Center for Workplace Happiness

Welcome to Election Day 2023. Though the news today is largely about who’ll be which party’s candidate for Election Day 2024, did you know that what and whom you vote for today could be far more important to your daily life than the votes you cast a year from today?

What do you care about?

1. The quality of schools for your children, grandchildren, and your property value?
2. The quality of roads in your region?
3. The speed limit in your neighborhood?
4. The resources available for crime and fire prevention in your town?
5. What you pay for electricity, water, gas, health insurance, car insurance, property insurance, and property taxes?
6. If you live in a state that collects income tax, how your tax dollars are spent?
7. The types of subjects that are and are not taught in your schools?
8. The types of intoxicating substances that are allowed to be sold?
9. What else is legal, illegal, and how the laws are enforced at a city, county, and state level?
10. If you live in Virginia, Rhode Island, or...

Full disclosure – today’s post is just for fun. OK, you’re right – fun is important for team cohesion, stress relief, and for mental wellbeing, so today’s newsletter might be useful, too.

And it’s mainly for fun, and yes, there’s a prize involved!

Do you love Halloween? I love Halloween – always have. Mom made our costumes because she loved Halloween, too. My two brothers and I were all sorts of craziness as we headed off to school on costume day, and as soon as I was old enough, I helped Mom with the make-up and accessories. There was that one year when I was sent home because my I Dream of Jeanie outfit was deemed too risqué for 5^th grade, so I put on a pink t-shirt under the top, tucked it into the harem pants, and went right back and won a prize in the costume contest.

Fast-forward to adulthood, when Halloween got even more fun when the candy came with a side of adult beverages and semi-suggestive fun. (Yes, the leopard...

Our lives are filled with war. War in the mainstream media, war in the social media, and war in the everyday conversations. We don’t have to live in the war zone to be profoundly mentally affected by war.

The social-mediazation of war began with the war in the Ukraine and shows no signs of stopping in this new conflict. From the first attack at the music festival to right now, social media accounts have been showing pictures of things no one should ever see, spreading fake news, and passing off old videos as proof of their version of current events, creating confusion, fear, and despair.

All of this takes a toll on everyone. Everyone, not just Israelis, Pakistanis, Jews, Muslims, innocent people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, as well as combatants. Everyone, no matter how far away or how distantly aware of the events, is affected.

In the Time Before Social Media, the mainstream media had rules that were mostly upheld, and they existed for the physical and mental...

What do they do, these vet’s assistants?

They have the best job ever!

All day with kittens and puppies they play

Getting wags and kisses – so clever!

You’d almost pay to have their day

It just sounds so life-giving…

Vet technicians are almost magicians

Turning snuggles into a living!

What you don’t realize with those stars in your eyes

Kisses aren’t all they are getting.

Listen up, listen well – get a clue

And you’ll find out what techs really do!

Welcome to Veterinary Technician Week, a week that recognizes those who support veterinarians in caring for pets. There's a lot of misunderstanding about what vet techs do - let's clear that up, shall we?

Vet technicians – what people think they do:

1. Play with kittens and puppies all day
2. Assist the veterinarian with all the fun things they do
3. Play with kittens and puppies some more

Vet technicians – a partial list of what they really do:

1. Check on animals hospitalized overnight,...

Today is the day for an observance you probably don’t know about. By the end of this newsletter, I hope you’ll be planning ways to make this day a better one for you and those you love before October 10^th 2024. Today’s observance is all about something I work with veterinary teams to improve – mental wellbeing. Welcome to World Mental Health Day 2023.

First observed in 1992, there’s been a great need in our society for decades longer than that to eliminate the stigma around mental illness. When most of us were growing up, those with different mental abilities were considered “slow” or “nuts” or just plain “weird.” We’ve made a lot of progress as research has identified different mental diseases and conditions, instead of lumping everyone into the same category and “slow learner” classes in school.

Around the world, one in 8 people suffers some sort of mental illness or condition that sets them apart...

Quick – think back to your early school days – were you bullied or were you the bully? Yes, those are the only two choices I’m giving you.

“But wait,” you might be thinking, “I wasn’t the bully and I wasn’t bullied.” OK, I hear you. Did you know someone who was being bullied? Did you do anything about it? No? Then you assisted the bully, putting you on Team Bully.

This way of thinking about bullying may feel very harsh to you, and you’d be right. It is harsh. It’s unrealistic to expect children to automatically step in to protect someone from a bully, because as humans we have a strong pull toward self-preservation. Plus, children’s brains aren’t fully developed and they don’t have the variety of life experiences, not to mention the confidence level, that would help them spot and report, or stop, a bully.

But we’re all adults here – let’s talk about the bullying that goes on in your...

Do you have a dog? Two? More? Are you dogless and get your dog love from friends’ dogs? Or maybe you’re someone who just doesn’t see the appeal of dogs?

If you love dogs, you’ll probably love this article. If not, read on anyway because there’s probably something here for you despite your distaste for this nearly-perfect being. (Oops…my bias is showing!)

In the early part of the 20^th century, Will Judy, the editor of Dog World Magazine, who was a WW1 veteran and an ordained minister, devoted his life to helping people understand what he saw as a spiritual bond between humans and dogs. Of dogs, Will Judy wrote, “The most loyal thing in the world is your dog. Whether you come home from Congress or from jail, whether you have lost your fortune or made a million, whether you return home dressed in fashion’s heights or in rags, whether you have been hailed as a hero or condemned as a criminal, your dog is waiting for you with a welcome...

What started as an inside joke has turned into a day of silliness that’s celebrated every year on September 19^th. Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day – avast, ye mateys, and I’ll tell the tale of the scurvy lads who created this sorry excuse for revelry!

Two friends were playing racquetball on June 6, 1995. John Bauer, AKA Cap’n Slappy, and Mark Summers, AKA Ol’ Chumbucket, played hard, resulting in an injury to one of them. In pain, he cried out “Arrrrrrrgghhhhh” and the silliness was well begun. It was an inside joke between them for a while, until they sent a letter to humorist and nationally syndicated columnist Dave Barry, who loved it and wrote about it. Boom – a holiday was born! In deference to the lives lost in the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, the men decided to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19^th instead of D-Day.

The day took on a life of it’s own as people learned to speak Piratese, and it tickled the...

Whenever leaders get together to talk about what’s working in their businesses, staff recognition is always high on the list. As a matter of fact, on nearly every list of the top ways to reduce turnover and increase employee engagement, recognition and/or encouragement make the list.

Happy National Day of Encouragement. If you’re a leader and aren’t already in the habit of looking for ways to praise, recognize, and encourage your team, use today as your reason to get started. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results you can achieve with a zero-dollar perk that pays great dividends. You can’t always allow flexible work schedules, grant promotions, or give raises – you can always give praise, and in all the ways that count, that’s a huge benefit to your company, your team, and your individual employees.

Encouragement boosts morale, builds relationships, and is contagious. What kind of recognition/praise/encouragement can you give to your...

When the word “leader” is bandied about, most people don’t think of recording artists. They usually think of world leaders, prominent business leaders, religious leaders – not famous musical performers.

That’s a mistake because much can be learned from them. As an illustration, let’s look at the life and leadership of Jimmy Buffett, a man who led millions of Parrotheads while building an impressive fortune. In possession of a shiny new history degree after a rocky college career, he went to New Orleans in 1969 and played music on Decatur Street while tourists dropped change in his guitar case. He moved to Nashville in 1970, and two years in Nashville saw Jimmy Buffett rejected by nearly every record company in town, many of them two and three times. Two years later, in an interview, he said, “Got depressed, got pissed off, got divorced and left. Best move I ever made.”

The move was to Key West, where he worked on an...