Positive Psychology for Your Hero's Journey The Way to True and Lasting Happiness

What do you want most out of life? How can you find true and lasting happiness? How can you not only survive but thrive in the midst of all of your stress? Answering these questions can involve the same kind of hero's journey we find in Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, Wonder Woman, and in so many of our favorite stories and in real people who we know or have heard or read about. Positive Psychology is the science of happiness and what makes life worth living. It may be our best hope for completing our most important hero's journey to the kind of life that we long for and which brings lasting rewards and satisfaction. This book was designed to be a road map for your adventure and a personal companion with what you need for making the most of your life and living it to the fullest. You will find the latest scientific theory and research, inspiring examples of hero's journey stories, and personal exercises that will enable you to create and discover a life of joy, happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. These have all been part of a popular and highly-rated university positive psychology course taken by over 3,000 students and consistently resulting in increased happiness and well-being. You will learn how to identify what will make you most happy and, most important, how to develop the positive qualities and strengths you need to achieve and sustain it. These include things like mindfulness, resilience, courage, creativity, gratitude, hope, humor, perseverance, spirituality, and wisdom. There are practical suggestions for how you can use and benefit from them every day. The stories in the book include real life hero's such as Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi and references to fictional heroes in familiar stories like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings. These stories are used to illustrate how you can put positive psychology into practice in accomplishing your most cherished and important goals. The exercises include the best of those developed and tested in positive psychology research. They will enable you to identify, develop, and use your strengths; to see, create, and savor more good things in your life; to develop more satisfying and fulfilling relationships with other people; and to envision your best possible future and clear the path for making your own hero's journey to realizing it.