Center for Workplace Happiness

Did you feel like I felt Saturday night – horrified, confused, uncertain, and helpless? No matter what your politics are, you have a heart that beats in your chest, you have family members you love and would do anything to keep safe, and if circumstances had been different, those killed and injured could have been your loved ones.

For all of us who feel unsteady in the wake of the violence, this issue of the newsletter has tools you can use to create a calmer inner atmosphere for yourself.

Arguably the worst part about being a bystander to a tragedy is the feeling of helplessness. In the absence of anything concrete to do, people tune in to news outlets and take to social media, airing their feelings, their theories, and finding supporters and detractors. We want to do something, yet everything feels random and uncontrollable.

Brains are interesting things – part of how we learn so rapidly as children is that the brain recognizes and stores patterns. As we have more...

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...

Tomorrow is May Day. It’s also Beltane, a holiday that you may not be familiar with unless you’re from County Limerick or County Wicklow in Ireland, where the Beltane tradition has been constant from the earliest writings in Irish literature. Beltane/May Day marks the midpoint between the spring and the summer solstice, a time where the earth starts producing food, flocks start producing babies, and the heavy summer work of providing for the community and putting up for the cold months of winter begins in earnest.

Humans have observed and celebrated the changing of the seasons throughout recorded history, and that continues today. The winter holidays are wrapped around the winter solstice. Easter, Passover, and Carnival occur near or on the spring solstice. Summer solstice in June is when school winds down and vacations ramp up, and the fall solstice is when vacation season winds down and school ramps back up. Toss in an election, a spooky holiday and a food-laden one,...

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...

This is the month many Americans dread. We know it’s coming…it comes every year. In the back of our minds, we know we should be more proactive…we should be more organized…we should be more responsible. And yet, here we are again, in April, with that sense of dread looming over us. April 15^th. It’s thirteen days until Tax Day 2024.

For tax accountants, the entire first quarter of each year is a zoo. That means not everyone procrastinates, though many do. The website Fast Company analyzed the most common days that workers call in sick, and it’s not shocking to learn that Monday wins handily and Tax Day is usually fairly high on the list.

Guess what day of the week Tax Day falls on this year? Yep. Monday. Oh, joy…a three-day weekend spent deciphering cryptic tax forms!

Deadlines and procrastination cause stress, and that stress is usually self-inflicted. Before you feel like I’m pointing fingers, know that if I am, they’re...

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, which can only mean one thing – today is Galentine’s Day! What? You’ve never heard of it? Read on…

Galentine’s Day became a thing in 2010, when an episode of the television series Parks and Recreation centered around the deputy director, Leslie Knope, throwing a Galentine’s Day celebration for her girlfriends. The party featured waffles, laughter, and an abundance of gift-giving, and suddenly women all over America and around the world were planning their own Galentine’s Day celebrations. A quick search of “Galentine’s Day” on your favorite search engine returns hundreds of branded gifts, games, clothing, accessories, party favors, spa package deals – well, you get the idea, right? You know that when we spend a bunch of time, energy, and money on it, Galentine’s Day is real. It’s a real celebration of just how important female friendships are.

In her documentary, Life is...

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...

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...

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...