Creating a Happy Family is an Investment
Family relationships can be some of the most challenging and most rewarding relationships in our lives. When relationships at home are going well, we feel much happier and better equipped to endure stressful situations in other parts of our lives. What better way to increase our overall happiness than to invest in happiness in our family relationships?
Here are 5 tips for creating and increasing happy family relationships that you can start doing right now. Each of these things takes only a minute or two to do. Try them all. See how they improve your family’s overall happiness.
1. Create Opportunities to Express Gratitude
Set up a bowl or jar with some scraps of paper beside it. Each day, perhaps just before dinner, ask family members to write down something they are thankful for. Periodically—such as when the bowl gets full, as part of your New Year’s celebration, etc.—read the thankfulness notes together as a family.
This creates opportunities for you to hear what’s meaningful in your family members’ lives. It also means you get to relive those positive moments together.
2. Give Positive Feedback Often
Everyone loves feeling appreciated and knowing they did a good job or that something they did was special to you. Make a point to compliment the people in your family when they do something helpful or good.
Relationship Tip: If you’re noticing a lot more conflict than usual in your home, try this. Suspend all criticism for two weeks. Don’t say anything critical, and instead focus on pointing out the good things your family members are doing. Be specific and genuine. See what happens after two weeks.
3. Display Pictures from Family Events Around the House
Frame that picture of the fish you caught while you were on the lake with your son. Hang the one of you with your daughters at the zoo on the refrigerator. Print the picture of you and your partner at the top of a hike and put it on your dresser. Use a digital frame to scroll through multiple experiences. You can even add new pictures over WiFi with some types of digital frames.
Posting these pictures where you can see them in your home means that as you go about your normal routines, you see images that remind you of those positive moments with your family, and you feel happier.
4. Create Electronics-Free Zones
This might mean no phones, TV or other devices at the dinner table, or no phones or devices for the first ten minutes in the car. Use the time to talk to each other. Ask open-ended questions. Listen without always expecting to have a chance to respond.
5. Eat Together Regularly
For some families, gathering around the dinner table every night is impossible with everyone’s varied schedules, and that’s okay! But it doesn’t have to mean that you never have the opportunity to gather over a meal together.
Try crafting at least one regular meal time each week when you can be together. My family eats together on Sundays and I look forward to this moment to reconnect.
If dinners aren’t possible, what about having breakfast together every Saturday or Sunday? Or perhaps lunch once a week?
Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. The important thing is to have repeated times together where you get to connect with family members in a positive way. Eating together is a simple way to do that. No matter what else we’re up to in our lives, we all have to eat, right?
Make These Happiness Boosters Your Own
Feel free to take these happiness tips and adapt them to best suit your lifestyle and relationships. The important thing is to continue to invest in your family relationships in positive ways that promote happiness in each member. Instead of a gratitude jar, you begin a family meal by each sharing something positive that happened during your day or week. Find the method that works best for you, and keep doing it!
For more tips on increasing your happiness, check out our post on giving the gift of experiences.
Get More Tips on Happiness in Relationships
You can learn more about how to bring greater happiness to your relationships in my book, 21 Days to Happiness, which teaches 21 happiness habits you can practice daily for a boost to not only your happiness, but your energy and productivity as well! Chapter 19 of my book gives more tips and ideas for crafting a happy family life. Check it out and let me know what helped you!
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.
Benefits of Employee Appreciation
We all crave appreciation, even when we already know we’ve done a job well. When is the last time a coworker or boss showed appreciation for what you do? Do you remember how it made you feel?
In the 1940s, Lawrence Lindahl conducted a study on employee motivation. The results may surprise you. During the study, supervisors and their employees were asked, “What motivates an employee?”
The number one answer was “appreciation for a job well done.”
This is pretty amazing for a number of reasons. One is that appreciation is free! Motivating an employee doesn’t always need to come from bonuses or pay increases. Simply noticing a good job and offering praise can be a huge motivator.
You might be thinking that our culture and workplace culture may have changed since the 1940s. It was a long time ago, that’s true. But these study results have been replicated in multiple studies since then. Time and time again, employees have made it clear that hearing a leader show appreciation makes a huge difference in morale and happiness at work.
Here are the 5 Ideas to Create an Atmosphere of Employee Appreciation
- Be an Appreciation Role Model. Compliment a team member in front of others. This both boosts the morale of the employee you’re complimenting and communicates to others that showing appreciation is something they can do, too.
- Give Regular Coaching Feedback. Be a coach and let people know that you want to help them perform and succeed. Try making suggestions, instead of criticizing. We all prefer recommendations instead of people told what we should and shouldn’t do!
- Give Immediate Praise on a Job Well Done. The closer the reward happens to the behavior that triggered it, the more powerful the association between the good behavior and the reward will be. Make sure to show appreciation as soon as possible so that an employee connects those positive feelings with the job they did well. This will increase their motivation even more. On the spot positive feedback is the trend now! Forget about waiting for annual review. Remember to “catch them doing something right” as recommended in the classic must read: The One Minute Manager.
- Send a Thank You Message When You Notice Someone Doing a Good Job. Having an encouraging message, note or email gives your team member a tangible reminder of your appreciation they can revisit again later.
- Make appreciation part of your daily routine. Set aside a few minutes each day show appreciation…whether it’s to jot a quick note or to simply connect with an employee or team member who’s doing a great job.
Appreciation Doesn’t Need Bells and Whistles
The most effective kind of appreciation is sincere and unstructured. Resist the temptation to create some sort of complicated employee appreciation program or tie words of appreciation with other incentives, like bonus programs. Those other ways of saying thank you are great for other purposes, but if you want your employees to receive the best benefits—and feel the most motivation—from your appreciation, keep it simple and genuine.
Get more insight on employee motivation and appreciation in our post on Performance Management.
More Insight on Employee Motivation
Another way to build a connected team is to discover what motivates each of your team members. The Career Values Scale test will help you understand each employee’s key motivations, values, preferences, and needs. Taking the test together also provides a great team-building activity. Try the test and reap the rewards of boosting your team’s effectiveness based on their individual personalities.
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
The words EMPATHY and empathetic leadership are gaining more traction as essential components of high performing organizations. What does it mean for employees, leaders, and organizations? Does it really matter and why should they or we care?
Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s experience, feelings, and point of view. As a leadership style, empathetic leaders draw on empathy to understand their team’s or people’s situations, as well as what they are going through so they can offer support and help. Interactions based on empathy, can build trust, encourage honesty, and deepen connections between people. However, there is a subtle nuance here; empathy is about the ability to comprehend other people’s situation and not how you would feel or react in their situation.
Why it matters
Empathy matters because people are not robots and what works to motivate one person is not what is going to work with someone else. Organizations, teams, employees, or people in general are individual human beings with unique needs, wants, feelings, and motivations. In other words, no one person is the same as another and as such no one person will respond in the same way as anyone else to situations, demands, or stress.
Why we should care
Empathy can make the difference between so-so or good results and great results at work. Simply put, showing empathy toward those we lead or work with can start us all on the road of understanding each other better. Understanding what drives us, challenges us, and motivates us can deepen our connections to one another and open the gateway to better, happier, effective, and more productive work (and personal) lives. If you develop and show empathy for everyone involved in your organization and teams, and you’ll likely have leaders and a workforce that feels valued, included, and driven to help you and your organization succeed.
There is good news! Empathy can be developed and practiced. Whether empathy comes naturally to you and or it’s miles out of your comfort zone, there are a few easy foundational best practices that everyone can immediately start employing and potentially reap big benefits.
Three Basic Steps to Developing your Empathy:
Step 1 Listening: This is not a revolutionary concept. Real listening happens with more than just our ears. When we really pay attention to what someone else is saying to us, we listen with our mind, heart, and gut. What is the person really saying? What are they really feeling? What is really going through their mind? If you don’t know, ask!
Step 2 Stay Curious and really care: Ask questions. Be interested in what the other person is saying. Assume positive intentions; you’ll probably be right about 90% of the time. They could offer up important information that could impact the rest of the team or even the organization. If possible, avoid “Why” questions, which can put people on the defensive or make them feel judged. Try “What” or “How” instead. Some examples, “What can you tell me….” What else?”
Step 3 Honesty and Transparency: We can’t expect honesty and transparency from others if we don’t practice it ourselves. This doesn’t mean unloading all your fears or gripes about something on the other person but remain honest about what is in your power to do or not in your power to do about a situation.
Empathy is an essential piece of any leader’s toolbox. Used appropriately and most importantly sincerely when talking to or coaching others, it is the springboard to more productivity, creativity, harmony, employee retention and better performance in the workplace. One of my favorite thought leaders, Simon Sinek says:
“We must all try to empathize before we criticize. Ask someone what’s wrong before telling them they are wrong.”
Imagine the problems or challenges that could be solved with that simple concept!
Empathy can offer up those tiny breadcrumbs of information that lead to a world of understanding and learning about the people we work with and they with you.
Pat Rothenberger
Certified Coach – Trainer – KCC Partner
January 2022
If you’re a creative person, a pack rat, a shopper or a collector, minimalist living and the idea that fewer things equals greater happiness may feel impossible to you. It doesn’t have to be! And you don’t have to be a true minimalist in order to decrease the amount of possessions you own and increase your happiness.
Who’s in Charge Here?
If you’ve seen the movie Fight Club, you may remember the scene in which Tyler Durden talks about the paradox of owning things. “The things you own,” he says, “end up owning you.”
It’s especially easy to feel this in our lives when things aren’t going well. For example, when something breaks can mean having to take time to find someone to fix it and then squeeze extra funds from our budget to cover the costs of repairs. Even maintaining and cleaning out stuff can end up making us feel like a slave to our things because we of the time it takes to care for them.
Do you have things that sit gathering dust, or memberships that are going unused? Are you working extra hours or skipping other activities because your budget is tied to paying for things you’re not even using?
Evaluate Your Needs and Hobbies
Take a moment and try to look at your home the way an outsider would see it. Think like a minimalist as you walk room to room. What items do you rarely or never use? What things do you never have time to clean, take care of, or enjoy?
Think of Marie Kondo as you walk through your home and look at what you have. Do these things bring you joy? Or have they become a burden in some way?
Sometimes things represent a guilt burden as well as a financial one. If you feel a twinge in your chest every time you walk past the treadmill you’re not using, it’s probably time to come up with a different approach to your fitness. Guilt isn’t an effective exercise! Get rid of the treadmill and find a fitness opportunity that energizes or excites you instead.
Take Time to Divest Yourself of Unused Things
Take ownership of your things and decide what you really need. What’s taking up too much space? What’s eating up your budget that you simply don’t need or use anymore?
Evaluate options besides ownership. If you love to go out on a jet ski but only find time for it a few days of the year, it may be more cost effective for you to rent one for those days when you go out on the water. That way the burden of caring for, maintaining, insuring, and storing the jet ski doesn’t fall on you, and you can be sure you’re only spending money on a jet ski when you’re actually using one!
Create a place for items you’re ready to donate, like a box in your garage. Get into the habit of actually giving away items. It may help to schedule a donation day for yourself, such as the first Saturday of every month. Not only will this create space, peace and freedom in your life, but you will be making someone else happy!
Continue to evaluate your needs on a regular basis. Remember, your things should be making your life better. If they aren’t, it’s time to start looking at them differently. Don’t let your things own you. Change your approach.
Remember “Less is more!” Minimalism means something different to every one; there are no rules. It can be a gradual process or you can be more motivated and get rid of a lot…you decide!
More on Happiness and Giving Things Away
Looking for more tips on minimalist living or de-cluttering your home? Check out chapter 4 in my book, 21 Days to Happiness, in which I share my tips for living a happier life with fewer possessions.
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” – Albert Einstein
Think about children for a minute. They’re naturally curious, imaginative, and always learning, always looking for new experiences and information. They know what they want, and they chase after it wholeheartedly. Does you hear your childhood self in this description at all?
There are a lot of good things about “being an adult: the knowledge and experience we gained, knowing what we want and don’t want, the discipline to stick through a task even when we don’t feel like finishing it. Those are things kids aren’t so good at doing. But what about the benefits we’ve lost? Where did that natural curiosity and that vivid eagerness go?
Many motivational experts like to say that leaders are made, not born. I believe we are all natural born leaders, but some of us have been deprogrammed along the way. As children, we were natural leaders – curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; and we often had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?
No, Don’t, Can’t
As children, we heard the words, no, don’t, and can’t over and over again. We had to sit silently in classes at school, listening while a teacher lectured on math, history, and grammar. Boundaries are a great thing for kids, and education is important. But they don’t foster curiosity or inspire us to ask hard questions or to seek information beyond what we’re given, and those things are an essential part of a great leader.
Recapture Childhood Curiosity
To be a great leader, one of the things we need to do is unharness that curiosity we had as a kid. We need to give ourselves permission to ask questions, to not only think outside the box, but also to ask questions without easy answers.
Give yourself permission to not know the answers. Ask for help. Consult the experts. Educate yourself. Seek new knowledge and information and give your team permission to do the same. Your openness and willingness to be wrong or to learn new things will give them confidence and inspire them to do the same. No one likes working for someone who thinks they know everything and are right all the time.
So unleash your inner child. Tune out your fears and tune into your curiosity. Embrace the journey toward greater knowledge. Let it transform your leadership capabilities.
Tools for Success
If you’re interested in learning more about how to maximize your leadership impact, you need to try our leadership assessment and development tool, the DISC (What’s Your Color?) Leadership Assessment. Take the test today and get your personalized report detailing your leadership strengths and weaknesses as well as exercises and development plans to help you gain the greatest increase in leadership performance.
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.
More Work Doesn’t Equal More Productivity
According to the American Dream Project, the average American works between 43 and 51 hours per week. That’s a lot of hours! One key question to consider as you plan your own workweek is, are you getting the best productivity from your work schedule? Does working extra hours actually make us more productive? The truth is, it doesn’t. In fact, the United States is ranked 5th in productivity behind countries like Norway, Belgium, and Ireland. Yet people in those countries work fewer hours than we do. So, how do we make our working hours more productive?Work Time Versus Productive Time
Here are some interesting facts to consider:- The average person is only productive 5 hours a day, yet our average workday is 8 hours, or more!
- Fewer people take breaks and vacations than ever before, which means people spend more time working than in past decades.
- Working more means feeling more exhausted, which also decreases productivity.
Why Do We Work So Much?
North Americans tend to have a higher living standard than some other countries. A lot of this comes from convenience spending, which is largely driven by our long workdays. But having more things and having easier access to food and entertainment don’t actually promote happier or more productive lives. Instead, those things can be a kind of escapism. We work hard, we’re tired, so we buy ourselves a treat—a fancy prepared dinner or a new outfit—rather than treating our bodies and minds to the things we really need, like rest and companionship.Happiness Equals Productivity
Want to know how you can maximize your productivity while decreasing your stress? The answer might surprise you. Happiness! Taking time to invest in your happiness has a significant impact on your productivity at work. According to the Great Place to Work Institute, the companies with the happiest employees are also the most productive. Happy people have more energy, are more resilient, and suffer from fewer health problems. In other words, taking regular breaks and limiting your work time so that you allow yourself to rest and spend time with people you love actually makes you a better, more productive worker.Try This For Increased Productivity
Set a timer on your phone to remind you to take regular breaks at work. While on your break, go outside and take deep breaths. Focus on a distant object or building to let your eyes rest, especially if you work on a computer. Listen to a favorite song or watch a funny video on YouTube. Get your mind away from your work for a few minutes. When you return to work, notice how your body feels. Do you feel more awake? Do you have more energy? Is your focus sharper?More on Breaks and Happiness
For more information on how to improve your productivity by using breaks and managing your time to boost happiness in your life, check out chapters 15 “Take a Break: Life is Not a Race” and 17 “Time: Harness Your Most Precious Resource” of my book, 21 Days to Happiness. Each chapter takes just a few minutes to read and focuses on one key happiness habit to help you achieve greater happiness, energy and productivity in your life. Ingrid Kelada Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert KCC Inc.
A good leader provides constant motivation to his/her team to help them maintain excellence and quality in results. A good leader always looks for ways to improve efficiency and quality, especially if this can be done by simplifying processes or without increasing an employee’s workload. Here are some skills you can sharpen to boost your leadership skills and help your team be more effective and increase results.
1-Wander Around
Do you remember M.B.W.A. aka Management By Wandering Around? It’s still the best, even if it’s a “virtual MBWA”. Observation often gets neglected due the demands on a leader’s time and schedule. Find ways to schedule regular visits to your team’s work environment into your calendar. If your office is nearby, try blocking out a few minutes before or after lunch to walk through and check on your team. If you’re far away from your team, stay connected and use technology like video calls. Also, when possible travel to their location and spend time working with them on a regular basis.
When you visit, notice workflow and ask questions. Is everything going okay? Does everyone understand what they’re working on? If not, who is the best person to assist them?
Observing employees work procedures and the work flow is foundational to implementing adjustments and improving results. To have credibility, a leader must be seen and trusted to be up to date with what is happening in the work place.
2-Feedback and Praise
Fair monitoring helps keep the ship on course and gives employees confidence when expectations are clear. Give feedback regularly, especially when things are going well. It’s easy to fall into the trap of only confronting an employee when there’s a problem. Regular praise and feedback help raise employee morale. Everyone likes to feel appreciated.
Do your best to provide quick individual assessments on a regular basis. Think of the time and energy you spend on feedback as a direct investment in your team. Set goals with your team and any leaders who work with you. Make sure everyone understands the role they play in reaching those goals.
3-Demonstrate Working Knowledge and Expertise
Have you ever seen the show Undercover Boss? One common theme that runs through each episode is the way the leaders have become detached from the actual workings of their businesses. They may have lost touch with how difficult the job can be or may have inadvertently implemented policies or procedures which actually make the average worker’s job harder while not providing adequate compensation for the changes.
Good leaders stay connected to their workers. If you do not possess the expertise and knowledge needed for tasks employees regularly complete, consult them regularly and LISTEN. This is important in order to maintain an accurate and informed overall picture of the business.
4-Ability to Anticipate
To keep on the cutting edge in business, it’s vital to be open and curious about upcoming trends. While managing the present to ensure ongoing excellence, a good leader also looks towards the future. Conducting and evaluating research is an important way of planning and being prepared for the future. What new technology is emerging that may impact work processes? Are there new tools that can be implemented to simplify our work? Is there a need for new software or hardware to address a specific problem? Keeping one eye on now and one on the future will help ensure that your team continually becomes more successful and efficient.
Remember this: excellent leadership is always proactive rather than reactive. By developing these four management skills, a good leader is on the journey to becoming a great leader.
More Tools to Develop Your Management Skills
Another great tool to use to unlock your full leadership potential is the WPI Leadership Test. This test helps you determine key factors in your personality which you can leverage for great leadership. The results are specifically tailored to your personality, so you can see what to do—and stop doing—to make your leadership the best it can be.
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.
What do You do When Feel Unhappy?
Everyone has days when they feel down. What do you find helps you on those gloomy days? Do you go out for a meal? Maybe see a new movie? Visit a friend? Take a walk? Do you get a buzz from jogging or going to the gym?
Maybe you find it energizing to go shopping. Or perhaps you treat yourself to an ice tea with friends to overcome your unhappiness.
We all have our preferred methods to shake off a dreary day. Sometimes those things are enough to make us feel better in the moment. But science tells us something interesting about achieving real happiness.
Right now, scientists are in the process of showing us how happiness can only come to us through internal change and positive daily habits. Other things might lift our moods for the moment, and that’s not a bad thing to do. But real, lasting happiness doesn’t come from keeping up with the latest movies or sharing a round of cocktails or beer with friends.
Learn Meditation as a Happiness Habit
Consider the research by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin and Jon Kabat-Zinn from the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre.
The study involved 41 stressed, but otherwise healthy, individuals working in a biotechnology firm in Wisconsin. 25 participants were taught mindful meditation, in which you focus on what you’re experiencing in the present moment, such as emotions, thoughts, and other sensations. The group of 25 met for a few hours each week to learn mindful meditation. Each member of the group was also asked to meditate at home using a guided meditation for one hour per day. Then after six weeks of training, all attended a meditation retreat.
The other 16 were held as a control group and did not receive meditation training until the study was completed.
After eight weeks, researchers collected data on brain function in areas that activate when we feel positive and happy. The results confirmed that the participants who were taught meditation had increased brain function in these areas as well as a measurable boost in their immune systems.
Not only did using their minds help these study subjects feel happier, it also helped their bodies become healthier, too!
Not for You? Try this!
You think meditation is not for you? You’ve tried it a few times and it didn’t work for you? You’ve read the research but you are just too busy or active? That’s what I thought, and then I learned that there are many ways to meditate. If you can breathe, you can meditate! I have explored different ways of meditating that fit with my “excited” personality and my favorite is walking meditation. I even have downloaded a guided walking meditation app from here.
You can learn more on how to increase happiness in my book, 21 Days to Happiness. Chapter 18 guides you through setting up your own simple daily meditation practice. Try it today!
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.
Did you know that…
“Studies show that 70% – 80% of change initiatives in organizations fail” -John Kotter
As an organizational psychologist, I can tell you that this alarming failure rate is often attributed to the human factor! Here are 3 classical myths that I frequently deal with in my practice.
Myth #1 – It is important to communicate the information in groups
Several organizations formulate a communications plan and focus on presenting the changes in information sessions to employees. The goal is to deliver the same message to all employees so they can hear it at the same time and in the same way, minimizing misinterpretations and rumors.
Warning!! This often has the opposite effect. Within a group, many people avoid speaking and asking questions. I often say “after every meeting, there’s a meeting … it’s the real meeting … the bosses are not invited and employees really say what they think! “
What to do? Alternate your modes of communication: large groups, small groups, and individual meetings.
Myth #2 – Focus on the benefits of change
It is clear that it is important to present the reasons that motivated our organization to implement the change as well as the benefits deriving from the change. We want this to be positive, right?
Warning!! Managing change is not about selling. If we talk too much about the positive without addressing the obstacles and potential difficulties, we give the impression of not understanding or care about the impacts and people will be suspicious.
What to do? Present a realistic portrait from the start. There are always pros and cons associated with a decision; if you are aware of these, then they must be pointed out. Solutions can be found by working collaboratively.
Myth #3 – We must organize meetings when we have NEW information to share
We all know that organizing follow-up meetings while implementing change is important. Often, we wait for new information to share before organizing a meeting so that the communication is relevant and value-added.
Warning!! The less we communicate in times of change, the less we manage the information. Every day, people are discussing the changes. If we do not plan for frequent dialogue, disinformation and rumors will take over.
What to do? Schedule periodic meetings and hold them regardless…whether there is something new to discuss or not. If we cancel a meeting because we are waiting for answers or because there is not much new to discuss … people will worry. It is better to have short frequent regular meetings and ask people to share where they are, their successes, obstacles, etc.
Looking for More Leadership Tools?
Get started today with our Leadership Assessment and Development Tool, a test which will help you maximize your leadership impact. The test reveals your strengths and weaknesses and then provides you with a focused development plan, including exercises, which will lead to huge increases in performance. Invest in your leadership potential by taking the test today!
Creativity or Problem-solving
One of the amazing things about humans is our constant endeavor to create or improve things. When we are inspired to create something, we demonstrate our passions or talents. When we run into a problem, we want to fix it and come up with a solution. These days it’s not unusual to complain about something and hear someone say in response, “There’s an app for that!”.
Whether we are trying to express our creativity or simply improve our lives, coming up with something new seems to make us happy!
Inventions are all around us. From books and music to sports and games to comfort items to technological gadgets aimed at making life simpler. Someone created every one of them!
Any form of creativity is enough to fill us with happiness. Think of the joy that comes from cooking a special meal, decorating your office, coming up with a tool for your job or playing a song. The creator enjoys this happiness that comes from the pride of putting in the effort and seeing the final result.
Creating is great, sharing is better
But the joy goes far beyond the creator. We feel happiness and wonder when we see an amazing photograph or a winning touchdown. Creating something is an incredible way to share joy with the people around you and to fill your own life with happiness, too.
Each day, develop the habit of noticing created things, from complex tools like the internet to the simple necessities so easily taken for granted, like a doorknob. Celebrate the examples of artwork or inventions you pass in your day to day life. Maybe you spot a magazine on the table with a great cover, hear a great song at the coffee shop or a colleague just shared something to improve things at work.
What Can You Create?
We live in an amazing world, and when we remember that, it helps boost our happiness and sense of wonder. And as part of the human race, that ability to create resides in all of us. What sorts of things are you good at creating? Maybe you’re good at cooking or organizing. Perhaps you’re a great fisherman, handy with your hands or gifted at spontaneous one-line jokes. Celebrate your talents and share them with others around you. Here’s one final thought to leave you with:
“The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile”—Bertrand Russell.
BE HAPPY!
Looking for more happiness tips? Check out chapter 20 in my book, 21 Days to Happiness, in which I share how to use your talents at work to boost your happiness. You can also find out more on the power of creativity in chapter 2 which teaches how music affects our happiness.
Ingrid Kelada
Business Psychologist/Happiness Expert
KCC Inc.