Center for Workplace Happiness

If I told you that there’s one thing that provides you with all the following benefits, would you rush right out and get it?

1. More active lifestyle
2. Lower blood pressure
3. Lower cholesterol
4. Significant decrease in heart disease/heart attack
5. Lower likelihood of depression
6. Lower anxiety levels
7. Lower BMI
8. Increased social interaction
9. Stronger immune system
10. Fewer allergies
11. Stronger bones

There are more benefits – I didn’t want to wear you out with the exhaustive list. As you look at that list of 11 benefits, how many of them would you like to achieve? You can get them all – get a pet. Oh, you already have one? Yay, you! Then you’re already reaping the mental and physical benefits of sharing your life with a living being who depends on you. If you’re not already a pet owner, this is an impressive list of benefits, and you should still be sure that your life can support a pet before you add one. They are completely dependent on you, which means...

Today let’s talk about leaders, and the leader that lives inside each of us. It’s easy to think about leaders as those who are somehow above our level – the president of your division, the president of your company, the president of the United States – and those are all leaders.

Did you know that you are a leader?

Today, let’s talk about what makes a good leader, and where leaders show up in our lives. Take a look at these examples:

• Have you ever sat behind someone at a red light and when the light turned green, they started driving? That’s leadership skills right there. A good leader pays attention to the conditions around them and reacts appropriately at the right time. If you don’t believe that taking off when the light turns green is showing leadership, think about how you feel when the person in front of you fails to go when the light turns green. Do you get irritated? Wonder if they’re on their phone? Clearly, they aren’t...

Do you equate age with wisdom? Many people do, and there’s science to back it up. While youth is revered in our culture, wisdom is, too, and when people are looking for advice, it’s their aging friends and colleagues they turn to. It is true that memory functions can fade with age, and it's also true that the frontal lobe, where logic, reasoning, and problem-solving happen, continues to develop.

As we age, we develop more emotional intelligence. That means older people generally are more concerned with the wellbeing of others, make significantly better choices and decisions, and process information and thoughts more holistically, so take in multiple perspectives and can share them more clearly.

Doesn’t that sound like someone you’d go to for advice, counsel, and coaching?

Last Wednesday was Spunky Old Broads Day, and February is Spunky Old Broads Month. Chances are, you know a spunky old broad or two, and maybe you even are one. I’m not sure when it...

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...

This week’s topic might make you roll your eyes. That’s OK. This week’s topic may make you think, “I’ve tried and it doesn’t work for me.” That’s OK, too. Keep reading for the why’s and how’s about adding … gasp! … meditation to your daily routine.

There are a lot of reasons people give for not meditating – they don’t understand what it is, they don’t understand what it does for them, and maybe they think they don’t have time for meditation. Let’s take those reasons, one by one:

What is meditation? It’s simply quieting your mind for a few minutes while remaining awake. That’s all. Most major religions have meditative practices, though meditation itself isn’t a religious activity. You don’t need special clothes, music, flexibility, or space to meditate – comfy clothes, a comfy chair or couch, and a space you can be undisturbed for a short period of...

Countries are at war. Banks are failing. The stock market is teeter-tottering. Inflation is behaving like a spoiled brat, refusing efforts to control it. Politicians are taking dirty laundry and gleefully hanging it out for all to see. And all of this is coming in the wake of a worldwide pandemic, which created a mental health crisis worldwide.

If you’re feeling a bit more stress, world events could be playing a role. If you want to feel less stress, read on for some scientific news and some practical ways to easily lower the angst.

To say that times are uncertain is an understatement. To say that every person has to feel the pain of the uncertainty, live in the stress of the uncertainty, and rule their lives based on what can only be guesses at possible outcomes is incorrect. Not everyone has to suffer in uncertain times. As a matter of fact, visionaries, great leaders, and innovators often thrive in uncertain times, because they see the opportunities that the upheaval...

Happy Act Happy Week! And if you’re not happy and you know it, it’s OK to not be able to give an Oscar-winning performance. In this week’s newsletter I’ll help you find your way back to happy with a few mental wellbeing tools you can use any time, in the privacy of your own head. Or you can just watch funny cat videos - whatever works for you is good.

Have you ever thought about our amazing range of emotions and how quickly they can switch up, based on what’s happening around us? Research at UC Berkley identified 27 distinctly different emotional states of mind, and also showed that they are interconnected, allowing us to slide easily and quickly between them. What are the 27 emotions they identified through a research study with over 800 participants? Here you go: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear,...

Are you a team lead? The team can be a work team, a sports team or a family team – most people lead some sort of team, whether they know it or not. Some people enjoy the role of leader, helping people develop their full potential, while others are intimidated or uninterested in taking a leadership role. No matter where you fall on the leadership continuum or what sort of team you lead, it pays to know how to shape your words and actions to help your people understand and want to follow you.

In 1938, Sears Roebuck & Company began an ongoing survey of their employees, looking to understand important yet difficult to quantify concepts like loyalty, satisfaction and organizational behavior. Their longitudinal study attracted sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists, all of whom parsed the survey results in a myriad of different ways. In many respects, this was the beginning of a strong corporate human resources focus. Fast-forward to now, when the science of the brain...

Have you ever had an idea, brought it to fruition, and during its infancy you discovered that your idea was bigger than you knew? International We Are Not Broken Day began in 2019, so is still fairly new, as is the organization of the same name. The founder, Texan Nochola Cotto, intended it to be a day for women who’ve been touched by any sort of trauma to be heard and helped. The “we are not broken” part has resonated with so many people that observance of the day has spread to anyone who’s suffered any kind of trauma.

Amputees
PTSD sufferers
People with depression
Victims of violent crimes
People with diminished mental abilities
People who are “different” in any way

Just being outside of what humanity at large considers “normal” subjects people to all sorts of unintentional, and sometimes intentional, abuse. Attitudes about people with disabilities, whether mental, psychological or physical, can be quite harsh, and human beings can...