Hello. Who are you?
Episode 1 of Part 1 of our Introduction series: Setting the stage for success.
Habits: Know thyself | Quiet
Skills: Mindfulness | Happiness
Description: This episode gives a brief overview of the Passion Arena programme before starting on helping you to get to know yourself. We introduce concepts around happiness and being aware of your emotions in various situations. This episode explains why you can't be happy all the time and introduces the difference between being happy, and being in a state of well-being.
Suggested student exercise
Who are you right now?
Ask your students to describe themselves in as much detail as possible based on how they feel right now. What do they like? What don't they like? Where do they feel confident? Where are they not confident? What are their best traits? What do they see as their weaknesses? What good and bad habits do they have? What would they most like to improve? What would they most like to try? What do they try to avoid? How do they feel most of the time?
The idea is to help them think about the things that impact how they feel in a given moment. Ideally, they’ll get a sense of how various things make them feel and, identify the areas they might like to focus on for improvement or enjoyment.
How this lesson might be applied in the classroom
The overall focus of this lesson is to introduce students to paying attention to how they feel in any given moment - essentially the practice of being mindful. In particular, we outline why a state of well-being as always there, and that whatever negative emotion you're feeling (the dark clouds) will eventually leave and you'll be back to your usual state of well-being (the blue sky).
Possibly the easiest way to apply this in the classroom—regardless of subject—is, in a moment of reduced attention by the students, simply ask them to think about how they feel in that moment. What emotion seems to fit how they feel right now.
The 'Knowing My Emotions' exercise that student will be provided after this episode will be repeated for quite a few episodes, so helping students to understand their emotions in the moment, will allow them to provide more accurate feedback as they progress.
Some specific discussion points
In the discussion of literary works, historic figures or current news items where people are involved, there is an opportunity to discuss the possible emotions of people in certain settings. The intent here would be to encourage thinking on how an emotional state might influence decisions or reactions that lead to either intended or unintended consequences. Questions to ask students may include:
What do you think [individual name's] emotional state was in [specific setting]?
Was that emotion helpful or unhelpful in that moment?
What effect did that emotion have?
Is there an emotion that might have been better or worse?
What effect could a better emotion or mind-state have had?
What could [individual's name] have done to ensure s/he was in a better mind state?
Discussing the quote from this episode:
"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him." — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Possible areas of discussion may include:
Do you believe this quote represents the truth? Why / Why not?
Can you choose to be happy (or in a state of well-being) in any circumstance? Why / Why not?
How important is choice to being happy?
Can you choose any emotions? Why / Why not?
Further information on this topic
If you'd like to dive a bit deeper on this topic, you might be interested in watching:
or you might like to read:
Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill.
by Matthieu Ricard, 2007.
Please let us know how we could improve this episode?
We're always keen to hear how our work can be improved. If you can think of anything we can do to improve either the delivery of our content, the content itself, the exercises, or our guides to how the lesson can be applied in the classroom, please let us know.