Self-Care | Live Happy

The New Prayer

Sitting in the 250-year-old Quaker meetinghouse high in the mountains of Vermont, I can almost touch the deep, round silence that connects those who have gathered here for worship this beautiful spring morning. The handful of men and women scattered on the old benches sit with their heads bowed, hands resting quietly in their laps or tucked under one of the hand-knit afghans placed around the room to counter the morning chill. Most of those present have their eyes closed, and one, I suspect, is fast asleep. But another is looking thoughtfully out one of the two-story windows toward the trees, and another, hands lifted up, eyes closed, gently sways back and forth. A log shifts in the old wood stove. The silence shifts as well, and slowly eyes open and meet, smiles appear, and hands reach out one to the other in greeting. New Space, a Different Place Praying with others can be a richly textured experience. Whether it’s done in the silence of a Quaker meeting or as part of a group singing an ancient melody with its origins deep in the sands of the Negev, communal prayer is often a joyously multidimensional experience that moves us into a new space. “Prayer is a doorway to God,” explains Brent Bill, Quaker pastor, director of the new meetings project for Friends General Conference and author of the forthcoming book Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a New Language of Prayer. “It’s an opportunity to open ourselves, engage in an authentic dialogue, and get as close to God as possible.” Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, executive director of the Mechon Hadar education center in New York and author of Empowered Judaism, agrees. “In Jewish practice, men and womenare required to pray three times a day in a group called a minyan,” he says. It can be a rigorous schedule for those unaccustomed to it, but, he adds, “it’s been my experience that being in a room where dozens of people are praying together pushes me to a different place. It allows me to ride the enthusiasm of others, concentrate better and focus more on prayer.” Nor is the effect limited to the minyan. Catholics who stand and clasp hands to recite the “Our Father” prayer report the same experience, as do Protestants who respond in unison to biblical readings from the pulpit, Quakers who sit silently in God’s presence and Muslims who kneel shoulder to shoulder in daily prayers. When Edgar Hopida, communications director for the Islamic Society of North America, hears the afternoon call to prayer over his office intercom in Plainfield, Ind., for example, he welcomes the opportunity to walk downstairs to the building’s prayer room, remove his shoes, and stand, shoulder to shoulder, with others to pray. As they alternately bow, kneel and sit, the group’s prayers will progress through several cycles that include reciting verses from the Quran, praising God and asking forgiveness, until those who are praying conclude by turning to their neighbors, first on the right, then on the left, and blessing them with “Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah”—“Peace be upon you, mercy be upon you.” Asking God to bless the person next to you with peace and mercy can be transformative. “I’ll be stressing at work and then I get into prayer, and I realize—`Yeah, I can get through this day,’ ” Edgar says. “Prayer with others helps me focus on the divine and those with whom I pray.” The Power of Connection Edgar’s experience is one that Debbie Eaton, head of women’s ministries at the 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Southern California, sees every day. Whether she’s praying with one other woman or 450, the result is the same. “When I’m praying with someone, particularly with someone who is struggling, judgment just goes away,” Debbie says. “They could be telling me the most horrible thing, and I just see them in the light of love. I can sense God holding that person—and I feel such joy, peace and love.” A few miles up the California coast, Carolyn Taketa, director of small groups at Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, shares Debbie’s perspective. “There’s a sense of unity, power, care and support in communal prayer,” she explains. “In a small group that prays, it doesn’t matter that you’re a CEO, that you have special needs or that you’re homeless. All that stuff gets stripped away. There’s just you, your friends, and a clear sense of God’s presence.” She sighs. “There’s such power, beauty and simplicity in that.” When a friend in Carolyn’s prayer group shared that her marriage was over, for example, the group cried with her for the loss of her husband, the pain to her children, and the bad choices that had been made as the marriage unraveled. “Then we made a circle around her and supported her with prayer,” Carolyn says. “We stood in God’s presence. And when we finally lifted our heads, there was a deep sense of peace.” Half a world away, Diane Heavin, the Texas-based co-founder of the Curvesfitness centers, had a similar experience a few years ago as she walked the Great Wall of China to raise money for breast cancer research. At her request, the names of thousands of men and women with cancer had been sent to her by Curves’ members from around the world. So every morning, all along the Great Wall, Diane, her friend Becky, and 30 or so walkers would gather in a group on the wall to pray for those whose names they had brought—all carefully written on index cards. The walkers were from different faiths and countries, but as Becky and Diane would begin to pray out loud, one by one, others would join in and begin to read some of the names. It was an amazing experience, Diane says. “This was a brutal walk. We all had achy bodies, we missed our families, and we were emotionally taxed.” But by the time the last prayers had been said, every member of the group had been blessed with a renewed strength, an increased awareness of God, and a closer connection to one another. “Even those who don’t define themselves as religious or who see themselves as non-theist seem to sense that something powerful is going on” when they experience prayer in community, Brent says. Even when it’s something as simple as sitting with others as they bless a family dinner, or hiking up a hillside in silence with others before the Easter dawn, many non-theists sense a presence. “Some of us call it God, others call it ‘Greatness’ or ‘Higher Power,’ or they don’t label it at all.” Brent smiles. “I’m easy with that.” Getting Out of Your Head Although communal prayer offers a powerful way to connect with the divine, those who actually sing prayers in community suggest that communal prayers expressed through music may transcend just about everything else. “The place that I’m able to go when song is a part of the prayer is much more intense,” Rabbi Elie says. In fact, “sometimes I think of the experience as transcending cognition. There are so many words in Jewish tradition, and the music takes me outside of the intellectualization of the prayer text to a different spiritual place.” That place is one regularly inhabited by musician Joey Weisenberg, creative director of the Hadar Center for Communal Jewish Music, a faculty member at several Jewish seminaries, and the prayer leader of Brooklyn’s oldest synagogue. One day he’s teaching cantoral students and baby rabbis, the next day it’s a children’s choir. Then he’s leading Friday night and Saturday morning Shabbat services. There’s a Jewish choir the next day, next week a workshop in Wisconsin, and every Tuesday night he and his band are on deck at Kane Street Synagogue. And that doesn’t touch on the days he’s in a recording studio laying down tracks that feature the hundreds of niggunim—ancient prayer melodies that replace words with nonsense syllables—that he’s rescued from the past. The niggunim remind him of the riffs he heard played in the blues bars where he grew up in Milwaukee—and with their unique ability to speak the wordless language of the soul and perhaps touch the divine, the niggunim are his passion. “The whole purpose of prayer is to crack open our hearts, our hardened hearts, just a little bit,” explains Joey, “and music is perhaps the best tool I’ve ever seen—I’ve ever experienced—for opening up a heart. It can prune away the shells that we have around ourselves so that, as we sing together, the harsh exterior of ourselves begins to be cut away.” Eventually, says Joey, as we become more vulnerable, as we learn to listen deeply to the music and one another, the wordless melodies of the niggunim will offer us an actual experience, in real time, of the divine. Sitting in my study one morning as I finish this story and listen to an MP3 of Joey’s music, the sun slowly rises over the mountain that shelters my cottage. The woods that surround my clearing etch their shadows on snow that has yet to melt, and the soft sounds of chickadees and titmice near my open window make their way into the room. Eventually, the niggun I’m listening to slows, then fades. Only the deep, rich silence of Presence surrounds me.

Hands Positioned as in Prayer isolated on white

Self-Care

God Online

When Indiana’s Enten Eller, director of electronic communication at Bethany Theological Seminary, was asked to facilitate the technology that would join three Kansas ministers-in-training with four others in Florida, he didn’t expect that it would lead to one of the most moving experiences he’s had in bringing people and technology together.The students needed to complete several activities as part of the work required for their ordination certificate. So, with Enten’s help, they utilized a combination of Adobe Connect video software for meetings and Skype for audio to get it done. They sang hymns together, often started by one of the students in Florida with the rest joining in with harmony.The high point, however, says Enten, was an “anointing service,” which, in the Church of the Brethren denomination to which they belong, is a ceremony of healing and renewal. A minister applies oil to the forehead of someone who is hurting three times to represent the forgiveness of sins, presence of God, and healing of mind, body and spirit. The minister then lays his or her hands on the person and prays for the individual’s healing.The students gathered in a circle at each of their locations and conducted the ritual with one another. “While the oil could not pass over the distance,” says Enten, “the prayers and support most certainly did, and we were all a bit astounded at how the distance seemed to vanish between us. We felt the Presence and close to each other—with a feeling of the Spirit uniting us, unbounded by space or time.”

Well-Being

Laughing for Life

Lori Stein might never have learnedhow to laugh if her husband hadn’t losthis job. “Right after he was laid off, hehad to go back east, so I was left herewith lots of time on my hands,” recallsthe accountant from Pasadena, CA.Already battling clinical depression,and feeling lonely and overwhelmed by her circumstances, Lori remembereda woman who’d mentioned a LaughterYoga club that met on Friday nights.With nothing to lose, she decided tocheck it out. “From the moment I walked in, Iknew this was for me,” says Lori. “Itwas so not who I usually am. I am soanalytical and serious and literal, andthis was the opposite of that. It waschildlike and carefree. It was absolutelyfreeing for me.” Lori made it her Friday night ritual,and when her husband returned home a few weeks later, he began attending withher. Now, almost seven years later, theyboth are staunch believers in the powerof Laughter Yoga, making it a priority toattend weekly sessions. Not only has it improved their marriage, Lori says, butit has helped her reclaim a sense of joyand youthfulness that she had forgottenexisted. It has also helped her manageher depression, she says. Lori is one of a growing numberof devotees worldwide who havediscovered the power of Laughter Yoga.Launched with just five participantsin 1995 by Madan Kataria, a medicaldoctor in Mumbai, India, today themovement has grown to include morethan 7,000 clubs worldwide. This isn’t a simple chuckle or a quietgiggle; it employs what experts referto as “mirthful laughter”—the kind ofdeep, shaking laughter that puts thewhole body in motion. It is that fullbody motion, according to the Mayo Clinic, that unleashes laughter’sgreatest benefits. In addition to freeing the mind,which provides instant stress relief,hearty, mirthful laughter stimulates the heart, lungs and other organs; itincreases the endorphins released bythe brain and heightens the intake ofoxygen-rich air. Over the long term,evidence suggests, it also strengthensthe immune system by releasingneuropeptides that help fight stress andother more serious illnesses. Bridging Breathand Laughter The notion that laughter has healingproperties is nothing new; in his 1979book, Anatomy of an Illness, NormanCousins wrote about combating lifethreatening illness with humor. As farback as the 1960s, Dr. William Fry of Stanford University began publishingstudies about the physiological processesthat occur during laughter, also notingthat they had a powerful effect on healthand survival. Inspired by existing research,Madan was writing an article about thebenefits of laughter for a medical journalin the mid-’90s and, as he did moreresearch, decided to start a laughterclub in Mumbai. Gathering a handfulof friends, they met in a park andtold jokes. “It didn’t take long for us to run outof jokes, so I knew that humor was notenough,” he says. “I started searchingfor ways to laugh without humor.” William’s research indicated that the human body cannot differentiate between genuine laughter and fakedlaughter, so Madan began looking atways to create laughter—even in theabsence of something to laugh about. “If you act like a happy person, yourbody responds,” he says, “so I startedtrying different laughter exercises.” His wife, Madhuri, was a yogainstructor and both of them werelong-time yoga practitioners, so theyimplemented gentle yoga breathing,called pranayama, with the laughter toboost its health benefits. “I never in my life thought itwould become so popular,” he says.“However, there was a need for peoplethat [Laughter Yoga] met. The stressin this world is too much, and peoplefeel lonely. And they like LaughterYoga because it’s simple—that’s whyit works.”Better Living Through Laughter Madan isn’t the only one who istaking laughter—and its effect on themind and body—seriously these days.Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicagois one of many hospitals worldwide thatuses Laughter Yoga as complementarymedicine. The hospital uses it as partof its pulmonary rehabilitation programin addition to implementing it into chemotherapy sessions for cancerpatients. While cancer is no laughingmatter, studies indicate that laughtermight be just what patients need. A 2003 study of cancer patients atIndiana State University SycamoreNursing Center looked at howhumor affected patients from botha psychological and physiologicalstandpoint. The study showed thatlaughter had the ability to reduce stressand improve NK, or natural killer, cellactivity. The study’s final conclusionwas that, since low NK cell activityis linked to a lowered resistance todisease and an increased morbidity ratefor individuals with cancer and HIV,“laughter may be a useful cognitive behavioralintervention.” “Even after all this time, I remainshocked in a positive way by what I see,”says Sebastien Gendry, founder of theAmerican School of Laughter Yoga inLos Angeles, CA. Sebastien trainedwith Madan to become aLaughterYogateacher in 2004, then worked alongsideMadan in India for two years. “I can’t prove that laughter really isthe best medicine, but I have seen manyexamples of people who have had results that are nothing short of miraculous,”he says. “The doctors can’t explainit, but they can’t deny that somethinghappened in those sessions that had amajor impact [on the person’s health].There is something of real substancethat takes place when you experiencelaughter like that.” Laughing – particularly whencombined with the breathing techniquesused in Laughter Yoga—also expandsthe capacity of the lungs and oxygenatesthe body. As more oxygen reaches theorgans, it helps flush out toxins while at the same time generating more energyand promoting overall relaxation.And as much as it does for the body,Sebastien says, it’s even better for themind and soul. “Healing the body is secondary to healing the mind,” he says. “Butthe research is valid. In the pastfour decades, over 400 medical research studies and more than 4,000psychological studies have beenpublished about the healing power oflaughter. The data is there.” Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the world’smost respected experts on holistic healthand founder of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, even testifiedbefore a Senate committee in 2010that laughing —and Laughter Yogain particular—could have a dramaticeffect on the overall health of the nationand could help lower America’s healthcare costs. Andrew isn’t alone in believinglaughter could help lessen the effects of awide range of ailments. A Japanese studypublished in the journal Diabetes Carediscovered that test subjects with Type 2diabetes – the most common form of the disease – were able to significantly lower their blood sugar levels after a meal bywatching a 40-minute comedy showthat induced laughter. Dr. Lee S. Berk, a well-respectedresearcher at Loma Linda (CA)University’s School of Allied HealthProfessions and a pioneer in the field oflaughter research, was one of the firstto discover the positive effects laughterhas on the endocrine system. Lee haspublished multiple studies showingthat laughter can decrease cortisol levels, which leads to stress reduction,and increase production of antibodiesfor greater immunity. One of his morerecent studies, presented at the 2010 Experimental Biology Conference inAnaheim, CA, even indicated thatlaughter may be useful in restoring theappetites of elderly patients who havebecome depressed and lost interest infood. His study found it could be an“accessible alternative starting point forthese patients to regain appetite and, consequently, improve and enhancetheir recovery to health.” Laughing With Class Sebastien says the growing evidenceabout the benefits of laughter havemade people more eager to exploreLaughter Yoga. Classes follow the same basicstructure, although each instructor maythrow in his or her favorite “tricks” forgenerating laughter. Classes generallylast for 45 to 60 minutes, and require nospecial equipment other than a bottleof water (laughing so much can drythe throat) and a willingness to leaveinhibitions at the door. There’s plenty of clapping whilechanting, “Ho, ho, ha, ha, ha!” followedby different exercises, done with apartner or as a group, designed toinduce laughter. Fake laughter oftenerupts into uncontrollable giggles asparticipants let down their guard andbegin playing—and laughing—likechildren. Much of the time, it feels morelike an improv comedy class than ayoga session. “Each class is different becauseDr. Kataria encourages teachers to becreative, but the basics of every classwill be clapping, breathing, laughing,stretching—and of course, a childlike playfulness,” explains Judi A. Winall, acertified Laughter Yoga instructor andleader of the Joyful Healing LaughterClub in Cincinnati. “It helps people, through play and laughter, get in touch with the joy that is in each of us. And when we tap back into that, it helpsus stay connected, stay healthier and be happier.” “Laughter is a cathartic way to release emotions. It stimulates the parasympathetic system, which allows you to be able to let go. And that letseverything in our lives flow better,”she says. Patrick Murphy Welage of WorldPeace Laughter in Cincinnati, a teacherwho discovered Laughter Yoga inMumbai and learned it from Madan while it was still in its early days, hasheld workshops and retreats around theworld. He also has taken it into prisons, universities and other high-stress environments to help release tension. “People want to feel valued and validated. When you look into someone’s eyes and laugh with them, you recognize one another’s humanity,”Patrick explains. “It’s non threateningandnon-judgemental. It’s like music; ittranscends your culture, race, gender orsex and reminds you that we are all inthis life together.” Some have sought to push the fitnessaspects of Laughter Yoga, claiming that it burns up to 500 calories anhour. Others have equated laughing 20 times consecutively to working out with a rowing machine. Sebastien, however, is quick to dismiss such claims, noting their vague citations and lack of supporting data. “The idea is correct, but the numbers are not,” he says, adding thatthere is nothing that can specificallymeasure calories burned through ahearty session of laughter. And, justas with any other form of activity,individual results may vary. However,he also recommends that people don’t get too hung up on the numbers; whatwe do know, he says, is that it has apositive effect on the cardiovascular andimmune systems, as well as the mind. In other words, it can’t hurt. Sebastien predicts that the Laughter Yoga movement will continue growing and become more accepted in the U.S.Just as it has in India and other partsof the world, he expects to see it entermore mainstream settings. Part of thereason is that laughter feels good, it isan inexpensive form of stress relief and,as people discover its many benefits,he says they are hard-pressed to findreasons not to try it. “At this point, there are so manystudies on the impact of laughter thatit’s no longer a matter of whether or notlaughter works,” he says. “It’s a matter of when you’re going to accept it.”

Self-Care

Going with the Flow

Heather McPhie had never felt sicker. Heather, the defending national champion in mogul skiing, was at the U.S. Freestyle Championships at California’s Heavenly ski resort last March.The week before, she’d come down with a horrible sinus infection, which she was trying to fight off with antibiotics.The drugs appeared not to be working, and her symptoms—runny nose, achiness, chills—seemed to peak on the Friday of the biggest contest of her season. She was one of the clear favorites to win.Between qualifications and finals, Heather slept for a couple of hours under a table in the VIP tent. She was too tired to take her inspection run, a critical step in planning and visualization.A rare fog settled over the mountain, and visibility was poor. At the top of the course, Heather put her headphones on and tried to push away all of the negativity—her illness, the weather.“It was incredibly stressful, but I quieted my mind,” she says. “You never know what’s going to happen and there are so many variables, so I just focused on my breathing.”She stood in the starting gate as an official counted her down. Three. Two. One. Go! When she pushed off, everything came into sharp focus. Her brain and body, hard-wired to perform thanks to years of training, kicked into overdrive. Time seemed to dissipate and whatever had been bothering her before suddenly vanished.She carved meticulous high-speed turns through the mogul field, wriggling her way down the mountain with the grace of a ballet dancer and the speed of a race car driver. On the first jump of the course, Heather did a huge layout, her body straight as she flipped into the air, landing solidly on both skis. On the second jump, she went for a D-spin, a 42 difficult off-axis 720 (two complete rotations), again landing with ease.The run earned her a miraculous victory and cemented her second national championship title. Her win also nearly guaranteed Heather a chance to represent the United States in mogul skiing at the Winter Olympic Games this February in Sochi, Russia.So just how did a girl who was sick and sleeping under a table hours earlier transform herself into a national champion and pending Olympian in a matter of moments? The answer is something even she can’t quite explain.“It was the like the perfect storm,” Heather says. “I barely remember actually skiing that run. I crossed the finish line, and I was like, ‘I’m not sure exactly what I just did,’ but I knew it felt really good. It was just a feeling. You can’t think your way through it.”This trance—an instinctual mental state that gives way to a sense of effortless concentration—is something that psychologists have spent the last five decades attempting to figure out. The phenomenon has a name: flow.And flow, it turns out, may also hold the key to happiness.Tapping into FlowDating as far back as Aristotle, there is evidence that man could become absorbed by one singular thing.“Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free,” wrote Chuang-Tzu, a Chinese philosopher who lived around the fourth century B.C. “Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.”But the idea wasn’t formally named until the 1970s, when a Hungarian-born researcher named Mihaly “Mike” Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheeksent-me-hi), now considered the founding father of flow, debuted his findings. In his research, he described flow as the mental state in which people become so intensely involved in a specific activity that nothing else appears to matter.He came upon the subject from his own experiences. As a child, Mike and his family were held in an Italian prison camp during World War II. He used chess to find a mental escape. “I discovered chess was a miraculous way of entering into a different world where all those things didn’t matter,” Mike once said. “For hours I’d just focus within a reality that had clear rules and goals.”In 1990, Mike published the bookFlow: The Psychology of Optimal Experiencewhich became a national best seller. In it, he explained that flow typically occurs when a person stretches his or her mind or body to its limits to achieve something both difficult and worthwhile.That experience, his research found, turned out to be a critical step toward living a happy life. “Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person,” he wrote. “People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”According to his research, Americans report that they experience something akin to flow several times per day, while about 15 percent of people say they never encounter it. He found that musicians, artists and athletes achieved flow most frequently.But for many people, finding flow isn’t as simple as it sounds.“There’s something about flow that’s really intriguing,” says Daniel Tomasulo, an instructor of applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “The goal is clear, there’s a very high degree of focus and people can lose their consciousness by engaging in the action.”Through flow, Daniel says, time and reality can appear distorted. “Flow is like all altered states; it’s a type of high,” he says. “And because of that, everybody wants flow.”But how, exactly, do you achieve flow? There’s no easy, front-door entrance, sadly.The way Daniel describes flow, it sounds more like a secret rabbit hole into Wonderland. “If you’re too anxious, you’re not going to be able to function. If you’re too bored, you’re not going to be engaged,” Daniel says. “Being in flow straddles those two extremes. What you’re trying to do is find a portal between the two that pulls you into the flow zone.”If there’s one group of athletes that flow researchers often point to for their high frequency of flow, it’s skiers.Mike often used skiing as a vehicle to describe flow. “Imagine that you are skiing down a slope, and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body,” he writes. “There is no room in your awareness for conflicts or contradictions; you know that a distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in the snow. The run is so perfect that you want it to last forever.”Perhaps skiers are more apt to find flow because their sport—which takes place in an often high-risk mountain environment—requires utmost focus and blends challenge with thrill and reward. Or perhaps it’s just because skiers have found the rabbit hole.“In flow, the activity feels effortless. You’re totally engaged from the inside out,” Daniel says. “A skier, for example, might have some ailment, but as soon as they’re in flow, the ailment almost magically goes away.”Staying in the PresentIn 2007, Heather’s first year on the World Cup, the most competitive circuit for elite mogul skiers, she earned rookie of the year. In 2010, she competed at her first Olympics, the Vancouver Games, and she qualified for finals but then crashed. The more intense the competition got, the more anxious she felt.“I kept choking under pressure,” Heather admits.Over the next few years, she battled injuries, while self-doubt and anxiety continued to plague her. As a result, she was struggling to break into the top 10.“I wonder what you could do if you believed in yourself,” her boyfriend said to her around that time.The comment struck her. “For the first time, I realized I was really holding myself back,” she says now. “I doubted myself. I was exhausted and constantly saying, ‘I could be doing more.’ I was just pinballing.”Her coach offered to set her up with a sports psychologist and with that help, McPhie slowly worked through her mental obstacles. She’d always trained intensely on a physical level to get her body ready for the winter season, but never before had she thought she had to train her mind, too.I worked on not worrying about the past or the future but just being here,” she says. “I have made amazing strides.”— Heather McPhieShe learned to focus on the present, the here and now. “I worked on not worrying about the past or the future but just being here,” she says. “I have made amazing strides. Now, I’m much more comfortable with myself. I’m so much happier. I’ve become more relaxed. It’s a constant thing and every day is different. Every day you have a choice.”In addition to being happier, Heather also started to perform better. In 2012, she earned four World Cup podiums and her first U.S. National Championship title. In 2013, Heather had the best season of her career, including five World Cup podiums, three of them gold, and her second National Championship title (while, of course, suffering from a sinus infection). She finished last season ranked third overall in the world, heading into this Olympic year.She says her skiing became more consistent and she was able to push herself to try more difficult tricks. In other words, without even trying to, by focusing on the present and pushing away negative thoughts, Heather reached flow nearly every time she dropped into a contest run.Her next challenge will be keeping that focus during the Olympics this February, where Heather, 29, will be one of the top American women to watch in mogul skiing.“My dream for the Olympics is to have the best run of my life,” she says. “I want gold, don’t get me wrong, I’ve dreamt of that moment. But I’m doing everything I can to stay focused on what I can control. I’m really excited to see what I can do.”Pushing Outthe NegativeLike Heather, Noah Bowman started crumpling under pressure.The Canadian halfpipe skier from Calgary, Alberta, broke onto the competitive freeskiing scene as an alternate at the X Games in Aspen, Colo., in 2012. He wasn’t planning to compete, but when another skier got hurt, Bowman nabbed a spot in the qualifiers.With no pressure and no expectations, he breezed through to the finals, where he landed a switch alley-oop double 900. This insanely technical trick involves a backward take-off with two and a half rotations and two inverted flips. Noah learned the maneuver just days earlier and no skier had ever landed it before. The trick helped Bowman secure a silver medal at his rookie X Games appearance.Looking back, Noah knows he was in flow at that time. “It felt as if I wasn’t thinking about anything, my subconscious took over and everything felt natural,” he says. “I had no outside or negative thoughts and it opened the door to continuously move forward and progress.”But in 2013, now a skier to watch and with halfpipe skiing slated for its Olympic debut in Sochi, Noah felt the glare of the world. He couldn’t commit going into the harder tricks, he felt distracted and he fumbled with moves that previously came naturally to him. His results reflected it—he narrowly missed qualifying for finals at both X Games events last winter.This summer, he knew if he wanted a chance to compete at the 2014 Olympics, he’d need to figure out what was stuck in his path. He worked with a mental trainer and found that stress and negativity were stopping him from getting into flow.“I’ve been able to identify these problems and step past them. I now have a much stronger understanding of flow state and what it takes to achieve it on a regular basis,” Noah, 21, says. “For me it comes down to one very simple thing to get into the flow, and that is fun. Fun is the spark that gets the momentum going, the energy up, and allows me to take myself to new levels.”This winter, when Noah is standing at the top of the halfpipe, waiting for his moment to drop in, whether he’s on Olympic primetime or just out skiing with friends, he’ll be controlling his thoughts, replacing all negative emotions with positive ones. But mostly, he’ll be having fun.He suggests you do the same.“What it really comes down to is finding things that allow you to access flow,” he says. “Find something that makes you happy, something you are passionate about, and then pursue it. You will feel the zone when you do something you love and over time you will learn to control the flow.”Megan Michelson is the freeskiing editor for ESPN.com and a freelance writer, based in Tahoe City, California. She previously worked as an editor for Skiing and Outside magazines and she’s skied everywhere from Alaska to Iceland.

Well-Being

Hopeful People and Their Superpowers

This special emotion is a constant in our lives that helps us achieve what might have been beyond our reach. Hope thrives inside us the moment we are born. As infants we cry out, hoping for comfort. As young children, we anticipate special days and the rituals that go with them, while when we are adolescents, we want a particular boy or girl to like us, a driver’s license and a college acceptance letter. Young adults hope to find a life partner, build a successful career and have a firstborn. We yearn for a loving family to care for us and a long life in our sunset years. While hope evolves and changes throughout our lifetimes, the feelings, motivational benefits and successful outcomes stay the same. More than 20 years of experience and numerous clinical studies have shown me that those who live in a “hopeful” state tend to be more motivated, driven and adventurous, all of which tend to reinforce a strong sense of self-worth and provide more moments of happiness. They benefit from more satisfaction in their chosen careers, have greater romantic success and more friends. They tend to be excited with the possibilities in their lives and surround themselves with successful, hopeful others. As an added bonus, research has proved again and again that happy, hopeful, productive people with solid support systems benefit from a longer, healthier life. Some people turn up their noses at the very concept of hope without realizing that a hopeful person can accomplish things others might find to be out of reach. We live in what can sometimes be a cynical, critical world. Life delivers hard knocks to everyone, no matter what they believe or how positive their attitude. While a hopeful outlook can be somewhat of a hard-wired character trait—often upbringing, difficulty moving on from life’s disappointments such as divorce or financial problems or just one too many tough times—can cause even the most positive person to have partially or fully put hope away. When this happens, the goal is to coax that glorious and life-changing sense of hope back out and reignite it. It starts with hope. The first step begins with taking some time to think about goals that are realistic and within reach, being open to exploring new options, rallying your support system, and doing whatever possible to turn hope into something that is real, tangible and happiness-making. Hope is related to your perceptions about yourself, others and the world around you. If deep down you still believe that good things can happen to you, that life still has possibilities and that you can find a way to make what you are hoping for come true, that is a terrific beginning. Take a moment and think about all the things that you are continuing to hope for. Are you hoping to accomplish a New Year’s resolution? Reach a new level in your job or relationship? Trying to become a kinder person? Lose some weight? Make a hope list. For each item on that list, think about all the things that you can do to accomplish what you were hoping for, and then get started on the easy ones right away. Spend time around a person or a group that you consider to be hopeful and optimistic. Hope is contagious. Being around others who see potential and possibility in their lives will have a ripple effect on yours. Consider joining a group focusing on weight loss, volunteering or attending a book club— it’s much easier to stay motivated and hopeful when you are surrounded by individuals with the same goals. Fill a “hope jar” with slips of paper that include all of the positive things that you hope for. Include the smallest item you can think of, like mastering how to bake cookies without burning them, to larger items, like learning a new skill or finding or improving a relationship. Pull one piece of paper out at the first of every month, and commit to spending the next 30 or so days doing all that you can to accomplish it. Hold onto hope and don’t give up until you’ve turned that idea into a reality. If you feel you are stuck and struggling to re-ignite the fire of hope, reach out to family or friends who appreciate your assets and skills and ask them to offer input on how you might move forward. Often it takes a person who is wiser than you to help you see how to be your best you. As a therapist, I am often asked how I hear so many stories on a daily basis that include struggles, fears and pain. My answer has always been that I see at least a sliver of hope in every person and a grain of optimism in every situation. That’s good news for you, because that means that there is hope and optimism living and breathing inside of you. Stacy Kaiser, the author of How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know, is a successful licensed psychotherapist, relationship expert and media personality. She has a B.A. in Psychology from California State University, Northridge and her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. With more than 100 television appearances on major networks, including CNN, FOX and NBC, and a weekly advice column for USA Today, Stacy has built a reputation for bringing a unique mix of thoughtful and provocative insight to a wide range of topics.

Self-Care

Olympian Steve Holcomb Defeats Despair

Hope is a huge part of sports; hope is the basis of everything we do,” says Steve Holcomb, 2010 Olympic gold medalist in four-man bobsled. “If you knew right now that there’s no chance of doing well at the Olympics, then why bother doing anything? What’s the point?” But hope is not just optimism, and hope is not wishful thinking. “Hope,” he says, “is knowing the possibilities are always open. Nothing in the future is set. You can make it what you want to make it.” For Steve, the element of self-determination is key. When a degenerative eye disorder threatened to end his career, Steve lost hope. In 2007, Steve had just become the No. 1 driver in the world, but he could barely see beyond the front of his sled. He had keratoconus, a progressive thinning of the cornea, and his vision was rapidly deteriorating. Doctors said his only option to save his sight was a cornea transplant, but it would require giving up the bone-jarring, head-rattling sport he loved: careening down icy chutes at 80 mph and withstanding four times the force of gravity. Faced with having his passion stripped away, Steve grew depressed and, at age 27, attempted suicide with 73 sleeping pills and a liter of Jack Daniel’s. “I gave up,” he says. “I regret that. I should have kept hope alive, but I didn’t.” When he woke up he realized, “It wasn’t my time.” Until then, Steve had kept his deteriorating eyesight a secret because vulnerability might have resulted in him losing the best equipment and the best push crews. But when he told his coach about the problem, he helped Steve find an ophthalmologist who was able to restore Steve’s vision by performing two experimental operations in 2008. A year later, Steve became the first American driver in 50 years to win a bobsled world championship. In 2010, he became the first American man since 1948 to win Olympic bobsledding gold. In 2012, he swept the two-man and four-man world titles. And this month, Steve, 33, is poised to defend his Olympic title in Sochi. Looking back, he feels he was fortunate to have been without hope. He can now say, “I’ve been there,” helping keep others from making the same mistakes of falling into the trap of despair. “I’m telling you from experience,” Steve says. “There is always hope.” Aimee Berg is a longtime Olympic writer and two-time Emmy winner whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Journal and many others.

Happy woman portrait blowing soap bubbles at the park.

Self-Care

Working on Your Own Happiness Isn’t Selfish

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”-Robert Louis StevensonIf you had the choice to spend the day with someone who exudes happiness or someone who has a martyr thing going, it wouldn’t be a tough decision, right? How about your super upbeat friend vs. your chronic complainer friend? Not a challenging choice there either. Spend time with someone who exudes positivity, and you are more likely to feel positive. Hang with someone who acts like life’s number one victim, and guaranteed, Debbie downer is going to rub off on you. It’s called emotional contagion, and it means the emotions of others can influence us. So if happy people make other people happy, why is it that happy people are sometimes thought to be selfish?“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided,” says Gretchen Rubin, happiness expert and author of The Happiness Projectand Happier at Home. “It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted.” Put another way …Happiness takes work. Happy people are taken for granted because they are thought of as naturally happy people or born happy, yet upbeat people have to work at being resilient, bouncing back, rising above, and staying positive. The outside world only sees the happy person and not the effort behind the scenes, so positive people don’t receive credit for creating their sunshine-like dispositions. “Happiness is a work ethic. You have to train your brain to be positive, just like you work out your body,” writes Shawn Achor is his book, The Happiness Advantage.Happy people are overlooked. If happy people are thought to be in selfish pursuit of their own fulfillment and pleasure, consider that the happy person often goes unnoticed. “No one is careful of (a happy person’s) feelings or tries to keep his spirits high,” Rubin says. “Because happy people seem self-sufficient, they become a cushion for others.” The happy person is expected to lift others up.Happiness doesn’t mean you lack empathy. Just because your smile lights up a room, doesn’t mean you are blind to the suffering going on in the world. You don’t have to sacrifice your happiness to show the world you are compassionate. “Just as eating your dinner doesn’t help starving children in India; being blue yourself doesn’t help unhappy people become happier,” Rubin says. In fact, happier people are better equipped to demonstrate their empathy and help people because their emotional tanks are full. “When I’m feeling happy, I find it easier to notice other people’s problems. I have more energy to try to take action and I have the emotional wherewithal to tackle sad or difficult issues, and I’m not as preoccupied with myself. I feel more generous and forgiving,” Rubin says. There will always be tragic stories happening in the world, but empathy is better expressed with giving back and good deeds, than giving up your happiness in a show of support.Happy people give back. Happy people are more interested in social problems, more likely to do volunteer work and contribute to charity, according to Gallup Well-being polls. While unhappy people tend to socially withdraw and focus on themselves, happy people turn outward and are more available to help others. And when people give back it only enhances their happiness, says Harvey McKinnon, a nonprofit fundraising expert and author of The Power of Giving: How Giving Back Enriches Us All. “People are hard-wired to give, and when people give to others, it makes them feel better.” Turns out, one of the best ways to get happy in the first place is to do a selfless act—help other people be happy. Rubin calls it a splendid truth: “The best way to make yourself happy is to make others happy, and the best ways to make other people happy, is to be happy yourself.”So if anyone tries to rain on your happy parade by telling you that your investment in your happiness is a selfish pursuit, just say, “I am doing this for you,” because really, you are.Sandra Bienkowski, owner of The Media Concierge, LLC, is a national writer of wellness and personal development content and a social media expert.

Hope 3D text surrounded by question marks.

Self-Care

QUIZ – How Hopeful Are You?

Instructions: Read the question and answer A, B or C. Answer the letter that is closest to what you would say or do in the scenario.1. You are really looking forward to attending a friends wedding in a few weeks. You are out taking a brisk walk, trip over some broken up sidewalk and break your leg. Do you… A. Immediately call the bride and groom to cancel. B. Decide to wait a few days and see how you feel before canceling. C. Let the bride and groom know that you are feeling optimistic about your recovery and plan to be there.2. You apply for a job that you think you're highly qualified for. Two weeks have passed and you have heard nothing. Do you... A. Feel depressed and worry that you won't ever have a job. B. Decide to give it another couple of weeks before looking into other opportunities. You’ll wait it out. C. Tell yourself that you have skills and potential and that a job will come eventually and keep looking.3. Your birthday is a week away and no one has mentioned trying to make any plans to take you out or celebrate. Do you... A. Assume people forgot or don't care. B. Hope that if you wait a little longer, someone will mention it. C. Assume that people will want to celebrate you and start talking with them about plans for your birthday.4. You have an opportunity to be hired for a much higher paying job that is out of the range of your normal experience. Do you... A. Decide there is no way you're capable and say no. B. Feel uncertain about your skills and ask other people to convince you that you might be able to pull this off. C. Feel certain that you could undertake and succeed at something new as long as you really tried and got help as needed.4. Your best friend just moved out of the city that you live in. Do you… A. Get very sad because you know that your relationship is over and that you will never find another best friend again. B. Figure that you will keep at least a bit of a relationship and talk once in a while. C. Assure yourself that if you work hard at staying connected, the two of you will stay close friends.5. When you imagine yourself five years from now, do you… A. Think things could be the same or worse. B. Hope for the best but expect the worst. C. Know that if you really want to and put your mind to it, you can build an even happier and more productive life.6. You are in the mall and parked in a metered spot when you arrived. You suddenly realize that the meter may have run out a few minutes ago. You think… A. I’m doomed! I bet my car was towed by now and my whole day is ruined. B. I will probably get a ticket. C. There is nothing I can do at this point in time and I will deal with whatever happens. Maybe if I hurry, I will get lucky and get there before something bad happens.7. After a routine medical visit, you doctor was mildly concerned about a non-life threatening medical issue. It is suggested that you have a follow up test to assess if there is cause for concern Do you… A. Call everyone and say you are very sick and might be dying. B. Get frightened, insist on a second opinion and research every treatment under the sun. C. Feel concerned, but know there isn’t a real reason to worry yet and wait for the test results.The Answer:If you answered mostly A’s you are a person that is not filled with very much hope. You tend to see life in a negative way, and not only do you not hope for the best, you tend to imagine the worst.If you answered mostly B’s, you are a person who has moments of hopefulness, but you tend to wait until the situation looks positive before allowing yourself to be optimistic.If you answered mostly C’s, you tend to be extremely hopeful. When times get tough, you try to be optimistic and look for the positive in a situation. People come to you in times of trouble, because they know you will see the silver lining.For more information on the benefits of hope read “The Hope Monger” in our February 2014 issue. Or try out some daily actions of hope you can do with our “31 Ideas of Hope.”Stacy Kaiser is a successful Southern California-based licensed psychotherapist, author, relationship expert and media personality. With more than 100 television appearances on major networks, including CNN, NBC, CBS and FOX, Stacy has built a reputation for bringing a unique mix of thoughtful and provocative insights to a wide range of topics.

Woman holding a piece of paper with a question mark over her face.

Self-Care

What are your top five character strengths?

People who know and use their character strengths tend to lead healthier and happier lives, forge stronger relationships, and have a greater sense of accomplishment, according to years of research by leading positive psychologists. Finding out what strengths you already have and learning where you need improvement can help you see who you are as a person as well as the person you can become. The VIA Survey of Character Strengths, consisting of 240 carefully designed statements for you to agree or disagree with, is uniquely configured to find out where your character strengths lie. The process is easy and only takes about 15 minutes. The results page will instantly calculate your top five greatest character strengths. For instance, if humor is your top strength, you generally like to laugh and try to see the light side of a situation—even if it’s a gloomy one. Making people smile is important to you. If your top strength is perspective, people most likely come to you for sage advice and appreciate your outlook on life. They may even say you are wise beyond your years. Drs. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson designated 24 character strengths they believe to be the formula for human flourishing. Curiosity, bravery, zest for life…we all have them. Throughout time, and even in the most remote parts of the world, you can find these universal traits that explain who we are when we are at our best. The VIA Signature Strength Survey can be found on AuthenticHappiness.org, an online resource center from the University of Pennsylvania where more than two million people worldwide have participated in surveys and questionnaires regarding signature strengths. It is free, and it not only provides data for researchers to continue developing their theories on well-being, but it also gives you knowledge and tools to use on your own path to happiness. Take the test and come back and tell us what your top 5 strengths are in the comment section below.

Shane Lopez holding a bunch of red balloons

Self-Care

The Hope Monger

Shane Lopez was a few years into his research on hope when he found himself feeling pretty close to hopeless. He had awoken on July 4, 2003, with a piercing headache, and though he kept his plans to go with his wife to a neighbor’s holiday barbecue, the pain kept getting worse throughout the afternoon and over the next few days. “There was this incredible pressure, not just in one part of my head but all over,” he says. Shane, then 33, thought he might be experiencing his first-ever migraine, but when he developed a fever of 104 degrees, he realized, he says, “something’s not right.” A battery of medical tests pointed to a surprising diagnosis: West Nile encephalitis. There were about a dozen cases of West Nile virus in Shane’s resident state of Kansas that year, including three deaths. Shane escaped the worst fate, but he would spend the next year incapacitated. “I went from being this very eager, ambitious, high-achieving person,” he says, “to someone who couldn’t walk halfway around the block.” He experienced extreme arthritic pain in every joint, slept 18 hours a day and was forced to take a leave from the University of Kansas, where he was a professor of psychology and counseling. Shane spent the few hours he was awake in his favorite chair in the attic. At 5 o’clock his wife, Alli, would get home from work and sit in the chair next to his. “She would talk to me about what our life would be like together when I felt better,” he says. “It wasn’t about the horror of my pain and fatigue that day, it was about starting a family together, my doing work I was passionate about and our taking a trip to Europe. She’d paint these vivid images of the two of us riding scooters through the Italian countryside. There were times when I felt that I wasn’t going to get past being sick and infirm. But Alli pulled me forward into a different future.” Her hope was contagious and curative. It would be a full year before Shane went back to work and several more years before all his symptoms abated, but the images that Alli had summoned did come to pass. Hope matters.Hope is a choice. Hope can be learned. Hope can be shared with others." In 2004, they took a trip to Italy, France and Switzerland and, yes, rode scooters. A few weeks later they discovered Alli was pregnant. Today, living in Lawrence, Kan., they are the adoring parents of an 8-year-old son, Parrish, and Shane is one of the world’s leading researchers on the psychology of hope. A senior scientist with Gallup, he was the chief architect of the Gallup Student Poll, an annual online survey that measures hope, engagement and wellbeing among middle-school and high-school students. He does hope-raising programs not only with kids but also with bankers and mayors, corporate executives and health care professionals. He wrote a book, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others, to spread his message to a broader audience: Hope matters. Hope is a choice. Hope can be learned. Hope can be shared with others. Shane is happy to call himself a hope monger, and he wants you to be one, too. How Hope Became a Vocation Shane didn’t start out as a hope researcher. Intelligence—something that can be measured with the hard-edged precision of IQ points—had been his area of investigation as a postdoctoral clinician with the Eisenhower VA Medical Center in Leavenworth, Kan. But as he worked with patients who were spinning out of control because of health, relationship or financial problems, something became very clear to him: Intelligence was overrated. “When I met people who were very smart but overwhelmed by life, I realized that intelligence has very little to do with coping,” he says. “It has very little to do with happiness. It has very little to do with general success in life.” What mattered more, he observed, was what Emily Dickinson called “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul”—and what his mentor Rick Snyder, one of the pioneers in the field of positive psychology, described as a life-sustaining force that is rooted in our relationship with the future: hope. “How we think about the future—how we hope—determines how well we live our lives,” Shane says. Why Optimism and Wishes Aren’t Enough To understand what Shane means when he talks about hope, it’s helpful to begin with what he doesn’t mean. Hope is not optimism. You’re optimistic if you believe the future will be better than the present, which turns out to be a nearly universal belief. Nine out of 10 people polled by Gallup across 142 countries expect their lives in five years to be as good or better than their life today. But looking at life through rose-colored glasses is itself a passive activity. Optimism is merely an attitude. Hope, on the other hand, is belief plus action. You’re hopeful, Shane says, if you believe the future will be better than the present and that you have the power—and multiple plans—to make it so. Hope is not wishing, something Shane dismisses as “mental fast food.” Daydreaming about the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect home can create a feel-good buzz, but it’s fleeting. “Hopes are sustainable,” he says. “Wishes are not.” Swap warm and fuzzy wishes for robust, action-driven hope and you reap powerful payoffs. Hopeful students earn a grade higher in final exams than their less hopeful peers with an equal IQ; workers who are hopeful are more productive—by about an hour a day—than not-as-hopeful colleagues, whether they’re closing loans at a mortgage company in the U.S., fixing engines at a Swiss factory or working an assembly line in China. Hope is protective, first responders who are high in hope suffer less psychological distress, and it’s strongly linked to a sense of meaning in life. Does hope lead to happiness? Not by itself, Shane says. But it’s hard to be happy without it. The Hope Shortage Among our Children We are suffering from a hope deficit in the U.S., Shane says, and nowhere is this more evident than among our children. For the last five years the annual Gallup Student Poll has been measuring hope among fifth through 12th graders. The online survey consistently shows that America’s youth is strongly optimistic: almost all—95 percent—believe they will have a better life than their parents. But there’s a considerable hope gap. Just over half— 54 percent—of the 600,000 students who participated in the 2013 survey are hopeful about the future, agreeing that they will graduate from high school, that they energetically pursue their goals and that they can think of many ways to deal with problems. The rest are what Shane calls “low hope” kids. “It’s shocking to me,” he says, “that half of the children out there don’t have excitement about the future, don’t have the sense that they can really be the agents of their own lives.” Shane and his colleagues don’t yet understand everything that’s behind this hope lag. But, he says, “What we know for sure is that students have more will than they have ways. What I mean by that is they’re incredibly confident that they can make the future better than their present, but they don’t have any good sense of how to make that happen. So, what they really need is for us to teach them how to turn an interest into a career into a real job or how to take some fuzzy warm feelings about someone and start a friendship. What kids lack the most are the ways to make good things happen in their lives.” Spending a day with Shane, as Live Happy recently did in Omaha, it’s easy to see his extraordinary capacity to connect his audience. Whether he’s sitting with a preschooler on his lap at the Children’s Museum in Omaha and guiding him through the interactive Fantastic Future Me exhibit, joking with a fifth-grader about his plans to run faster than Usain Bolt, or exhorting a group of high-school teachers to be their most hopeful selves so they can be effective purveyors of hope for their students, Shane’s message resonates. In teacher Pam Mitchell’s fifth-grade classroom at Paddock Road Elementary, Shane is coaching nearly two dozen 10- and 11-year-olds in how to go from “goal setting to goal chasing.” Alternately striding among the rows of desks and crouching down to be at eyeball level with the kids, he asks how they feel when they’re working on a goal they’re excited about. “Pumped,” one girl suggests. “Pumped! I loooove that word,” Shane says. The students offer more adjectives. “Positive.” “Motivated.” “Encouraged.” “Dreamful.” “You kids are great at this! When you’re working on a goal that you’re really pumped about, this is where hope happens.” Shane asks the kids to open their “hope folders”—one part of the hope-building project—pick the goal they’re most excited about, then write down two ways to make it happen. “Where there are ways there’s a will,” he says. In a message he also shares with corporate execs, he explains that having more than one action step can help you keep moving when you hit an obstacle. Next, Shane instructs the students to make a where/when plan—“this is an appointment with yourself”—on taking the first step to pursuing their goal. “We find exciting goals that our body and our heart tells us we’ve got to work on, and we come up with incredible ways to get to these goals,” he says. “And you know what happens? The day passes and then the next day passes and we run out of time to work on these goals. It happens to adults, too. Time slips away.” Kylee is picked to come to the head of the classroom and share her hope project. Her goal: help cure cancer. Her ways: join a team that’s already fighting cancer; make a list of ways to raise money. Her where/when: 11:30 on July 9, the day she turns 11, on the couch in her living room. Watching from the back of the classroom, Omaha’s Westside Community Schools district superintendent Blane McCann laughs, “Cure cancer? These kids just might do it!” Sustaining Hope Shane says that over time he has learned to be hopeful. And it continues, he says, to be hard work. “Being a hopeful guy is something I work on every day,” he says. He tries to surround himself with high-hope people—easy to do, he says, when Alli and Parrish are the two most hopeful people he’s ever met—and every day he looks toward the future and figures out what it is he’s most excited about. He has regular sessions with a “strengths coach” who helps him make sure his goals are aligned with his strengths. Shane doesn’t take hope for granted. What his childhood and his experience with West Nile taught him, he says, “was you have to have something to be excited about in the future; otherwise every day will be a chore.” The experience of hopefulness is unmistakable, he says. “When I’m at the height of hope I’m literally sitting on the edge of my seat,” he says. “My words are sharper and clearer and there’s this lightness, this uplifting feeling throughout my body. If you haven’t had that feeling in a good while, you have to re-learn it. And that’s the role of the most hopeful people in our lives. They can teach us hope.” Shelley Levitt is a contributing editor to SUCCESS magazine. Her articles on health, beauty and well-being have appeared in Women's Health, Fitness, WebMD and Weight Watchers magazines.

The New Prayer

God Online

Laughing for Life

Going with the Flow

Hopeful People and Their Superpowers

Olympian Steve Holcomb Defeats Despair

Working on Your Own Happiness Isn’t Selfish

QUIZ – How Hopeful Are You?

What are your top five character strengths?

The Hope Monger

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