Center for Workplace Happiness

Six seasons. One hundred eighty episodes. Syndicated in dozens of languages in countries worldwide. Almost 75 years since it debuted, the I Love Lucy show still attracts over 40,000,000 viewers each year.

How’s that for a silly half-hour sitcom?

Turns out, the sitcom created as a showcase for Lucille Ball and her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, was more than simply a showcase. It’s a deceptively simple, incredibly complex series of life lessons about humor, acceptance, perseverance, and trust. With comical storylines crafted around core values, along with four main characters who are instantly relatable and likable, the I Love Lucy show changed the landscape of television and of how people viewed relationships, friendships, and careers.

• Do you ever feel like no one understands you? That was a key piece of Ricky Ricardo’s life experience on the show.
• Do you ever feel like your dreams will never come true? That was a key piece of Lucy Ricardo’s life experience on...

It’s the end of September. The END of September – how did that happen? If it’s true that time flies when we’re having fun, we must be having a LOT of fun, right?

The Presidential election is in six weeks. Thanksgiving is in two months. The first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Day are the same date this year, and they’re just three months away. It seems like day before yesterday that 2024 was dawning and it feels like it’ll be 2025 day after tomorrow.

The feeling of time passing is relative. When you’re focused or busy or engaged in something you love doing, time flashes by. When you’re bored or sad or depressed, time is a caterpillar trying to organize all those feet to get moving.

If this year has flown by for you, too, then that means you’ve been busily productive and hopefully having fun while doing all that you’ve been doing. If you’ve felt like you’ve been spinning your wheels, that means you’ve had...

Hi {{ first_name }},

I don’t want to overwhelm you with this, but do you feel overwhelmed a lot? If I gave you an exhaustive list of what creates feelings of overwhelm in people, just reading the list could overwhelm you!

So…let’s not do that, shall we?

Feeling overwhelmed is very common. Each day brings with it a new set of potentially adverse events, missed timings, and piling on of responsibilities and tasks that anyone is at risk of overwhelm several times in the day. Everyone, especially those with anxiety or depression, can take a deep emotional dive when overwhelm hits.

Does it help you, even just a little bit, to know that it’s common, human, and normal to feel overwhelmed? Would it help you, even just a little bit, to know what’s happening in your brain that makes you feel so stuck? Because you’re not stuck, your brain is just blind to the possibilities at hand that can help tame the overwhelming feelings.

First, the...

Today is Made in the USA Day, Thursday is Independence Day, and the short work week means most US workers have more freedom than normal this weekend – four days off instead of two. Today, let’s talk about freedom from a slightly different perspective – let’s talk about the freedom you either do or don’t allow yourself to feel.

• Have you ever come up against something that felt unfair to you, and you rebelled? That’s you, allowing your freedom.
• Have you ever been in a situation where you felt intimidated, maybe because of an authority figure? That’s you, disallowing your freedom.

America was formed because of those two different approaches to freedom. Ours is a country created through civil, then not-so-civil, disobedience. The words “free” and “freedom” crop up in our foundation documents eight times – four times in the Declaration of Independence, 3 in the Bill of Rights, and once in the Constitution. As a...