Workout for Happiness is a start up in Berlin that’s all about taking responsibility for your happiness. You work on improving your physical and mental health, check off personal to-dos and perform other tasks proven by science to help people flourish.
You can train yourself to be happier, it’s just like training your muscles with weights at the gym. The key is putting theory into practice.
Workout for Happiness are about to launch its final program before their development of an app and you can be a part of it. We interviewed the founders Amelia & Adam to learn a little more.
Tell us about the Workout for Happiness program.
We created a three and six-month holistic program where people work on themselves daily across the mental, physical and social levels. We use scientifically proven methods that increase happiness and wellbeing.
To be happy, you have to “work it all out,” meaning you have to actually DO all the things that foster sustainable happiness - intellectualising your happiness brings you nowhere. Our candidates work on their happiness like an athlete continuously works on their sport.
What’s the program like?
We turned Workout for Happiness into an exciting real life adventure game. Candidates collect happiness points for the time they spend on their happiness and wellbeing. They get awards/badges, jokers, freebees and participate in photo contests. They do all this in international solidarity groups of five, as community is everything. With our holistic approach, we cover a wide spectrum of topics so that by the end of the program, our candidates will have personally experienced – not just read about - so much that is necessary for sustainable happiness. Most importantly, it’s a lot of fun! In fact, many of our candidates will join again, including a sports medicine professor from Louisiana
How does one get happier?
We are all responsible for our own happiness, real change comes from within. But we cannot wait for happiness to come to us, we have to actively work for it. It’s the doing that’s the most difficult part.
Workout for Happiness is a reconditioning program because real change takes time, effort, commitment, and hard work! We are all products of our own upbringing and social conditioning, a process that - starting in childhood - has spanned over decades. Stuck in our ingrained patterns of behaviour, we have created comfort zones. We are like cargo ships floating through the ocean of life on a programmed route. What if this ship were to suddenly have to change course? With Workout for Happiness, everyone is pushed out of their comfort zone, as that’s where personal growth lies. Dedicating 3-6 months of your life to this journey has a remarkable impact.
Who would benefit from trying this?
The Workout is designed for anyone who’s committed to working on themselves to become happier.
We're big believers in the power of meditation. Do you believe meditation is fundamental to happiness?
Yes, absolutely! One of our three pillars – mandatory to-dos – are there to make you mentally and physically fit, as this is a foundation for a flourishing life. Meditation is one of our mandatory to-dos; our candidates meditate three times a week for the duration of the course. Candidates also receive a badge and extra happiness points for taking part in a meditation retreat.
Talk us through what day one of the program would look like in terms of the activities and exercises.
Apart from our mandatory to-dos that improve mental and physical health, the program also consists of personal to-dos that you’ve put on your list, because completing them would make you happy, and weekly themes and tasks from the science of happiness. With these you try to reach the daily quota of 2 hours.
For example, let’s say that on Monday, you’ve completed 1 hour & 10 minutes from the mandatory training module (45-minute workout; 15-minute stretch; 10-minute meditation), you have to fill the remaining 50 minutes to reach your daily quota. That’s where you go through your personal to-dos, which can range from meeting a friend for coffee to working toward your career goals – you know best what makes you happy!
What support do people get with the programme?
Candidates will have an opportunity to have one-on-one Skype calls with us, which will no longer be possible once the App is officially launched.
Once they’ve written us expressing interest, we will have a short introductory Skype call, as well as mid-term and final interviews. Also, we will always be available for direct questions and concerns.
Apart from this, candidates will get to know their fellow team members week-by-week through a web platform we’ve created.
Joining our last manual program, conducted by third-party apps, is a great opportunity to get involved in the “making” of Workout for Happiness before it is scaled to hundreds of thousands of people. We are taking on a limited number of candidates to remain a tight-knit group. This means that candidates can still address their suggestions and feedback directly to the Founders and in this way, help us shape the program before its launch!
The three-month program costs £80/€85. For the upcoming program starting in September, Amelia and Adam have kindly offered our readers a 25% discount. Sign up before September 24th for only £60/€65 by clicking on the following link and introducing yourself to Adam and Amelia. Upon signing up, you will receive an email with more information.
In case you have any preliminary questions, you can also write Adam and Amelia directly at join@workoutforhappiness.com.
The preparation week begins on September 25th, the official program will run from October 2nd – December 24th 2017.
