Science of Happiness

Science of Happiness overview:

• We will start with what is real. Happiness is not a mood - it’s a practice. We will explore research-backed ways people build meaning, connection, and emotional resilience.

• Happiness is not a fixed trait - it’s a process shaped by how we engage with our environment, our values, and our capacity to adapt.

• Together we will honor differences in how joy shows up. Not everyone smiles the same way. We look at how happiness is shaped.

• Repeated practices like gratitude, mindfulness and purpose driven actions can rewire emotional patterns.

• Happiness grows when we as individuals feel empowered to shape our lives and are able to reflect on what truly matters.

• Acts of kindness, flow states, and goal alignment have a stronger impact on happiness than passive pleasures.

What Do We Explore:

• We will explore the science behind our emotional well-being, not as a prescription, but as a tool kit for crafting our personal meaning.

• This is not a search for universal definition. It’s a quiet unfolding an invitation to notice how happiness moves, where it settles, and what helps it return. We look at happiness and how it shifts in our lives over time - through grief, joy, resistance, and repair.

• Happiness can stagnate, not because someone is broken, but because the terrain is heavy. Trauma, isolation, systemic pressure, and inherited scripts can all create barriers that make joy feel distance or conditional.

• We explore cultural and familial scripts/messages about worth, productivity, or “deserving” happiness can block access to it.

• When survival takes precedence, such as with being overwhelmed and burned out, happiness often gets deferred or flattened.

What We Work on:

• Together we gently identify beliefs, rituals, roles, and expectations that longer serve - and to begin release them.

• We work the work that helps to release the need to “earn” happiness production, compliance, or protection. We have in the past inherited scripts that tell us how joy should look, when its appropriate, and what it must cost.

• We work on restoring the right to feel joy, grief, ambivalence - or nothing at all, without explanation, masks or agendas. We will reclaim our emotional truths. We find the feel in each moment we are observing.

• This is not about abandoning joy. It’s about making space for joy that’s real, rooted and unmasked.