Flourish:
Experiments in Happiness

Registration opens: 03 March 2025

Start date: 07 April 2025

Duration: 6 Week

Course fee: USD 179.00

Happiness is a journey, not a destination. This course will help you unleash your life’s potential and flourish by choosing positivity moment-by-moment.

Sometimes we’re stuck on the treadmill of life, running fast and getting nowhere. Nothing is really wrong, but it’s not really right either. Perhaps you feel like this. Perhaps you want to feel happier and fully engaged with your loved ones. Or you want to gain a deeper appreciation for your life and develop a richer sense of purpose.

Flourish is an eight-week, interactive, online course for personal growth that teaches practical skills for increasing positive emotions, such as joy, gratitude, serenity, and inspiration, to people who want more happiness day-to-day. We encourage personal experiments using our exercises developed from positive psychology to help you find a path to happiness that works best for you. We will help you understand where you can make changes in your life to increase pleasure, purpose, and connection.

Flourish: Experiments in Happiness - 1
Flourish: Experiments in Happiness - 2

Flourish will give you practical tools you can use to create your personalised path to happiness.

After completing the Flourish online course you will have:

  • Developed insight into how your day-to-day emotional experiences affect your life.
  • Identified the specific activities that elicit positive emotions for you.
  • Learned skills to seed more positivity into your daily life to tip the scales from feeling blah to flourishing.
  • Developed a broader mindscape that allows you to see more possibilities, giving you additional options when dealing with life’s difficulties.
  • Gained tools and techniques to build up your emotional resources, so that you can more easily bounce back from setbacks.

Flourish will help you craft a life full of growth and creativity to help you become the best version of yourself.

This course is for you if:

  • You feel stuck and long for something better.
  • You think there has to be more to life than this.
  • You want to feel happier, find a sense of purpose, and add value to the world.
  • You want to feel more fully engaged with your family, friends, and community.

Create your Flourish Journal – your own unique infusion of positivity

Life is full of ups and downs, and when we’re caught in negative emotions we can overlook what is going right for us. That’s when your Flourish Journal can become your best friend and guide.

At Story Pieces, we provide exercises and prompts that help you create your very own Flourish Journal – a compilation of memories, objects, mementos, poetry, quotations, and images that tell your unique happiness story. Your Flourish Journal will contain reminders and exercises that resonate with you and are designed to bring more joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love into your life. Keep your Flourish Journal nearby for an infusion of positivity when you most need it.

This living document is an ever-changing journal that you can add to and modify long after the course finishes as you continue to create the story of your best life.

This course includes:

An abundance of practical exercises designed to bring more happiness into your daily life.

Guidance on creating your Flourish Journal – a compilation of memories and activities telling your unique happiness story that can be used as a positivity infusion.

Access to a website where you can track your positivity levels as you work through the course.

Heartfelt connection with classmates in a private class forum.

A gorgeous ebook of the entire course plus bonus material for you to download and keep forever.

Lifetime membership where you have unlimited access to course materials and can join the class each time it is offered for no extra cost.

FAQs:

Can I really learn how to be happy?

Happiness is a journey; it is not a destination. Studies from the field of positive psychology have shown us that the range of positive emotions that we call happiness depend largely on our mindset and less so on our circumstances. We can’t prevent suffering; bad things will happen to all of us. And we may not always be able to change our external circumstances. But we can always change our mindset, and we can seed our life with more positive emotions that build happiness and strengthen our inner resources so that we have more resilience during the hard times. Yes, we really can learn to be happy.

How is this online course different?

We all start with our own set of stories – our joys and heartaches, our strengths and limitations; our happiness journeys will be unique. The Flourish online course is not a prescription for happiness that you must strictly follow; rather, it is a compilation of practical exercises that you can combine to create your own unique recipe for your best life. This course isn’t about wishful thinking or clever, but empty, ideas. All exercises are based on scientific data from the field of positive psychology; we know that, when applied, they work to change lives.

What do I need?

You will need access to a computer and the internet, along with an email address (for registration and email updates). Each of us will create a Flourish Journal. Any craft supplies that inspire you in this process would be helpful. These might include: coloured papers and other collage materials, such as magazines or old books; your favourite coloured pens and markers; acrylic paints; a glue stick; and anything else that inspires you. Also collect together representations of memories from your life, such as photos, special mementos, and letters. A notebook and pen to record your thoughts through this process would be helpful.

 

I have never taken an online course before; how does it work?

The Flourish online course will begin on 3 June 2019. You will be able to access this course from your Story Pieces account once the course starts. Lessons will be posted in the online classroom at the beginning of each week during the eight-week course. You can access the lessons and complete them at any time that best suits your schedule. In addition, you will have lifetime access to all course materials. This also allows you to join in the classroom each time the course is offered at no extra cost. Finally, you will receive an ebook of the entire course that you can download and keep forever.

 

Will I be able to communicate with others during the course?

Yes, you will have access to the private Flourish Community class forum through your Story Pieces login where you can connect with others and share your thoughts, personal stories, and any reflections inspired by the exercises. The community space is open to current members of the Flourish online course (more students will continue to join the group with each new iteration of the course). This community provides an inspiring space to share your ongoing happiness journey; it will remain open indefinitely.

Can I ask questions directly to Sue?

You can ask questions directly to Sue in the private Flourish Community class forum during the eight weeks of the course. Sue will check in with the community daily. Some questions may require simple responses and can be answered at that time; others may be more complex and have a wider relevance. These will be compiled into a written Q&A document that will be made available to all participants.

For any technical or logistical questions, the Story Pieces team will be available to help during working hours Monday to Friday (New Zealand time).

What is your refund policy?

If the course does not meet your expectations, we are happy to give you a full refund within one week of the course start date. After this time, there are no refunds or extensions for this course. Thank you for your understanding.

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