![]() "The club is about how we all have problems and challenges, and how we get to decide how to deal with them. "We don't hold hands in a circle and sing 'Kumbaya,"' she said. ![]() Turner described herself as a basically happy person anyway, she said club meetings are a way of reinforcing her own sense of life's goodness by passing the positivism along. She immediately made plans to attend the next meeting. Ketchian, though diabetic, splurged for candy and cake for his club meeting. There are no club dues or attendance fees, and Mr. That's about the only money he said he sees from his happiness work. Ketchian "a guru of happiness," and he counsels people outside of the club, charging $400 for four one-hour sessions. Since he started his club, two other Happiness Clubs inspired by his have sprouted up, in Canada and California. ![]() The sense of fellowship continued unabated for the remainder of the meeting. "You have to reflect on the fact there are people who haven't made the decision yet," he said. Ketchian's reply was amiable if assertive. "They are only 'events' when you make the decision." "It really bothers me you call them 'obstacles,' she said, sternly. Her expression, it could be said, appeared less than happy. It was something called the DOC Formula, a three-step process in which D represents the "happiness decision," O stands for figuring out the best way of overcoming obstacles and C represents making the right choice.ĭr. Ketchian was expounding on his latest way of delivering what he readily admits is the same basic message, that choosing happiness is the only sure way of achieving it. Of course it's simplistic, he replied, that's why it works.Īt the February Happiness Club meeting, Mr. He didn't even pause when asked if he would call his philosophy simplistic. Love interests turn sour, parents get sick and die, and the news tells of war and tsunamis and racial cleansing. Life experience, too, can rock the notion of sustainable constant happiness, at least without constant access to lithium. He said that he stumbled onto the secret of teaching happiness as a means in itself when counseling an AIDS sufferer who had read "Food for Thought" and told the author the phrase in the book that meant the most to him was "Happiness is a decision."īut can one be truly happy all the time? Many religions seem to counsel against it, in the books of Ecclesiastes and Job, Old Testament books that speak of the sadness of the human condition, the Hindu concept of Maya, which says a sense if worldly happiness is an illusion, and Siddhartha's realization of life as a vale of tears. Ketchian, 59, calls himself self-taught, a voracious reader of philosophy and psychology tomes without any formal degree in either field who in his 30's found himself as concerned about humanity's true nature as he was about running a business.īy the 1980's, he was handing out copies of a self-published book, "Food for Thought," to his printing clients and being a co-host on a radio show with a positive-thinking theme. Ketchian warned, waving a copy of a "permission slip" he had passed around in which signees proclaimed that "in all ways I will choose happiness for the rest of my life." "You're never going to leave this room until you agree to be happy," Mr.
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