"I am happier," says Sherrod Ballentine, a district court mediator in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "Every day, I feel so grateful to wake up this way."
Ballentine, 57, wasn't clinically depressed before; she was, as psychologists say, functional. But hoping to kick her mood up a notch, she took a one-day continuing education course called "Authentic Happiness and How to Obtain It." She has since completed a six-month class on the same subject, faithfully doing exercises like writing and reciting a "gratitude" letter to a friend and jotting down three happy events of each day every night for a week.
"It trains your mind to focus on the past as being very positive," she says. "It's completely different from traditional psychology, where you spend your time trying to figure out why you are so irrevocably sad." Ballentine says her newfound happiness even inspired her to take the next step in ...
