COURSE

Creating Sustainable Happiness

Momentary feelings of peace and connection are blissful, but what’s the key to sustaining happiness? In this 10-day course, Elisha Goldstein, PhD, founder of A Course in Mindful Living, will bring you through the key teachings and practices to support you in growing key inner strengths that make happiness last.

Visualization Psychology Science Happiness Health & Happiness Guided Imagery Mindfulness

Meet your Teacher

Elisha Goldstein

Santa Monica, Ca

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is co-founder of The Center for Mindful Living in West Los Angeles and creator of the 6-month mentorship program A Course in Mindful Living. He is a psychologist, speaker and author who has published numerous articles, chapters, and blogs, including Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion, The Now Effect: How This Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life and co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn and MBSR Every Day. He synthesizes the pearls of traditional psychotherapy with a progressive integration of mindfulness to achieve mental and emotional healing. He has his private practice in West Los Angeles, California.

10 Days

4.4k students

4.6 stars

14 min / day

Happiness

English

Lesson 1

Resilience and Mindfulness

In this first teaching session you’ll learn that when making any change in life, obstacles are inevitable, so it’s important to build resiliency from the get go. I’ll talk about what makes us resilient, bring you through an experience, teach you the three factors that support sustainability and why mindfulness is the fundamental strength to support positive change, resiliency and sustainable happiness.

Lesson 2

Relaxed Presence

In this meditation session you’ll jump into your first practice to play with the first foundation of sustainable happiness – mindfulness. As you strengthen mindfulness you’ll get better and better at waking up to what matters in the day. You’ll sense into a relaxed presence, feeling more grounded, calm and in control. The practice of mindfulness allows you to get better at coming down from your mind and you’re your life. Just stay curious, see what you notice and like an instrument, continue coming back to refine your mind and then bringing into your daily life.

Lesson 3

Mindful Awareness

In this meditation session you’ll settle into the second practice of mindfulness. You’ll continue to play around with mindful awareness and deepen this foundational strength that is essential for sustainable happiness. You’ll notice that I use the word playing intentionally as you’re just settling into being curious and aware of your experience.

Lesson 4

Warmth, Courage and Heart

In this teaching session you’ll learn about the second foundation of sustainable happiness - the science and experience of heart. With any change you want to make, obstacles are inevitable. The obstacles can often lead to self-criticism and doubt which causes us to give up. This track will explore the science and practice of self-compassion to bring us back into balance, give us the courage to overcome obstacles and also make the joys in life that much greater.

Lesson 5

Tune Your Heart

In this meditation session you’ll learn how to put tuning your heart – the second key to sustainable happiness – into practice. You’ll start with mindful awareness of breath and then tap into your heart by visualizing someone you care about and uncovering kind intentions that will flow to them and to yourself. In the process you will be strengthening your mind and heart which will be a great support to you in the journey ahead.

Lesson 6

Resilience

In this meditation session, you’ll learn a four part practice I call SAFE that will allow you to step-by-step find a way to settle into what’s uncomfortable and send a signal to your brain that you are not only safe, but confident too, strengthening your innate resilience. One of the greatest obstacles to sustainable happiness, or really to most things we want to do in life, is difficult emotions. The previous meditation gave you some experience with warming the heart, this meditation builds on that practice, giving you the ability to feel stronger as you go.

Lesson 7

The X Factor for Sustainable Change

In this teaching session, you’ll build upon the previous experiences tuning your mind and heart and now learn about the science, psychology and practices that support what I call the X Factor in sustainable happiness – human connection. You’ll hear about the science of human connection, the costs of modernity and the importance of shaping our environments to play on our brain’s implicit decision making and make this all easier.

Lesson 8

Loving Kindness

In this meditation session, you’ll bring your mindfulness and heart into putting the science of human connection into practice. Science shows that the following meditation when practiced over and again can cultivate a sense of positive social connection and even have positive neurobiological impacts. In this meditation, you’re going to be expanding your practice from session 5 on tuning your heart and sending friendly wishes to a loved one, a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person and expanding out to all people. When we feel more connected, we feel happier. Remain open and curious and you are also welcome to experiment with soothing touch during the practice if you like.

Lesson 9

Balance

In this final meditation session, you’ll learn to practice balance. This practice will integrate what you’ve learned with the strength of your awareness, the caring and courage of your heart, and your sense of connection with others around you. Now, you’re going to expand from there into a sense of connection with all of things…this sense of connectedness is at the source of enduring well-being. Connection leads to balance and balance leads to happiness.

Lesson 10

The Sustainable Happiness Toolkit

In this final session, you’ll learn how to bring all of this off the mat and create a sustainable happiness toolkit. I’ll bring you through 5 simple steps that give you a roadmap on how to bring all of this into your daily life.You’re going to need something to write or type on, if this isn’t available, you can reflect on the instructions in your mind. I’m going to give you some instructions and then you’re going to pause the audio so you can reflect on these instructions. When you’re ready you’ll restart it. I’ll remind you about this as we go. As you bring this into your life, you’ll build awareness, overcome challenges and continually strengthen sustainable happiness. Allow this not to the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning for you.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 37 community questions and 5 audio replies from Elisha Goldstein. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

4.6 (276)

Recent Reviews

Alan

May 17, 2025

This has been a great course. The flow imbues empathy

jori

August 24, 2023

Wonderful course! Thank you!

Robin

August 16, 2023

This was very enlightening and opened my eyes to more of what’s impacting my life both positively and negatively. Thank you for doing this course. Brightest Blessings 🙏

Bill

June 19, 2023

Well done

Adele

June 9, 2023

Really enjoyed this practice to cultivate happiness.

Rachel

June 5, 2023

This course was difficult, as it should be, backed by research, supportive, well-paced, and helped me learn a lot about how to feel into my emotions and be present. It was also relatable and within reach of my understanding rather than talking about high level concepts and things I don’t understand like “different energies and frequencies.” It was also consistently structured and that helped me know what to expect. The explanations and meditations each session allowed for education and practice, both of which are necessary in a course like this.

Dan

May 17, 2023

Very grounded blending of neuroscience and ancient wisdom.

Keith

May 15, 2023

Lovely! Thanks for sharing this course with us. Namaste

Chantal

April 23, 2023

Very very good course, thank you

Johanna

August 21, 2022

Loved it! Great way to integrate mindfulness practices for happiness.

heather

June 20, 2021

excellent

Shachar

April 9, 2021

Amazing course. After each session I felt like my life is changing and getting better. Through these 10 sessions I learned to build compassion with my self. A thing that was missing in my entire life. Thank you for change my life from criticism to love.

Anne

March 24, 2021

Beautiful and empowering course. Thank you

Barbara

March 22, 2021

Talks way too fast to be relaxing and take in the information and my phone has an incredible speaker but turned up on high volume I can barely hear him.

Alex

December 8, 2020

Simple and clear!

sam

December 5, 2020

so good

Kathie

November 14, 2020

Good reminders to be kind to ourselves as we try to stick to a meditation practice!

Valeska

July 21, 2020

very simple and very deep, thank you

Mary

July 13, 2020

Great course, lots to work on. Specific tools for lifelong use. I have had many episodes of depression in my life. I’ve taken antidepressants for years under the care of psychiatrists and psychologists. I’ve studied psychology & had come to the conclusion that this was my life (I’m almost 70, with chronic disease & pain.). I took a course in meditation in my 20’s & was never able to maintain a consistent practice until several years ago when I found this Insight Timer App. Since then Ive been able to quit medication, and maintain a stable mood & temperament. I’ve found ways to find peace and acceptance in my life. I’ve seen glimmers of happiness during my life, but never been able to sustain it. This course has given me hope for Sustainable happiness. I know others who always maintain a “glass half full” type of mindset, but just accepted that my brain did not work that way. Now, for the first time, I’m aware of a shift toward just that awareness. I’ll be working on this course going forward. Thank you so much!

Jennifer

June 6, 2020

Great course. Really clear. Also I liked that it had a practical aspect that I could actually incorporate into my life. And I plan to continue using my toolkit. Thank you.

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