(Newswire.net — January 14, 2014) Singapore, Singapore — As part of the Singapore American School (SAS) Speaker Series, Dr. Maureen Neihart presented a powerful message about how to achieve and keep optimism and ‘happiness’ alive in your family. Dr. Neihart is a U.S. licensed clinical child psychologist and Associate Professor and Head of Psychological Studies at Singapore’s National Institute of Education. For more than 30 years, she has worked with gifted children and their families and is considered an expert on resilience and the psychology of high performance.
Dr. Neihart asked the audience, “What does it mean to be happy?” Happiness means something different in different cultures. Scientific research shows that happiness means subjective well-being, and how well you believe that things are going well for you and your family.”
During her presentation, the audience learned simple, yet proven and powerful ways to keep optimism and drive, recover from setbacks and failures, and build lives of health, hope and joy for themselves and their families.
Dr. Neihart shared the “vaccines” or simple action steps that parents need to release their own and their children’s potential and keep life’s troubles from holding them back. There are many vaccines that have been scientifically proven in clinical trials to improve well-being, and Dr. Neihart grouped them into five categories – Positive Emotion, Relationships, Meaning, Service and Preserving Hope.
She continued sharing that many people have a misconception: when good happens, then we will be happier, and when bad happens, then we will be sadder. This is true in the short term, but then we adapt to our status quo happiness range. She said that research shows that happiness, or well-being, is comprised 50% by our genetics, 10% by our life circumstances and 40% by our intentional activity. This is great news for families and their children! We can directly affect our own levels of happiness and well-being!
The reason ‘feeling happy’ or having a positive sense of well-being is important is because research showed that long-term, those who feel happier more, live longer lives.
The first category is Positive Emotion. She suggests that we need to broaden and build our capacity for dealing with difficult events in our lives. Some of the vaccines she suggests are scheduling pleasurable activities, keeping a gratitude journal, writing a gratitude letter thanking someone whose actions made a difference in our lives, or looking at the decades of our life and all the happy things that happened.
The second category is Relationships.Some vaccines improve positive emotions, others strengthen relationships. A strong network of relationships is essential for good health. Research shows that people who live longer have strong positive social networks and feel happier and more a sense of well-being. Likewise, lonely people are less healthy than people with friends.
The third categoryis Preserving Hope. The best possible selves exercise is the vaccine – and here, Dr. Neihart suggests spending a few minutes imagining everything going just right in your life in the future and writing for 20 minutes about what you imagine.
She didn’t speak about vaccines about Meaning and Service as time was limited. She did however talk about one of the most important vaccines – Exercise. This is the one vaccine that is guaranteed to work for everyone. If you are not active, get started. If you are already active, then add another session or two a week.
Established in 1956, the school primarily serves the American and international expatriate communities of Singapore. SAS is registered with the Singapore Council for Private Education, affiliated with the Office of Overseas Schools through the U.S. Department of State, and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).
For more information about Singapore American School visit www.sas.edu.sg.