Introducing Constructing Confidence: The Positivity Toolbox
From the experts at Constructing Confidece comes a comprehensive suite of research-based strategies and resources to support your children's sense of confidence and resilience.
Welcome to the digital version of The Positivity Toolbox. This is a guided program to help you strengthen and develop confidence and resilience in you and your children through fun and easy activities, discussion starters, and tips on making it stick. As a subscriber, you will receive the Positivity Toolbox content as well as ongoing supporting materials and access to a discussion forum. We have a great network of experts and can’t wait to share key tools and insights.
Starting with our own, The Positivity Toolbox.
Why it matters
One of the best things we can do for our kids is help them develop a greater sense of self-confidence and resilience. Developing a “growth mindset” is key to achieving these skills, and one of the most important building blocks to reach this goal is embracing positivity.
This program is designed for you to engage in the 12 research-backed behaviors known to increase positivity with your child, so that you can help them develop their growth mindset while giving them the gift of control over their own individual levels of positivity.
Growing up is challenging! Let’s prepare our kids to reap the benefits of cultivating these behaviors in their lives and in your own so that -- together -- you and your child can continue developing a sense of resilience by increasing personal levels of confidence to help you both excel in life.
Backed by science
That’s right, positivity is a science-backed tool we can develop and lean into. When we experience positive emotions, we’re better problem-solvers, we make better decisions, and we’re able to be more resilient and maintain our self-confidence.
While many people may believe that happiness is determined by personality and that we have little control over how happy we are, positive psychology research reveals that only 50% of happiness is determined by personality. Life circumstances account for 10%, leaving 40% within our control!
We can engage in intentional activity to influence our well-being!
Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky uncovered 12 behaviors, that enhance our feelings of positivity, thereby allowing us to be more resilient, confident, and yes, even happier. She focuses her research on happiness and is the author of the book, The How of Happiness. She also is the lead researcher responsible for this happiness pie chart.
Basic Instructions
Each chapter of this newsletter will introduce you to the 12 behaviors. Each edition begins with an overview page that provides background on why each is important to develop.
Then, you will find two collaborative activities that you and your child can do together. One activity is geared toward younger kids, while the other is designed to encourage the behavior of older children. Lastly, we have included discussion questions so that you can continue the conversation and encourage these new skills to stick.
You can access the behaviors in the archive and you can explore in any order you like and you can even repeat activities. Repeating the same activities over time will spur new discussions with your child. These exercises -- designed for ages 4-12 -- support a growth mindset! Lean on this toolkit when a teachable moment arises or be proactive and carve out time to pick and choose as you see fit.
What you can do next
Click to download this first chapter of our Positivity Toolbox, which includes a summary, two hands-on activities for you and your children to do together, plus a series of discussion questions to encourage lifelong behaviors.
*Our next chapter will cover the notion of NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS. If you’d like to order a hardbound edition of our entire program — as the activities can be revisited over and over again — you can do so via Amazon.