First, why do our tools work?
To understand why our tools work, you need to understand three premises:
1
Human brains are predisposed to focus on the negative.
This is how we evolved and was originally designed to keep us safe in a hostile world.
2
Human brains change. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change throughout our lives.
In short, we can teach our brains to focus on the positive.
3
Small efforts yield big rewards. The amount of effort given does not proportionately relate to the result received.
If you take just 2 minutes a day for yourself, you can yield big results.
The founder of Take 2 Minutes, Marc S Fussell (), is an entrepreneurial technologist with over 25 years of experience. Marc has worked for many large corporations and small start-ups. Marc has worked in every area of I.T. throughout his career.
There are a few events that all happened around the same timeframe in 2015/2016 that led to the creation of Take 2 Minutes. Notably, Marc's older son was struggling a bit in high school. To help,
Marc began texting positive and loving messages to his son around Noon each day. Marc is a developer by nature; thus, he automated this process a bit. Marc realized that most of his positive and
loving thoughts were coming to him during the early morning hours of 5 AM, while Marc was either on his yoga mat or meditating. There are better times to text a high schooler than this early-morning time.
So, Marc wrote a program allowing him to note his thoughts and at Noon send the message automatically. As Marc developed a library of positive, loving, and happy thoughts, he had a couple of other
friends and family members who wanted to receive them. So, Marc added the ability to join a distribution list. This small application eventually became the first version of Take 2 Minutes, named Love Co.
Around this same timeframe, each morning while dropping his younger son off at school, Marc told his son, "Love, love, love, love, love; it is all about love. Make today your best day." and shared a positive
thought with his son.
Then, one day at a small local shop, the employee talked to Marc about the positive message they had received from Love Co. When suddenly, a stranger in line behind Marc exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, I get your messages too!"
At that time, Marc went home to look at his distribution list, which he assumed to be 10-15 people, to learn that over 200 people were receiving his daily positive messages. It was then that Marc realized he needed to
do more to help spread positivity and help people with happiness.
Marc began to look for ways to expand his application and help more people. In 2018, through a mutual friend, Marc made an acquaintance to a renown doctor of psychology who introduced Marc to the field of positive psychology.
New to Marc, the field of positive psychology has become a serious and well-respected area of study over the past 40 years, with significant data validating many of the solutions that have been created. This opened up a
world of ideas around positive education tools. Tools that focus not only on overcoming stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts but also on building life skills, including grit, optimism, resilience, growth mindset, engagement,
and mindfulness. Marc immediately began building Take 2 Minutes.
The first version of Take 2 Minutes was officially launched on November 11th of 2019. No where near as robust as today, the initial launch included basic information about the company, team, and goals available on the website;
the ability for new users to signup for positive messages; and the ability for existing users to login to edit profile settings.
Our brains focus on the negative to keep us safe in a hostile world. However, we can change this behavior. You can teach your brain to focus on positive things. Through the research of many people we can understand that the amount of
effort given to this process does not proportionately relate to the result received. Because of this, we are simply encouraging you to Take 2 Minutes a day for yourself. From this minimal amount of time, you can yield big results through consistency.
The tools developed at Take 2 Minutes have been created and designed to help you do this.
As of this writing, Take 2 Minutes has many tools to help you and has managed multiple focus groups to validate the effectiveness of the activities and tweak the activities. The tools have matured over time. For instance, Marc
learned that not everyone who wants to practice gratitude journaling is able to simply start because some people are better at editing ideas given to them. Meaning, some people have the ability to simply sit down and think of things
for which they are grateful; however, other people need a push or idea to help them get started. From this learning came the Gratitude Challenge activity.
You can learn about all of our activities here.
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