Each 2nd Thurs. at 7pm - Happiness and Goodness at Barnes and Noble

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Get ready to get happier simply by talking about happiness! We'll be in the cafe. Look for our red Meetup sign. Please feel free to arrive late or leave early. It's great if you can RSVP in advance, but in case you can't, come anyway.

As a reminder, this group has two goals. The first is to explore the relationship between happiness and goodness. The second, much more fun, goal is for us to become much happier just by getting together and talking about happiness. The theory behind this second goal comes from a classic psychology study showing that by simply talking regularly about happiness we can become much happier.

While we'll depart from them whenever and however much we may wish, like by talking about gratitude, acts of kindness, meditation and other happiness techniques, the following list of 14 topics will serve as a backdrop for our discussions.

1. Keep busy and be more active
2. Spend more time socializing
3. Be productive at meaningful work
4. Get better organized and plan things out
5. Stop worrying
6. Lower your expectations and aspirations
7. Develop positive, optimistic thinking
8. Become present oriented
9. Develop an outgoing, social personality
10. Work on a healthy personality
11. Be yourself
12. Eliminate negative feelings and problems
13. Close relationships are the number one source of happiness
14. Put happiness as your most important priority.

Here's some background on the research our group is based on.

In 1980 three New Zealand researchers found that after eight 2-hour conversation sessions about happiness over four weeks, their subjects reported a 22 percent increase in their happiness. Continuing their twice-weekly sessions, by the sixteenth week they reported being 42 percent happier.

Our list of topics comes from Fort Myers, Florida psychologist Michael Fordyce's "14 Fundamentals of Happiness." In 1977, Fordyce pioneered the science of happiness-increase with the world's first experiment designed to boost individual happiness.

That's the group, and those are our goals. It's also very, very important that we have fun. With that in mind, let's get ready to get good and happy!