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08/18/2021 08:30 AMDana Hilmer has a voice for radio and podcasts. It’s smooth and soothing. She has used her voice in the past as a featured speaker at meetings of the Madison Happiness Club, having been invited by her friend Tina Garrity, the club’s facilitator of about 15 years. One talk was titled “Are You at a Life-Changing Crossroads?”
Dana says, “I’ve also spoken about happiness. My background is in positive psychology, which is the science of happiness and resilience and goal setting. It’s the science around the question of, ‘What can you do to live your best life?’”
Tina moved out of state this month and asked Dana and her business partner, Wendy Perrotti, to take over the Happiness Club. Dana is a certified coach, positive psychology consultant, speaker, and trainer, and Wendy is a certified professional coach, speaker, and leadership trainer.
About the Happiness Club, which is free to the public, Dana says, “We’re excited to be able to kind of carry on Tina’s legacy. She’s created something great and, of course, things were different over COVID, so we’re excited to be able to kick it back off and resume live meetings, delta variant allowing.”
The featured speaker at the Happiness Club’s planned Wednesday, Sept. 29 in-person kickoff meeting will be Dr. Joyce Saltman, “a super smart, super funny woman who is a professor at Southern Connecticut State University,” Dana says. Her talk is titled “Sex vs. Chocolate: The age-old competition between these two favorites will be explained and discussed.”
Dana says, “What we’re doing as a club—and this is how Tina structured it as well—is we’re bringing in speakers every month on topics that allow you to live your best life. That’s what it really comes down to, so it’ll be a range of different kinds of speakers but it’s all about not only being your happiest, but how can you be the best version of you and how can you live your best life? So all the speakers will address both of those areas of conversation.”
Dana shared the schedule for the rest of 2021. The Happiness Club will meet Wednesdays, Sept. 29, Oct. 27, Nov. 17, and Dec. 15 at 6 p.m. in the Scranton Library’s Johnson Community Room for about an hour and a half. Meetings, which are free and open to anyone, are planned for the last Wednesday of every month, but November’s and December’s are moved up because of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Dana and Wendy plan to create a Facebook page for the club in the near future.
How to Be Happy
Dana says the path to happiness applies to all ages and genders.
“I think it’s whatever resonates for you at this point in your life,” she explains. “One way is to be really intentional about what you choose to focus on, because what you choose to focus on dictates your reality. So whether you’re having a good day or a crappy day more often than not has to do with what you choose to focus on in that moment. You can have everything going on that’s very positive in your life, but if you’re focusing on that one thing that’s causing you anxiety or stress, or you’re focusing on the news or whatever, that’s going to dictate how you’re feeling that day and ultimately the actions that you take.”
Making gratitude lists, whether mentally or on paper, is a popular recommendation, but Dana says not to stop there.
“I like to tell people to take it a step further—focus on what you’re grateful for and then, what was your role in making that thing happen? Because if you think about it, everything with the exception of it being gorgeous out today—we had nothing to do with that—but everything else, you had something to do with it. So if you had a great interaction with somebody today, or if something went well in your job today, or whatever it is, there’s something you did that allowed for that, and I think it’s really important to acknowledge that.”
Dana also recommends investing time in the relationships that matter the most to us.
“The number-one determinant of people that are happy, and there’s so many studies that show this, people that are happier have relationships that feed them and that they cherish, and it doesn’t need to be a lot of friendships. But to have some relationships in your life that are very positive and that you’re grateful for, to invest time in those relationships, to spend time with the people that you love and cherish, that’s a huge determiner (of happiness). And that, of course, was so difficult for so many people during COVID.”
Madison to Madison
Some of the people who matter most to Dana include her husband Dave and their sons, UConn junior Zach, Columbia University sophomore Mikey, and Daniel Hand senior Danny.
The family has lived in Madison for 17 years. Dana and Dave were college sweethearts at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and lived for a while in New York City. They moved to Madison, Connecticut, after friends decided to move here and recommended Dana and Dave check it out. Dana jokes that they went from Madison to Madison.
She recalls, “At the time, we were trying to think of where we wanted to move to raise our family, and I was like, ‘Well, it’s far away from New York City, but it’s called Madison, I’ll go check it out.’”
She adds, “We came here with kind of a two-year mindset, thinking, ‘If we like it we’ll stay, if we don’t we won’t,’” Dana says, “and we’ve loved it. We’ve raised our boys here and it’s been a beautiful place to raise a family.”
The family enjoys hiking and being outdoors and recently returned from a long trip that included visits to Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyons, and Arches national parks.
“We’re so grateful we’ve been able to create and to experience with our family going to these unbelievably beautiful places,” Dana says.
They also like bringing their sons to their old stomping grounds of New York City.
“I think probably because Dave and I lived in New York City for so long, it’s also been wonderful to bring our kids into New York City over the years,” she says. “I feel like they all have a real comfort level there and they kind of consider it a city that they all love. We just love exploring the different neighborhoods but also exploring foods from different parts of the world.”
Camp Reinvention
Dana and her business partner, Wendy, have a passion for helping other women. They joined forces to start Camp Reinvention in January 2020, a program that helps women overhaul their lives to whatever degree they desire.
Dana describes it as “a community for women that are 50 and older who are eager to break that stereotype about what it means to be getting older and to be super intentional about creating a second half of their life that they’re excited about.”
The inaugural six-month session kicked off with a retreat at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York.
“It was such an incredible program and we had really, really great feedback,” Dana says. “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we gotta keep this up, we got something great here.’ So we immediately signed up for the next two retreat dates and then COVID happened. So, like many people, we pivoted and we decided to start Camp Reinvention Online and we created the pilot program with about 70 women.”
She says, “We take the women through a really intense process for all that internal head work that we need to do to get clear on what it is we want to create in our life, to let go of the stuff that doesn’t serve us, to move past all those limiting beliefs and the stuff that we have in our head, and now that we know what we want to create in our life, to really be proactive, to be very intentional about creating an action plan that allows you to move forward on a consistent basis towards what it is you’re creating in your life.”
Dana also thinks it’s important “to have fun along the way and to remember that we deserve to play and to have wonder and awe and to take care of ourselves.”
Crash Course
This fall, Dana and Wendy are launching an intensive version of their program, called a Camp Reinvention Success Accelerator focused on career change.
“We do our Camp Reinvention process in a very intense boot camp kind of way over 12 weeks, and during that same 12 weeks we’re bringing in experts that teach the hard skills,” she says.
There will be two learning tracks, Dana says: “One track is for people that want to find a new job, and the other track is for people that want to start a side gig or start a business.”
Experts for the new job track will advise participants about topics including LinkedIn, creating a résumé for the digital era, interviewing, networking, and avoiding ageism in the workplace.
“If you’re around 50 or older, it is a little more challenging,” she says. “Things have changed, and it is different now, looking for a job in this kind of digital era.”
Experts for the business track will advise participants on topics like the legalities of starting a business, what they need to do (and don’t need to do) in the first 90 days of starting a business, promoting on social media, developing a website, pitching to the media, and engaging in public relations.
“Between the internal mindset stuff and all these experts that are teaching the hard skills, it’s a really robust program,” Dana says.”
The pandemic caused many people to rethink what they want from their lives and to re-evaluate their careers, she points out.
“I think COVID was kind of a collective reset button, where so many of us have just asked ourselves, ‘What is really important to me?’ I think work now can look different and the work-life balance can look different, and I think so many people are just reassessing and asking, ‘What is it that I want?’” she says. “The life that you lived so far does not need to dictate the life you live in the future. You can change gears at anytime.”
Learn more about Camp Reinvention at www.campreinvention.com. Learn more about the Madison Happiness Club and contact Dana at www.danahilmer.com.