Project!

Happiness, Joy, Love, Fulfillment and Energy Project

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to gain experience observing one’s thoughts and to learn about ourselves. We will do this by observing some aspect of ourselves that affects who we are as a student.

How we got here

According to the Red Fox Clan, we all thirst for joy, happiness, love, fulfillment and energy. We draw these experiences to ourselves in many ways- through having fun with friends, learning, cooperation, exploring, breathing, concentrating and many more. Sometimes, however, we use strategies that don’t actually lead us to joy or happiness. We have seen many patterns of this in history. People have tried to gain joy by exploiting others, lying, intimidating others, and so on. These misguided strategies often hurt others and ourselves (also seen in our country’s history). We can hurt ourselves by avoiding or taking shortcuts on assignments because we don’t learn important skills we need. Also according to the Red Fox Clan, joy arises when all work together for the benefit of all.

Mission

Our mission is to identify ways we mislead ourselves when trying to experience happiness, joy, love, fulfillment and lots of energy as students and members of a learning community. We will observe these ways/thoughts/beliefs in ourselves and interrupt them.

Procedure

First you must come up with an idea of what thought pattern/feeling/belief/behavior you want to interrupt. This is just like your trigger from the fall when you saw a leaf or heard your name. You stopped and noted what you were paying attention to. This time, the trigger is a thought or feeling inside of you, a thought or feeling that leads you away from happiness, joy, love, fulfillment and energy without you knowing it! When you notice your trigger, you will interrupt it. This can be doing jumping jacks, a few dance moves, going out on the fire escape for 30 seconds, asking someone a question… some action that doesn’t interrupt others but interrupts your trigger.

Choosing a thought pattern/belief/behavior to interrupt that is useful to you works best. Here are some suggestions to help you brainstorm your trigger:

- Consider yourself as a student in class. Do you offer ideas and contribute to discussions? Are you constantly involved or do you hold yourself back, unable to participate fully? What happens for you in at these moments when you could choose to participate or not? What feelings do you have? What is your internal dialogue?

- Do you find yourself experiencing emotional reactions to people in class or in our community? Or in group situations? What emotions arise? What happens for you? What is the situation in which your reactions arise? How can you learn more about them?

- Are you influenced more by a certain person or group of people? How are you influenced? What feelings arise? Is it beneficial for you and others? How do you interact with this person or these people? How does this group act towards others? Any intimidation or trying to gain energy from others?

- Is there a subject or activity in school you don’t like? What thoughts cross your head when you see it on the board or while preparing for it? What does it feel like in your body? Do you express what you are feeling out loud? How do you feel when you begin this activity?

Next is developing a contract and testing your trigger. In the contract you will share what your trigger is (what you will observe) and how you plan to interrupt it. You will have the opportunity to test your trigger over a few days to see if it happens enough, if it happens too often, or if you need to make other changes. We will follow the contract and interrupt triggers for a whole week. While you do this, you will be expected to take short notes about what happened and what arose for you.

As an ending project you will be asked to share with me (and others if you wish) what you did, what happened, what arose for you and any insights you gained about yourself.

All parents are invited to take part in the project along with their child(ren)!