Turns out, yesterday was Tuesday, not Friday. I got so disoriented yesterday that by the day’s end, I was emailing people and telling them to have a great Labor Day weekend. My excuse is that I got 17 new stitches in my forehead during a 4.5 hour marathon Mohs surgery on Monday. Sheesh. Now I’m a poster-boy for sun block. See the photo at the bottom of this post for the evidence.

I’m posting today (Wednesday, not Saturday!) to let you know about a unique opportunity, and to ask for your support.

Beginning this September (National Suicide Prevention Month), the Montana Happiness Project, L.L.C., in collaboration with Families First Learning Lab, is launching a 20-week Happiness Activity Challenge. Using various social media platforms, this campaign guides participants through 20 distinct evidence-based positive psychology interventions designed to increase personal happiness and life meaning.

This Campaign will be available for free, online, through social media. Because we’re offering it for free, we’re looking for two levels of support.

• Collaborator: Being a collaborator costs you nothing. All it means is that you’re publicly saying that you support our efforts at spreading evidence-based happiness and will share our happiness activities with colleagues, friends, and perhaps formally engage your organization to participate. If you’re a collaborator, we’ll put your name or organization name and logo on our website.
• Sponsor: We’re asking specific organizations to partner with us to sponsor each week. To sponsor a week, we ask for a $500 contribution. In return, we’ll include your Logo and our Thanks in our social media posts for the week. This will include posts on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, WordPress, and on our Squarespace Montana Happiness Project website. If you’re a sponsor, we’d love for you to encourage your staff to participate in this happiness promotion activity, talk about it with each other, and post about it on social media.

You may wonder, if we can be collaborators and my staff and colleagues can participate for free, why be a sponsor? That’s a great question. We’re doing our Happiness Challenge as an act of kindness for the people of Montana and beyond and acts of kindness are evidence-based happiness strategies. We hope you’ll join us, perform an act of kindness, and sponsor at least one homework week.

Whether you’re a collaborator, sponsor, or evesdropper, we hope you’ll engage with our happiness challenge to see if participation in some or all of our 20-day happiness project helps you (and your staff, friends, family, etc.) feel happier.

Below, I’ve answered a few questions:

Who can participate? – Anyone. Our primary focus is Montana, but our goal is to reach out and promote positivity and happiness to anyone and everyone who is interested.

How much does it cost? – Nothing. Nada. Nil. This is free because we believe life is hard and people need support, skills, and to have hope for greater happiness.

Do I have to commit to all 20 homework assignments? – Nope. We’re doing this on social media. You can participate as much or as little as possible. You can be explicitly active by posting and sharing about your experiences, but you can also keep your experiences to yourselves.

Are the homework assignments really evidence-based? – Yes. Nearly all of the assignments have direct scientific support as “interventions” that increase happiness and decrease depression. That doesn’t mean increased happiness and decreased depression are guaranteed, because even “effective” interventions don’t work for everyone. . . but they’re worth a try. A few of the assignments don’t have direct experimental support, but they’re based on concepts shown to increase happiness and meaningfulness.

What’s the catch? – No catch. We’re offering this experience as an act of kindness because we think it’s a good thing. We also recognize that positive psychology or evidence-based happiness interventions are not a great fit for everyone. Just do what you can when you can if you can.

How can I contribute to the idea of sharing evidence-based happiness knowledge and skills? – We hope you will do this activity with co-workers, friend, and/or family. We hope you’ll share it on social media, or talk with your children about your experiences over dinner. If you’re especially inspired by our 20-week Happiness Challenge, you’re welcome to donate (not required, but appreciated) to Families First Learning Lab. Just let the good people at Families First know that your donation is to support the FFLL Happiness Project.

If you have questions and/or want to become a collaborator or sponsor, please let John (john.sf@mso.umt.edu), Jeanice Robins info@montanahappinessproject.org, or Dylan Wright dylan@familiesfirstmt.org know and we’ll set you up!

I’d end with “Mark your calendars!” but given that I’m still not certain that I’m fully oriented to time, I’ll just say, thanks for reading all this and considering full engagement with our Happiness Challenge.

Sincerely,

John SF