We hesitate to call it a curriculum because it is more a schedule of key concepts. The idea is not for participants to learn these concepts in order to succeed in the PATHS program, rather, PATHS believes in exposing participants to powerful ideas in an environment structured with ample processing time, which allows for connections to be made in multiple ways. This approach is highly beneficial to deep learning. The PATHS curriculum is very different from what many people may have encountered in school or college. It is designed to be as down-to-earth, practical, and helpful as possible for real-world living.

01 The Invisible Suitcase ( 1 session)

This concept refers to the psychological baggage, both good and bad, that we all have. The people, places, and things that have been formative experiences are all baggage in our personal invisible suitcase. Not only is the baggage itself important, but how our baggage is "packed" within the suitcase is equally important. None of us have perfect items in our suitcases nor perfectly organized suitcases. Once we reach a certain stage in life, we have the power, if we understand it and take the time to do it, to organize our suitcase to be more suited to the journey through life we would like to take. With care and skill, we can learn to say goodbye to baggage that doesn't "fit" any longer and give more space for new more helpful baggage. We can fold certain experiences so they are available to us but take up less room and don’t get so crumpled. If we never take the time to look through our invisible suitcase(introspection), it can get too heavy and overloaded and burst open spilling our baggage all over the sidewalk at very inconvenient moments. The good news is that, with work and time, we can have an increasingly well-organized suitcase, filled with everything we need for our journey, that no longer bursts at the seams.

02 The Nature of Reality ( 1 session)

We often walk through life feeling that there is truth and then there is fiction or lies. However, a close inspection of even very simple situations reveals that reality is infinitely complex; a solid object is in fact more space than anything else; an aggressive person or animal is, in fact, more likely to be scared than angry or confident. How is this helpful? Well, so often we struggle with frustration at situations or people saying things like, “that/they just don’t make sense”. But if we are operating from a strong understanding of how complex reality truly is then we are much more likely to approach a perplexing situation with the genuine curiosity that can help us move from frustration towards learning and then to understanding.

03 The Nature of Profound Truths - Paradox (1 session)

The way in which we consider paradox is the existence of two contradictory truths existing at the same time. This idea is counter to most of the ways we have been culturally trained to think: good and evil, right and wrong, “is it this or is it that?” The first, and possibly most fundamental paradox PATHS participants will face will be that they all have something uniquely important to offer the world, but so does everybody else. In this way, we are all very special and very ordinary at the same time. The value of thinking about truth as having a paradoxical nature is that it helps us develop a greater ability to think flexibly and expansively. It becomes easier to allow two, or perhaps even more, truths to coexist. Once we can expand our thinking in this way all kinds of stressful situations can become more interesting, hold more learning potential, and be less hurtful.

04 The obstacles are the path (1 session)

When we are trying to achieve our goals, especially when they are bigger goals, it is both stress-inducing and discouraging when obstacles beyond our control frustrate our progress. But changing the way we think about obstacles makes a huge difference. As soon as we realize that the obstacles were always going to be in our way and we are only discovering them because we have actually begun the journey, then we can feel good about meeting these challenges and ready to learn from what they have to teach us.

05 What is a Mindset? (1 sessions)

A mindset can be thought of like a piece of software for a human brain. A mindset is a kind of automatic way of thinking about groups of situations. We have mindsets because we don’t have time to rethink our approach to situations every day. But our mindsets, just like a piece of software, can get out of date. The world changes quickly these days, we learn and grow, and so do the people around us. All this change means we frequently find our old mindsets need updating because they are not working for us any longer. Trying to live life with mindsets that aren’t working well anymore is as frustrating and painful as trying to text with a flip phone. Simply becoming aware that we can observe our own mindsets, almost as an outside observer would, and make judgments about how well they are serving us, allows us to take the next step of rewriting our mental software and developing newer mindsets more adapted to our current circumstances.

06 All The Shoulds (1 sessions)

Throughout our lives, we are subtly, and often not so subtly, influenced and infused with ideas about how we “should”, how the world “should”, and how other people “should” be. Then we find that we, the world, and other people do not conform to these “should”s - these externally applied expectations. This mismatch of the true nature of who we are and the expectations put upon us by the culture we live in can be very confusing and waste a huge amount of our energy as we try to control ourselves in ways that do not suit our natures. It also frustrates us when the world does not live up to what we have been led to believe it “should” be like. Often we might try to control the world in ways that are beyond our ability to control, and other people in ways that only harm our relationships with them. If we learn that the problem lies in the original “should” messages we have received, we stand a chance of relinquishing our need to control so much. We can take a deep breath and be kinder to ourselves and to those we love knowing we and they just are who we are. We can relax more, knowing that the world will never respond the way we expect, and our efforts to make it a better place will need to be strategic and calm.

07 Junk Values (4 sessions)

There is a lot of evidence that people who place a high value on material goods and status (“junk values”) are many times more prone to depression and anxiety than people who place a high value on connecting with friends and family and serving something bigger than themselves (religion or service of any kind). From this, we can see that these “junk values”, which are strongly promoted in our culture, for commercial reasons, are actually quite detrimental to the well-being of many of us who live by these values some or most of the time. We did not necessarily choose these values of our own free will but they have seeped into our mindsets through constant advertising, music videos, TV, and movies. This unit will be an exploration of what participants say their values are followed by activities that allow them to reflect upon how closely their everyday actions suggest they actually live by those intended values. The goal is for participants to become keenly aware of the level to which “junk values” are present in the culture around them and in their own thinking. And from there to consider how much they choose to maintain the status quo in the way they conduct their lives and choices or to change it.

08 Habits (2 sessions)

Habits are a lot like mindsets in that they are mental shortcuts that we can think of a little bit like psychological programming. Habits help us navigate the world by allowing us to complete many functions of our lives on autopilot, saving us valuable mental energy. Consequently, we have many valuable habits that serve us well and that we do not want to get rid of. On the other hand, we are all aware of habits we have that cause conflict, make us feel bad about ourselves, or reduces our ability to progress. In fact, if we slow down and think carefully we can become aware that some of our habits are in fact major drags to the upward trajectory we would like to see in our lives. If we learn how to change specific negative habits we can make a huge difference in our ability to learn, grow, and succeed over time. In this unit, participants learned about how habits form, why they are so hard to change, and specific strategies and understandings for making real-life changes to the habits they may choose to alter.

09 Our Relationship with Technology (4 sessions)

Technology is a necessary and in many cases positive, part of modern living. But when are we using technology and when are technology platforms monetizing our attention for their profit? There is a growing mountain of data that the monetization of human attention for the purposes of selling online advertising is leading to a wide range of detrimental psychological and even physical health effects. In this unit, PATHS begins by soliciting information from participants about their own experiences with technology. How is technology serving them well? What would happen to their lives if they did not use technology as much? What are the challenges in their lives with using technology? Then we explore information about how video games, social media platforms, and advertising use deeply rooted human psychology to hack human neural responses to keep us on their platform and away from the real world for as long as possible. Finally, participants discuss how to integrate technology into their lives in ways that are most constructive and least negative to their own wellbeing.

10 Good Relationships (of all kinds) (3 sessions)

Too often our close relationships cause a lot of stress and take up large amounts of mental and emotional energy distracting us when we are trying to focus on achieving other important life goals. While there is no magic solution, it helps a lot if we understand that a significant amount of confusion and stress come from unrealistic ideas of what our relationships “should” be. (Here we are back with the “shoulds” again.) Throughout our lives, most of us have received many messages that have created expectations about how this or that kind of relationship is supposed to play out and we experience stress, disappointment, and shame when our relationships do not live up to those expectations. Learning some hard truths about what we can and cannot expect from love and friendship in all of the forms of relationships we have is, at first, disappointing and hard. However, after enough time to absorb these new ideas of reality, it becomes clear that more realistic expectations help us live with less stress, help us negotiate better outcomes in our important relationships, and help us focus with a clearer mind on our life goals that fall beyond our relationships.

11 Do We Need Nature? (2 sessions)

In this unit, participants are challenged to consider the effect that nature has on them and humans in general. We will consider data such as that prisoners who could not see trees out of their windows get sicker at a rate 30% higher than an identical group who looked out over woods and that a three-day stay in the woods boosts your body immunity, traceable in blood tests, for up to six months. Participants will consider what their experiences with nature are, how they feel about nature, and why they think they may feel this way. Participants will also discuss the value or lack of value of having a strong relationship with nature and how humans might maintain and even grow their relationship with nature in a world that seems to be increasingly busy, urban, and commercial.

12 The Power and Value of Feedback (3 sessions)

We live in a culture in which honest, direct feedback exists almost exclusively in sports within the context of high-quality coach-athlete relationships. But the rest of us also desire to feel the thrill of learning and growing rapidly. The rest of us also want to feel how alive and vibrant life feels when we challenge ourselves to expand to our full potential in areas of our choosing. In PATHS workshops feedback will not be taught or expected of students until they have firmly established levels of trust in each other and the facilitators. This is important because our culture typically perceives feedback as an attack rather than a gift. But the process of feedback will be modeled between the facilitators from day one. The facilitators will give each other open and direct feedback and will encourage respectfully delivered direct feedback from students. In this way, the culture of the workshops will have done a lot to introduce the learning about feedback before the actual unit begins.

13 Rethinking and Unlearning (2 sessions)

In many ways, this is an extension of the unit on feedback. Here we look at how in most interactions around issues people tend to take on roles that might be considered to be “preacher mode” in which we tell others what to believe, “prosecutor mode” in which we try to prove others wrong, or “politician mode” in which we try to recruit others to our view of things. All of these modes are self-serving, closed-minded, and prevent us from listening to understandings and perspectives others bring to the table that can open our minds and help us understand more deeply. Because reality is so complex and because our circumstances are constantly changing it is very helpful to be aware that we need to be good at “unlearning” anything we thought we knew and ready to “rethink” any assumptions or beliefs we hold. Once this becomes our operating starting point we are much more likely to enjoy, and succeed at, working with and learning from a wide range of different people.

14 How Big Should I Be? (3 sessions)

This unit is all about ego. We live in a highly individualistic world with constant messages that everything is about us and how well we are doing in comparison to everyone else. Even if we happen to be the top of our particular pyramid we still need to worry that we won't be tomorrow or next week. All of this is a very stressful and lonely way to live, not to mention a fundamentally egotistical and narcissistic approach to the world. One of the great values of being out in the savannah, on the top of a big mountain, or surrounded by forest or woods is that it gives us a sense of how small we are in comparison to the planet. Although for people who haven't experienced these environments before it can be frightening at first, once a person has the chance to acclimatize, this smaller sense of ourselves is in fact very comforting and peaceful. It puts less pressure on us, allows us to be more humble, more compassionate, more empathetic, and more flexible. This unit is all about opportunities to consider the possibility that our individualistic and status-driven culture has made our egos too big for our own good. This allows us to relax and stop trying to be so special. Giving up the idea that we need to be important frees us from all kinds of burdens of social performance that may be interfering with our social-emotional well-being.

15 Goal Setting (3 sessions)

We often advise each other to set goals but few of us have spent time analyzing how incredibly complex goal-setting really is. In this unit, participants will learn about the different levels of goals: top-level goals, mid-level goals, lower-level goals. We discuss how lower-level goals need to support mid-level goals and how mid-level goals need to support top-level goals. We Discuss how, counter to popular belief, the lower the level of the goal the more likely it is that it should be abandoned easily if obstacles make it hard to achieve. It does not make sense to spend vast amounts of energy trying to achieve a low-level goal when it can be replaced by an alternative to achieve the same end. But the higher up the goal hierarchy the goal is the more cautiously it should be replaced or abandoned. Additionally, whose goals are these? Where is the motivation for all this goal-setting coming from? Are these goals intrinsic or extrinsic? Because only intrinsically motivated goals will be long-term sustainable.