I don’t know if you noticed this, but I was surprised by how many prizes were given away to mothers over Mother’s Day Weekend with the question, “Tell us why your Mother deserves this x, y, z gift”?

How about, because she can bring in a new life form and did?

It again speaks to the general belief that mothers are supposed to do something special or more likely sacrifice and put the needs of others before their own in order to be considered a “good” or “exemplary” mother.

The problem with this concept is that it turns a child’s entire understanding of love upside down as well as how to give and receive love in a way that is balanced and healthy.

In fact, the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley have done extensive research and why Why Parental Happiness Comes First (You can click on this link to s...And here’s the summary:

1. Emotions are contagious.

2. Happiness gives us resources that we need to be a better parent. Happy parents tend to be warmer, more responsive, and better listeners

3. Kids will model what you do and how you be rather than what you say. As we know, it’s not enough to “do as I say not as I do” that doesn’t work as you know with kids.

Rather, the prize really ought to be awarded to mothers who are happy.

And this is not just about having happy children, but rather successful children as well.

Just take it from Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, who graduated from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. A teaching Fellow for “Positive Psychology,” the most popular course at Harvard at the time, he found that the common formula of: if you work harder, you will be more successful, and then you will be happy to be scientifically backward.

“A decade of research shows that training your brain to be positive at work first actually fuels greater success second. In fact, 75% of our job success is predicted not by intelligence, but by your optimism, social support network and the ability to manage energy and stress in a positive way. By researching top performers at Harvard, the world’s largest banks, and Fortune 500 companies, Shawn discovered patterns, which create a happiness advantage for positive outliers—the highest performers at the company.”

Here’s a wonderful video by Shawn about how he came upon the power of positive psychology when he was playing with his younger sister when they were 7 and 5 years old.

So the question is how to be a happy mom exactly?

Tricky when you have screaming kids that are trying out what seems to be the latest World Wrestling Moves and what if you are going through postpartum, or have not had good models yourself of being a happy parent?

Well that’s essentially the topic that What is a Mom will be addressing from every angle. Tomorrow you’ll get my Top 10 Easy Tricks to Getting Happy Fast.

See you tomorrow!