I’m at the Office of Public Instruction Summer Institute in Bozeman today (and tomorrow), along with the Pirate and the Pusher. The Summer Institute is an annual four days of training for Montana educators.
Shortly after arriving, two women sitting at a table stared at me, looked away, and then stopped me as I walked by, saying, with enthusiasm, “We just took your class!”
They were, of course, referring to our Happiness for Educators course. Although completely online, I’m presenting in many of the videos, sometimes in my pajamas. We were all excited to meet in person.
They also got to meet Dylan Wright (who plays the role of a pirate in our Happiness for Educators course). I mean, how can you have a Happiness for Educators course without a pirate? They also met Tammy Tolleson Knee, the new and fabulous director of the Phyllis J. Washington Center for the Advancement of Positive Education at the University of Montana and high leverage “Pusher” of all things positive.
Tomorrow will be even more excitement. I have the honor of delivering the morning keynote. I’ll be opening with a make-believe scenario, with me as a candidate for governor. I’ve done this a few times previously during presentations for educators. It’s a method I use for emphasizing the central and foundational role that educators and education play in society.
My platform as a candidate for governor of Montana is education . . . education . . . and education . . . because. . .
The road to a good economy goes through education.
The road to a healthy enviroment goes through education.
The road to a civil society goes through education.
The road to excellence in health care goes through education.
The road to justice goes through education.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. As John Adams, founding father and our 2nd president once said (I’m paraphrasing), “It’s impossible to spend too much money on public education.”
And so, yes, there will be more excitement tomorrow because it doesn’t get much better than spending a day with 400 Montana educators who are dedicated to helping young people become educated citizens.
I’m posting ppts of my two presentations (keynote and workshop) below.
From Wikipedia: Sonja Lyubomirsky is a Russian-born American professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.
And there’s so much more.
Not long ago, Tammy Tolleson Knee, the new Director of the Phyllis J. Washington Center for the Advancement of Positive Education, asked me if I thought she should attend the Western Positive Psychology Conference at Claremont Graduate University. I saw that Sonja Lyubomirsky was the featured keynote speaker and immediately said “Hell, Yes!” [I didn’t really swear at the time, but it sounded cooler for this blog post].
I also looked at my calendar and was bummed that I couldn’t attend. But then I said to Tammy that we should reach out to Dr. Sonja for a possible short meet-up at the conference.
So I did.
She responded within hours.
At the conference, Tammy got to meet her and talk–despite the fact that Dr. Sonja also was busily signing her new book for the masses. How cool!
And then, Tammy shared the following email with our whole CAPE staff upon her return.
Happy Friday, ,
In honor of my Sonja Lyubomirsky buzz, I thought I’d share some fun tidbits and resources from the WPPA conference!
Her last name is pronounced Lou – Boe – Mere – Ski
Here is a recent chapter she co-authored in the Handbook of Social Psychology(6th ed.) titled “Well-being” (though she prefers the term “happiness”). It’s long but comprehensive.
Here is a 5-minute Ted Talk teaser on her new book.
Fun fact: She has been cited in academic publications more than 90,000 times.
She said the Big 3 PPIs are Gratitude, Kindness, and Social Interventions (or Acting Extraverted).
Among the many fascinating findings she shared was a study fromBrain, Behavior, and Immunity suggesting that intentionally engaging in more extroverted behavior can improve patterns of gene expression.
She joked that part of her wishes they had never introduced the happiness pie. More on that later.
Her final advice: Share deeply, listen and be curious.
My overall takeaway: There is no end to what we can learn in positive psychology, and CAPE is very much on the right track.
In conclusion: Who is Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky? She’s a bad-ass academic researcher who’s also incredibly personable and who, in her spare time, writes books designed to help people live better lives. You can learn more about her here: https://sonjalyubomirsky.com/
At the Phyllis J. Washington Center for the Advancement of Positive Education at the University of Montana we have two big and exciting activities happening this summer.
The first one is called “A Really Good Day for Educators.” We’re offering this FREE, live and in-person day of training for educators on August 3 in Missoula in collaboration with a fabulous organization called Legacy+. Legacy+ is a Toronto-based organization that helps bring purpose to life. They’re also fun and amazing collaborative partners. As one example, they immediately claimed the site https://areallygoodday.com/ for our event landing page. Go there now (if you’re interested). You can learn more about Legacy+ here: https://legacyplus.org/about-us/
The second activity is our usual Evidence-Based Happiness for Educators course. We still have openings and the price is an absolute bargain for 3 UM grad credits or 45 OPI license renewal units.
Last thing. I wrote an Op-Ed piece on Mental Health Awareness Month and sent it to the New York Times. I do that sort of thing once in a while when I want to have sort of a lonely-rejection experience. However, the NYT may be ignoring me, but I’m not ignoring myself, because, I have now submitted the Op-Ed to @johnsommersflanagan.com. . .and the johnsommersflanagan website monitor is much kinder and has let me put a link to a pdf of the lightly edited Op-Ed piece here!
Thanks to the generosity of the Maryland Department of Health and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, I’ll be offering a free two-hour online training on Thursday, April 30 from 10am-noon (Eastern time). The flyer (attached below) includes details on the workshop content and a QR code for registering.
Hello from Montana where we continue to offer and collect data on our evidence-based “Happiness for Educators” course.
Although we’re in the process of updating the following abstract (see below) with fancier stats, for now, it’s a solid summary of our outcomes to date. You’ll notice our depression outcomes (g = 0.59) are not far from worldwide estimates of counseling and psychotherapy outcomes for depression (see Harrer et al., 2025; estimated effect size for depression treatment is g = 0.73)
I’m writing today with expansion and collaboration on my mind.
If any of you academics, educators, or practitioners out there are interested in offering the Happiness for Educators course in your state, or if you happen to be interested in research collaboration, please email me: john.sf@mso.umt.edu. We’ve got a good thing going (who’s against having happier and healthier educators?) and would love to begin scaling up (within our capacity).
Abstract
Purpose: Using an approach grounded in happiness research, this study contributes to the literature on strategies for supporting educator well-being. Educators deserve good health; when educators have better health, students benefit. We developed and evaluated the effectiveness of a three-credit, graduate-level, online and asynchronous evidence-based “Happiness for Educators” course on educator well-being, mental health, and physical health.
Research Methods/Approach: Using a pre-experimental design with five repeated cohorts, we evaluated pre-post course changes on six different well-being, mental health, and physical health questionnaires with 17 end-point outcomes. Across five cohorts, 266 of 293 (90.8%) educators completed the course. We evaluated outcomes using paired t-tests.
Findings: After using a Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons, educators completing the course reported statistically significant improvements (p < .002) on all 17 outcomes. These outcomes included measures of positive and negative affect, hope, depression, mindfulness, and physical health. Large to medium effect sizes (using Hedge’s g) were obtained on the following outcomes:
Positive affect, (g = .802)
Total health, (g = .719)
Negative affect, (g = .705)
Depression (g = 590)
Total hope (g = .568)
Sleep (g = .556)
Mindfulness, (g = .542).
Overall, course participation was linked to a 60.8% reduction in depression rates.
Implications: Implications that can be drawn from a pre-experimental exploratory study are limited. However, these outcomes suggest that an asynchronous, online graduate-level course on positive psychology (aka happiness) has potential for improving educators’ well-being, mental health, and physical health. Future research on this approach is recommended.
My apologies for the late notice, but I’m doing a free, online, one-hour talk tomorrow, 3/4/2026 at 2-3pm Mountain time. Sponsored by the Center for Children, Families, and Workforce Development and MAPP-Net, the talk is titled, “Ten things Everyone Should Know about Suicide, Mental Health, and Happiness.” Here’s the link:
Warning: this is not my most uplifting talk. the first half focuses mostly on the “Wicked Problem” of suicide. The good news is that I do end on Happiness!
Whether you attend or not (it’s free!), thanks for being someone who’s working to make the world a better, kinder, and more eudaimonically happy place.
Apparently, it’s winter in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Who knew? Clearly not me. Being from balmy Montana where we’ve barely experienced any winter in 2025-2026, I arrived here in Grand Forks to the -25 F degree windchill without a stocking cap or gloves. What was I thinking, you ask? Well, maybe I was just in a here-and-now mindfulness state where the future had not yet arrived. Yep. That’s it. I didn’t forget to plan. I was just in the moment.
In this moment, I’m in my hotel room prepping for three things:
My keynote presentation at Red River H.S.
My hoped-for good night’s sleep, and
How to get to the airport and make it to Boston before I get frostbite.
While prepping for these first two things I had an incredible epiphany and discovered or recovered the simple solution to insomnia. Some of this is old, so bear with me:
Sleep is a challenge for much of the U.S. population. If you struggle with sleep, join the club. It’s a big club. We welcome you, principally because misery loves miserable company.
There are three main forms of insomnia: (a) initial insomnia (aka difficulty falling asleep); (b) terminal insomnia (aka early morning awakening); and (c) intermittent insomnia (aka choppy sleep).
Several other factors also interfere with sleep including children, pets, light, your neighbors starting up their chainsaw, alcohol, caffeine, temperature, nightmares, and more.
This means that many Americans are awake in the night at times when they would rather be asleep. I know you’ve been there, done that, and will likely do it again.
But when you’re there in that “I wish I was sleeping” state, did you ever have the epiphany that you should stop trying to get back to sleep? Sure, you have. Maybe you’ve even gotten up. But that’s not what I’m about to suggest.
Because sleep is elusive and difficult to directly achieve, if you awaken in the night—and you have a pattern of insomnia—you could (and maybe should)—immediately let go of sleep as your primary goal. This is because if you have a goal and you’re not achieving it, you’re going to feel frustration and other unpleasant emotions (anger, sadness, anxiety, etc.) that are directly contrary to sleep.
Do you recall the main characteristic of a smart goal? A smart goal is within your control. If your goal is not within your control, then it’s a dumb goal. Make sense?
So, if you’re awake and struggling to return to sleep, try shifting your goal away from sleep and toward something that is, literally, the next best thing. You should shift to a goal of relaxation, of soothing, of comfort, of emotional peace, and of getting yourself into a generally pleasant state of mind and body. You can accomplish this via several strategies. You can meditate. You can count your breaths. You can use the Seligman technique of three good things. You can do progressive muscle relaxation. You can use the cognitive shuffle. Essentially, you can use anything you want that helps you get to an emotionally calm and pleasant state (although I recommend avoiding drugs and alcohol to get there).
Or, if you need more info on this stuff, plus sleep hygiene, you can watch the video linked below.
The point is that, over time and with practice, you will begin to be able to achieve your very pleasant, almost sleep state. And physically, physiologically, and emotionally, the benefits of almost sleep are very close to the benefits of sleep. But—on the other hand—if you directly keep pursuing sleep as your primary goal, you will feel frustrated and less restored that you would with almost sleep.
Experiencing frustration through the night offers you zero benefits.
I’ve thrown out several ideas here and this may not feel like the ultimate fix for your sleep issues, but then again, expecting to find an ultimate fix for your sleep problems will likely only magnify the problem. For most of us, there is no ultimate sleep fix. There is just time alone in bed with our own brain and our own thoughts, and so teaching ourselves to be as comfortable as possible with our brains and our thoughts is a fantastic goal.
If you want more on this, I’ve stolen the Module 3, Part 2 Sleep video from our Happiness for Educators course and the link is here (Note: for some reason, maybe because I pretended I was asleep at the beginning of this video, I seem—at least to me—to have a very slow pace in this video; of course, this may be a good thing; it could make you very, very, sleepy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOXW_5Df3UE
As for me, I’m looking forward to up to 850 Grand Fork educators tomorrow, so I’m stopping here, not in search of a good night’s sleep, but in search of experiencing a pleasant mental and emotional state, which just might translate to a more restorative nighttime experience. . . and maybe even more sleep.
Today, Tammy Tolleson Knee and completed day 1 of a 2-day course on Strengths-Based Suicide Assessment and Interventions in Schools at the Buffalo Hide Academy of Browning Public Schools on the Blackfeet Reservation. We are beyond happy for this opportunity. It’s the first time for Tammy and I to present together (for two days!). As frosting on the presentation cake, Rita is here with us, watching, listening, heckling, and guiding.
In case you haven’t heard, Browning Public Schools and their staff have already started integrating strengths-based suicide prevention work into their programming. Two of our former University of Montana school counseling graduates, Sienna and Charlie Speicher are at the center of this work. Sienna and Charlie have already taught strengths-based courses through Blackfeet Community College, and they founded the Firekeeper Alliance. Here’s the Firekeeper Alliance Mission Statement:
Our mission is to cultivate resources, attention, and awareness to ultimately transform perspectives regarding suicidal distress in Indian Country and to help reduce suicide rates in our communities. We believe that mainstream and current approaches of suicide assessment and intervention struggle to meet the unique needs of Tribal populations. The Firekeeper Alliance promotes a different set of strengths-based, decolonized ideals around suicidal behavior. We believe that systemic and cultural shifts in the clinical community are necessary to truly make a positive change.
The Firekeeper Alliance also focuses on several areas, including offering strengths-based approaches to counseling, as in the following:
Offer individual and group counseling sessions utilizing evidence-based therapies which are effective in addressing suicidality.
Promote assessment techniques and interventions that elicit protective factors and a resilient spirit.
Administer assessment instruments that screen for strengths, character assets, and benevolent experience to depathologize suicidal distress.
Advocate for strengths based assessment and intervention approaches to be used in conjunction with cultural healing mechanisms.
Back to our training. . .here are the ppts that Tammy and I developed. There are SO MANY, but then again, we’re covering two whole days!
In closing, I want to give a big shout-out to Browning Public Schools (BPS) for collaborating with us (the Center for the Advancement of Positive Education; aka CAPE) to bring this training to Browning. Not only do we have a dozen or so school counselors in the room, we’ve also got a dozen or so administrative staff, including principals and the BPS superintendent. We had a blast today and are looking forward to more meaningful fun tomorrow!
I’m looking forward to a morning drive to Bozeman where I’ll meet and talk with healthcare and mental health providers and advocates from all around Montana. In advance of the Summit, I want to say thank you to the Montana Healthcare Foundation and to all the participants for their dedication to the well-being of all Montanans.
I have two talks . . . and the slide decks are linked below:
We had a blast on Saturday afternoon in Absarokee doing a 3-hour workshop on “Tools for Living your Best Life: A Happiness Primer.
Why was it a blast? Let me count the ways.
Rita opened the event with a sweet version of the song, “Happiness Runs. . .”
Turnout was awesome with 33 participants packed into the old Cobblestone Schoolhouse.
Rita and the Cobblestone Board orchestrated a “Best Savoring Treat” contest, brought in a judge, and we all applied our savoring skills before, during, and after our designated snack time. There were many deserving entries. I felt for the judge, who had to sample all 14 food options!
The group was a combination of educators and people off the street. I think the person who won the longest travel to attend drove from Jordan, but we also had a teacher from Townsend, and a handful who drove down the hill from Red Lodge.
Questions, comments, and participation was amazing. I was very impressed with the level of engagement.
At the end, I had the honor and opportunity to act as the auctioneer to raise funds for the Cobblestone Building (which needs gutters installed). As an untrained auctioneer who uses his little league “a-batta” skills combined with a complete breakdown of inhibition, it was great fun.
The event was supported by the Cobblestone Board and the Phyllis J. Washington Center for the Advancement of Positive Education (CAPE) at the University of Montana. If your organization would like to host a community event, contact Torey Wetsch at CAPE for information: torey.wetsch@mso.umt.edu.
John Sommers-Flanagan 