwo's week of happiness. Below are the ones that we are aware of. Let us know if we missed you.

50+ Marketing Sharp Brains Evolution Shift GenBetween ">Boomer Chronicles Contemporary Retirement The Business of Life Aging Backwards Happiness Project Man-o-pause Hello Rocky 500 Miles to Nowhere Mizmell LifeBites