Articles

curaJOY Organizes Global Emotional Wellness Directory For Underserved Communities

curaJOY launches a free emotional wellness directory that gives marginalized communities access to global mental health providers and evidence-based methods. Nonprofit developer of the family emotional wellness platform Quest Depot, curaJOY, is launching its global emotional wellness directory, ensuring that Asian Pacific Islander, multicultural, cross-cultural, and third-world adults and children have access to inclusive and effective health care that caters to their specific needs. More details can be found at https://www.curajoy.org curaJOY’s newly launched directory aligns with the company's vision to drive greater advocacy, acceptance, and innovation of emotional wellness programs for families across different cultures. The nonprofit investigates barriers to care for families with children and adolescents in emotional distress. The most frequently reported obstacles include limited financial resources, time constraints, cultural stigma, language barriers, lack of family support, and insufficient parental awareness of mental health and developmental issues. According to the latest research, Asian Pacific Islander adults are... Read more

Why can’t everybody just be more like me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16H64-l_7Lw I recently just finally got to watching the Galaxy of the Guardian series with my daughters. And one of them asks why the character Ego wants to destroy everything and make plans after himself. As parents, we often have to answer difficult questions on the spot. I said, “Haven’t we all gone through moments where we think–if everyone in the world were more like me, life would be so much easier?” In psychological terms, this is called the theory of mind and refers to the ability to acknowledge different perspectives and know that your mindset might not be shared by those around you—and doesn’t need to be. Theory of mind is an innate potential ability people may reach, to different effectiveness, over time by observing others and testing out their social assumptions. This is a situation where variety IS really the spice of life, and exposure to different perspectives... Read more

Write The Soundtrack of Your Life

When you’re sad, mad, frustrated…, it can be hard to tell what will make you feel better. Maybe you want someone who will just listen without being too nosy, or you might tell yourself distractions like ice cream or TV will soothe, but sometimes, what we really need is time alone to write. This article gives you some tips on how to use writing as a self-care tool. Throughout my life, I have often used writing as a tool to work through difficulties, make better decisions, and express myself more fully and honestly than I could talking in person. Shrek was right! People are like onions, covered under layers of expectations, fears, past traumas, pretenses… The act of writing thoughts down is beneficial for a few reasons beyond just getting our thoughts out. When we write our thoughts and feelings down on paper, it gives us a chance to pause... Read more

Who doesn’t procrastinate?

I am too busy.I am too tired.I don't have the energy.I am too scared.I don't know where to start. These are the most common excuses people use when they procrastinate—delay doing what they need to do. How many of these have you personally used? According to the American Psychological Association, almost 80% of the people surveyed admit to lying to themselves about the reasons they put off doing things. So, who doesn’t procrastinate? The short answer is--nobody. You’re human, and nobody is productive 100% of the time. But some people have allowed procrastination to thoroughly pervade their lives so much that they don’t realize how much of this non-renewable resource they’re losing. Whatever kind of future, lifestyle, quest you seek, you need time to achieve mastery and time to make it stick. Procrastination is often confused with laziness or plain lack of self-discipline. The truth is that people who... Read more

Shining Moments Writing Contest Winner Announced

Congratulations to Colin Witkowskic, who is the winner of our Spring Shining Moments Writing Contest. We've been trying to reach you to regarding your winner's prize, but your schools email account has been rejecting external emails. Please get in touch with us or ask a parent to email us at info@curaJOY.com so we can deliver your $100!

A person in need

A few months ago, I was consoling a friend who had recently lost all her companions, been shunned out of school, and had rumors spread about them for just being themselves. Since COVID-19 quarantine was still going on, we could only communicate through text. She was thinking of suicide and I was just there, peppering her with reasons why she shouldn't go, constantly spamming her phone until she would text back to reassure me this was okay. I felt her pain through the blue screen, though I couldn't hear her sobs. After an hour, she gradually calmed down. After my mother had brought up her website's new contest, Shining Moments, I decided to enter this story in with her permission.

15 habits of incredibly happy people

While happiness is defined by the individual, I’ve always felt it foolish to declare that nothing can be learned from observing the happiness of others. Examining how to be happy is benefited from observing the patterns of others, and then taking only what you find useful. Inspiration is the goal, not rigid rules on being happy. I’ve gone over dozens of research papers in the pursuit of learning more about the subject — happiness in work and life is a topic to take seriously, so I’m always on the hunt for inspiration and insight. Below I’ll cover a few of my favorite studies. 1. Think of Yourself Less Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Thoughtful words from C.S. Lewis, but do they equate to real life happiness? Our self-esteem is a bit of a tricky topic, because current research on self-esteem paints a very inconsistent picture: it seems that high self-esteem is... Read more

curaJOY taps into the power of partnerships and volunteerism for its new, innovative educational programs for developing emotional intelligence and social skills.

On a mission to provide personalized, available, and effective emotional wellness support for all families, curaJOY convenes top educators, psychologists and technologists to create an evidence-based program to help families regulate their emotions, overcome setbacks, and establish emotional resilience. The new program was developed for children aged 7-18 and their parents, and incorporates AI-driven algorithms and gamification to create a curriculum that is tailored to the individual needs of each family. More information can be found by visiting https://www.curajoy.org/join-us curaJOY was founded by Caitlyn Wang, a mother, business leader and psychoeducational expert, and was driven by her passion to develop effective tools for social-emotional learning in youth. She believes that by helping children improve their communication skills, develop empathy, and find balance in their lives, the organization can contribute to creating a new generation of successful adults. “We are changing the world, one child at a time,” says Wang. The isolation... Read more

Fail First To Win

In school, when teachers ask questions, many kids might know the answer, but are too shy or nervous or unsure of themselves to raise their hands, get the correct answer and begin the positive feedback loop for confidence by receiving affirmation from themselves and their community. On curaJOY's website, we discuss how children develop confidence. You can find the article here. Fear of failure is the enemy of confidence building because it stops children from overcoming obstacles and aiming for the edge of their comfort zone to grow. When I recorded a voice memo to remind myself of this blog topic in the car, my daughters in the backseat overheard, and asked "are you telling people to try to fail?" The answer, of course, is no. We want to allow for failure when it does happen so that we have what it takes to always try our best. In karate,... Read more

Are Doors Opening For You?

Most people get the idea that your body is what you put into it--diet, exercise. Thus the endless waves of vegan, organic, keto, gluten-free… But you also get what you put into your work, your relationship, and your life! It starts with your mindset. When I first started out as a marketing manager, I yearned to get into sales and be where the money and action were! Unfortunately, at that time, the workplace was very gender-biased. it was a gender-biased workplace where girls were the support, creating, back office, and men were the sales, tech, and engineers. No opportunities were given to a rookie with no background in sales or accounting. The opportunity came for me in the form of a craphole bad collectibles. Every sales and accountant had tried to collect 385-days overdue account receivables amounting to $1.2 million USD. I VOLUNTEERED to sort out the mess. It was... Read more

QuestMates

In Quest Depot, QuestMates are our resident 3D embodied agents with advanced Natural Language Processing capabilities that converse with participants and teach via the Socratic method. Each QuestMate contains a wealth of social-emotional learning content, cognitive behavior techniques, but each has different personalities, appearances, gender, race, and age, and life stories. Participants’ interactions with QuestMates are personalized based on their age, communication style, chief concerns, quest performance, and mood. QuestMates offer users unlimited support and therapeutic conversations 24/7 online, via text and via major social media platforms.

Treasure Chest – Performance-based Rewards

Quest Depot’s payout rate is designed specifically to maximize motivation and facilitate behavior change. It’s also important to note that Quest Depot doesn’t require 100% success for full treasure chest award qualification. Perfectionism impedes long-term personal growth, and we value progress and effort towards the right direction in order to maximize our quester’s life potential. 94 - 100% = full payment + gamification points87-93% success rate = 90% awarded to quester + 3.5% fees to curaJOY + 7.5% credit back to the funding ally 76-86% success rate = 80% awarded to quester + 3.5% fees to curaJOY + 17.5% credit back to the funding ally65-75% success rate = 70% awarded to quester + 3.5% fees to curaJOY + 26.5% credit back to the funding ally 55-64% success rate = 35% awarded to quester + 3.5% fees to curaJOY + 62.5% credit back to the funding ally 54% and below = 0% awarded to... Read more

Journey Progress – Updating Your Progress

Questers are required to update their journey with a picture at least once a week. Their updates determine their quest performance scores, and there are systems in place to flag false submissions. Quest Depot users email, text, push notifications to remind users who forget to update and make it easy for users to update via our website, text, chat. Regular progress tracking keeps quests on the top of mind and retains the support of allies, making them feel involved. Questers may submit their Journey Progress to any QuestMate too. They’re given a 2-day grace period to update their progress. For example, if Johnny was supposed to practice the piano for 45 minutes on Monday, but forgot to update his Journey Progress, Quest Depot will remind him to submit his progress. Johnny has until the end of Wednesday to let Quest Depot know whether he completed his Grand Plan on... Read more

Thinking Outside of the Box Yourself for a Happier Life

Much of our own unhappiness and the world’s problems disappears when we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Everyone has a different story, and understanding their perspectives not only make you feel better about any situations (even upsetting ones) but improve your overall happiness. Babies start out in life completely egocentric, only aware of and concerned with their own needs, and slowly realize that the world does not only revolve around themselves. Children need empathy to cooperate, lead, communicate and make friends well. The Oxford dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation.” In other words, empathy starts with perspective-taking. How do you teach perspective-taking? For a skill to truly become an inner strength, it needs to be frequently reinforced, and what better way than planning skill practice into the fun... Read more

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