At Happiness Matters

Welcome to Happiness Matters,
I’m Dr. Louise Lambert.

Some people say that happiness is pointless or even silly; yet the scientific evidence for good living is firmly on its side. From being healthier, more productive, earning more money - I hear they are also better dancers! - to being a better learner, as well as friend and partner, happiness matters to individuals and organizations. But don’t be fooled by the smiley faces. Happiness comes in many shapes: optimism, engagement, integrity, kindness, vitality, curiosity, persistence, courage, contentment, humour, altruism, and more. And all are serious ideas in positive psychology, the science of wellbeing, which I’ve been studying for two decades.

Since 2000, I’ve been a positive psychology practitioner, researcher, and editor of the Middle East Journal of Positive Psychology. My mission is to bring the science of wellbeing to individuals, workplaces, and schools. Through my programs, online courses, workplace training, academic research, popular books and digital content, the skills of positive psychology can help us all feel good, relate well, and function better. In fact, life is too short for anything less! And the alternatives of cynicism and indifference, no matter how attractive they seem, won’t get us there.

I’m glad you’re here and I look forward to getting to know you. Feel free to look around and see what’s available. If you don’t find what you need, just ask. I am open to ideas. And a coffee. Coffee always helps.

Workplace Wellbeing: The "Thrive365" Series

For Managers: The Micro-Actions of Wellbeing

8-10 modules x 90-120 minutes

Our most popular program! As managers influence 70% of employee wellbeing, as much as a spouse, ouf!, they are a key group to target. As it's not enough to merely think about or ask about wellbeing, this program adopts a behavioural approach, equipping managers with the skills necessary to foster wellbeing within their teams while enhancing their own job satisfaction and making their roles more manageable. In sum, they develop high-quality connections, the relationships in which individuals feel seen, heard, affirmed, and elevated. To do so, we guide managers to engage respectfully with their teams, assist in task enabling to help colleagues work best, and show trustworthiness while giving it in return. They learn to recognize when team members are struggling and how to approach them and explore strategies to strengthen poor relationships and address workplace incivilities. At last, they are encouraged to model behaviours that support wellbeing given their influence. Optional modules include recovery strategies, such as using humour, stressing less about stress, and engaging in serious leisure.

For Senior Leaders: A Primer in Workplace Wellbeing

2 hours

Without the active involvement of senior leaders, wellbeing programs don’t work. They get off to a good start and then employees stop attending because no one is held accountable, nor seemingly interested in their outcomes. As a result, programs fail to see a return on investment, yield no reductions in turnover or stress related sick leave, and no improvements to productivity or profit are observed. And yet, the evidence shows there are clear actions senior leaders can take to reverse these outcomes. We explore: (1) the business case for prioritizing the wellbeing of human assets; (2) what wellbeing is (and is not); (3) successful strategies from a range of industries; and (4) the leadership actions necessary to ensure wellbeing programs deliver. This is a good workshop for organizations still unsure if wellbeing is what they need, and what it demands from leadership. Because signing a cheque is not enough.

For Employees: Workplace Incivilities

75 minutes

Anywhere in life, difficult relationships are the pits, but they are especially difficult at work when they involve workplace incivilities. These small acts of disrespect are costly for organizations and impact days away from work as much as mental health issues. Organizations have a vested interest in tackling them quickly. Ranging from withholding information, making false promises, not including people, or being deliberately mean (do you have a “Karen” in your office!?), incivilities affect you, your work, and everyone who has to hear about it. By identifying these behaviours and addressing them with different degrees of directness, you can create better working relationships. This is one session everyone can relate to, and one everyone wishes they didn’t need to attend. Rest assured, no one holds back and plenty of heartfelt suggestions emerge for how people can be nicer to one another.

For Employees: Live it Better

1 day

It’s not enough to not be “unwell”, one must be “well” too. In fact, the research is clear, the happier individuals are in life, the happier they are at work. So, let’s aim higher and move past the standard mental health talks about reducing the bad, and plan for “awesome!” by adding the good. In this daylong workshop, we strive for nothing else but to strengthen participant’s subjective wellbeing, strongly correlated with employee engagement and client satisfaction, as well as better health, learning and productivity. Using positive psychology interventions, employees: (1) recognize the value of positive emotions at work and how to generate them via humour, savoring, and optimism, (2) build relationships through capitalization, gratitude and appreciation, (3) harness altruism and kindness to build a climate of trust, and (4) use life crafting to design one’s best life.

For Employees: Lunch & Learn Sessions

1 hour

We have several 1-hour “lunch & learn” sessions, including topics like: Prosocial behavior, Social capital, Dealing with failure, Developing a growth mindset, Using optimism (& pessimism) more effectively, Joyful living, Four ways to Savor, Emotion regulation, Using meaning to buffer stress, etc. In short, we've got lunch hour sorted!.

For Teams: I See You

6 weeks

We focus on what managers can do for us, but the truth is that our colleagues are an untapped source of wellbeing. Here, we collectively harness the skills of social influence to spread wellbeing across the organization, as well as functionally apply and embed new practices to sustain it. Thus, the skills are geared towards generating wellbeing in, and for others by building trust, removing barriers, modeling and leading with wellbeing principles, as well as engaging with peers more respectfully and advocating for their greatness to be known. From fixing poor relationships, noticing when people aren’t well, to befriending newcomers and elevating peers, the skills learned are key to building wellbeing… because when managers can’t, colleagues must.

Happiness for Individuals

Designed Just for You

The course is structured around 5 pillars, which include respect for your:

Time
We offer the course without expectation of you being online at a certain hour or day. We favor real life over online and you should too. Improving your life shouldn’t come at the expense of living it.

Intelligence
This course is based in science and you are intelligent enough to understand it. We augment your learning by referring you to scientific articles and books but have vetted the most boring ones!

Ambition
In life, there are participants and spectators: you are in the first group. Not here to only understand your life, you want to change how you live it. We push you to try new skills because nothing different comes from doing the same thing.

Autonomy
You understand your life the best and despite evidence showing that an intervention works, it may not be the right timing, context or circumstances for you. Choose what you like and need, leave what you don’t. You’re in charge.

Finances
This course relies on therapeutic, evidence-based scientific tools that would sell for hundreds of dollars in a clinic. Relative to a full course of therapy (which you likely don’t need), last night’s dinner party, and the watch you’ve got your eye on, it’s a bargain.

Learning Outcomes

This 10-module course includes 14 videos, 6 audio files, 49 worksheets, and 8 quizzes. It’s designed for individuals like you, who want to get on top of how they think, feel and respond to events. People who want to be happier despite the noise. People who want to have a toolbox of skills and strategies to:

1. define their best life, plot the steps to its realization, and ask for what they need;
2. develop a growth mindset, and build self-efficacy;
3. master emotional self-regulation to control thoughts, actions and emotions;
4. implement boundaries between one’s problems and those of others;
5. nurture flexible optimism to tackle challenges and opportunities;
6. develop meaning and purpose both in life and at work;
7. remediate hassles, and stress less about stress;
8. engage in self-compassion, cognitive reframing and realistic self-talk;
9. limit materialism to curb overspending;
10. generate positive emotions and adopt savoring to design a more joyful, colorful and rich life!

Yup. It’s for people who seriously want a better life.

Is that you?

Nationalization Programs

Return to Work

Unemployed individuals can also benefit from discovering and developing their character strengths and deploying these towards their participation in the labour market. This program considers the emotional consequences of being out of work and the need to restore one’s sense of identity, integrity, and self-efficacy. The 6-week program is best undertaken within existing social and financial assistance programs and serves as the missing psychological link to spark a desire to keep searching for work. Studies show that identifying strengths has positive impacts on depression, self-esteem, psychological distress, and wellbeing. Young adults who receive strengths-based training are more likely to be employed post-intervention and tend to have increased earning power over time. The strengths covered in this program include: Perspective, Open-Mindedness; Emotional Self-Regulation; Hope & Optimism; and Persistence & Bravery.

Visioning and Planning for National Wellbeing

Based on academic research and government experience as an official in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, Deputy Canadian Ambassador to the UAE, Palestine, and other regions, we are especially proud to offer a Master Class in “Building Wellbeing into National Policy” for post-secondary students studying in political science, sociology, diplomacy, or international affairs. It may also interest government leaders, ministers, policy practitioners and other relevant organizations across the region. This course introduces concepts of happiness and wellbeing as they apply to public policy-making and focuses on how to best design, implement, and measure happiness and wellbeing policies. Such policies can address challenges such as community growth, human capital, and socio-economic development.

Educational Institutions

Student Wellbeing Programs

Given that 75% of mental health issues emerge before the age of 25, attention to the wellbeing of young people cannot be overstated. Without it, mental health issues experienced as youth persist into adulthood, where remediation is more difficult and costly. Positive psychology interventions are not only effective for boosting wellbeing and life satisfaction, but also in reducing levels of depression, loneliness and anxiety, and protecting against poor mental health. Greater student wellbeing contributes to higher GPAs, standardized test results, and as much as 6 months of extra learning. Students with greater wellbeing are more likely to complete a degree, search for, and find work, and obtain higher income. Schools offer a clear value proposition when wellbeing is addressed. Accordingly, we work with schools and universities to implement positive education intervention programs. We have year-long weekly intervention programs for secondary and university students. These include student manuals, teacher guides, as well as suggested empirically validated measures to assess changes.

See our published work with the Dubai College.

See our published work in Kuwait public schools.

Want to know what makes university students happy? Surprise: it’s friends, not mental health Apps. Read our UAE based study asking this question HERE.

Wellbeing for Educators

One of the greatest contributors to student wellbeing is not a mystery, it’s teacher wellbeing. And yet, teachers report the same levels of stress as nurses and physicians and 50% leave teaching in the first five years. Poor wellbeing fuels burnout, organizational disengagement, presenteeism, less effective teaching, and low student achievement. Teacher training does not often prepare for the stressors of the classroom and supports typically focus on younger teachers. University educators do not do much better. To help, we offer a 2-day training course in positive education, which includes: (1) foundations of positive psychology and its offshoot, positive education, (2), data around the impact of wellbeing on learning, health, and other areas of life for students and educators; (3) an introduction to positive psychology interventions and their applications in the classroom; (4) and how educators can use positive psychology to uplift their colleagues.

More fun facts? The most expensive schools do not yield the highest levels of wellbeing! Read our study on 19,000 UAE youth exploring wellbeing levels across curriculum options and emirates.

Want to give the gift of wellbeing to parents or educators? Consider our self-paced online course in positive psychology for individuals.

Positive Psychology Content and Digital Content

Digital Assets

We develop positive psychology content in the form of bite-size interventions for health insurers, healthcare institutions and wellness Apps (i.e., UMore, Tuhoon), as well as education and corporate learning management systems and dashboards (i.e., GEMS Education).

Digital Wellbeing Interventions

We're especially excited about the potential for positive psychology in healthcare given that happiness drives health outcomes and healthcare satisfaction. Deploying positive psychology content for patients can reduce, as much as prevent poor health. Why not listen to our latest study (2025) looking at this question on 9000 UAE residents.

You may consider the benefits of our early happiness groups conducted in Canadian primary healthcare. We found that happiness gains held over time, as did reductions in perceptions of pain and functional limitations. See it here.

Wellbeing Mapping and Tracking

We also work with very smart (& nice!) folks who have developed a WhatsApp enabled Chatbot that can map and track the distribution of wellbeing in organizations. This allows companies to know where wellbeing is in short supply and when, as well as who is doing well and needs fewer resources and saving money. The chatbot offers curated services for anxiety, depression and low wellbeing in industries like construction, flagging concerns to managers.

Podcasts and Masterclasses

We have created audio and video masterclasses and several podcast series. They are great internal communications tools, branding collateral, and public offerings for external stakeholders, signaling company commitments to wellbeing and its scientific research.

Our podcast series in collaboration with Gallup and the Global Wellbeing Initiative is HERE.

Our podcast series with the Arab German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) is HERE.