“Maybe I’m the one that’s meant to do that.”
(Mary Beth Heffernan, The Adaptable Mind)
After award-winning filmmaker Tiffany Shlain produced her film, The Science of Character, she decided to premier it in a really innovative way. She offered the film for free, and made it available to schools all around the world, and Character Day was born. It’s a day when she encourages people around the entire globe to stop their very busy lives and spend one day focused on personal character development. Her organization, Let it Ripple, provides films and resources to create a global discussion. She was expecting 250 screenings or so in that first year (2014) but there were more than 1,500. Last year, Tiffany and her team added two new films for the 2nd Annual Character Day and had over 6,700 screening events throughout the world. The 3rd Annual Character Day is set for September 22, 2016 and, so far, more than 31,000 groups around the world have already signed up!
What is Character Day?
Character Day is a free event and a global initiative whereby groups around the world watch films on the science of character development from different perspectives, dive into free printed discussion materials, and join an online global conversation around the importance of developing character strengths such as wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence – all rooted in evidence-based research.
While Character Day is just one day each year, the resources are available year-round. So sign up your school, classroom, organization, company, congregation, or family to participate. It’s completely free! Sign up here.
Join Happy Living for Character Day
If you don’t want to host your own event, I invite you to join us here at Happy Living. We are proud to be one of the groups hosting a Character Day workshop and we welcome anyone interested in a living a more meaningful, successful and happy life to join us. Ours will be conducted online from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT on September 22. Just send an e-mail to [email protected] and write Sign me up in the Subject line. Then you’ll receive an invitation to join our Character Day Online Workshop.
Our Agenda
Once you’ve sent your e-mail to me at the address above, just log in to our Uber Conference room right here: www.uberconference.com/happyliving and follow the call-in instructions. Please be a few minutes early, as we will begin promptly at 11:00 AM EDT.
Our focus will be twofold:
- What are your character strengths?
- Which one(s) do you want to develop more?
I’ll begin the workshop with a brief introduction to Character Day. Next, we’ll watch Tiffany’s eight-minute film called The Science of Character, which explores the neuroscience and social science behind character development, and how we can shape who we are and who we want to be. Then, I’ll lead a group discussion about WHAT inspired you from the film, and WHY. Following our discussion, we’ll watch another short film called The Adaptable Mind. This one explores the skills we need to flourish in the 21st Century. I was so moved by Tiffany’s message in this film that I wrote about it in this post: Has Man’s Left-Brain Created a Woman’s World? Again, I’ll lead a group discussion about the biggest takeaways the workshop attendees got from the second film.
Transformation
Finally, I’ll spend our closing minutes together focusing you on the biggest question of all: HOW will you bring the changes you want into your life? You see, that’s what character development is all about. Developing or changing from who you are today, into the more fully realized and optimized person that you want to become, by your own definitions. So, join us on September 22nd for Character Day and let your own personal adventure begin!
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