Negative Recipes for Happiness can be very destructive. Some of the worst are giving our girls, tweens and teens a Negative Recipe that goes something like this:
Buy all the popular magazines about celebrities and pour over them.
Start to think about your body, your face, your hair and nails all the time.
Try to emulate the physical attributes of starlets.
Do whatever is necessary, including coloring your hair, your nails, and exposing flesh.
Passionately pursue all of the above.
Why is the above Recipe so destructive and dangerous? Some of the reasons are:
It keeps girls, tweens and teens from getting to know themselves as wondrous human beings by focusing them off of themselves and their talents and potential and on to idealized versions of youthful perfection.
It also keeps girls, tweens and teens from developing a meaningful sense of what is important about people. For example: their positive actions, their capacities to help others, their talents, their inner selves.
I’ll be talking further about this incredibly important subject that effects the physical and emotional health of our girls, tweens and teens. Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, Positive Psychologist, www.enchantedself.com
