It just can’t be overstated: when you’re happy, you’re more productive and healthy.
So, just as companies can’t afford to ignore the importance of workplace happiness in the corporate world of today—you can’t afford to ignore your own happiness either.
Cultivating your own happiness at home and at work is the single most important factor in achieving your goals and accomplishing personal wellbeing.
Research suggests that happiness unlocks inner confidence, generates meaningful experiences, and enhances occupational success. It also builds the capacity to trust one’s skill-set, to cope when things go wrong, and to readily connect with others.
In the workplace, happiness is a key to what psychologist term, career self-efficacy, or workplace confidence; a confidence in one’s ability to manage career development and work related tasks with enhanced efficiency.
Get this. Simply showing a positive film clip to employees prior to carrying out standard workplace tasks led to an increase in productivity by over 11% on new tasks in a workplace study; a clear indicator of the power of happiness priming.
Research also finds that one’s happiness (i.e. feelings of positive affect) has the strongest influence on a person’s perception of meaning in both life and work. Put simply, whether or not a person perceives themselves as happy dictates whether they find meaning in what they do.
It’s clear; happiness is directly related to both inner confidence and more meaningful life and work experiences. A happy person is more productive, but also more confident, more successful, and more motivated towards delivering meaningful outcomes.
Thus, it just can’t be overstated. It’s worth checking and re-checking if you’re happy.
And, it’s worth knowing what makes you happy...
If you’re like me, you may have trouble describing what makes you happy. It’s even hard to tell sometimes if I am truly happy…
This is because many of us rarely stop to think about it. We may experience positive affect in the moment, but the root cause of such emotion may be hidden in the commotion or the hustle of our daily routine.
That’s why it’s important to track your own happiness.
It’s important to keep a journal and start recording days when you feel up beat and energized at home and at work.
On these happy days, start to build a habit in which you first reflect, and second, list out what happened, what may have lifted your spirits, and what the consequence was.
Tracking helps to increase self-awareness of happy states, and also helps you begin to recognize what truly makes you happy and what can keep you happy.
It’s a great mechanism to help you check and re-check if you’re happy on a more frequent basis as you work towards sustaining a more happy and healthy self.