Happiness Hacks

Nothing makes you feel better about yourself than working to help a noble cause. Help your church, school, or community meet its fiscal responsibilities through fundraising efforts. Successful fundraising depends—at least in part—on showing need and having a donor recognition program that reinforces a sense of belonging. School fundraising events work best when the “fun” in fundraising is emphasized. Some ideas for school fundraisers are having seasonal events, food or juice booths, candy product sales, car washes, and card sales (for prepaid phone cards, pizza cards, or cards for local gift shops). Church fundraising ideas include holding bake sales, holiday boutiques, bingo, and raffles. Raise some money for your school or church and spread the idea that helping others can create happiness for everyone involved. 

The old adage about not burning your bridges in case you have to cross them again one day very much applies to your career: it’s not in your best interest to damage or sever professional relationships. You never know when you might meet those individuals again and have to conduct business together. If you are at least on good speaking terms and have shown respect toward the other party, it will be a lot easier to reestablish a smooth working relationship. Stay optimistic and do your best to safeguard your professional relationships—that way, you can feel happier and more assured that you are doing something vital to keeping your career or job on track. 

Get active! You’ll feel better. If you prefer team sports to solo sports, join a softball or bowling team or organize a team that includes people from your circle of friends or your business colleagues. Softball teams and bowling leagues play against other teams, so even as you are having fun with friends on your team, you are also potentially making new friends with players from other teams. Psychologists say that people who live isolated lives or lack strong social networks are not as happy as those who form strong bonds and social connections with others and have ongoing support from friends and family. 

Do your creative juices start to flow when you see something new? Do you immediately have an idea for making it even more functional or efficient? Do you enjoy figuring out how things work or coming up with innovative ways of doing things? You may have that creative spark that all inventors share. Just tinkering around with your product idea, sketching out drawings, making notes, or even giving your product an original name can bring you happiness. Improve upon an existing product or develop a totally new one. Find a niche in the marketplace: a product that is needed but doesn’t yet exist. Who knows? You might have the idea for the next big innovation everyone will be clamoring for. 

If there’s a farmers’ market in your neighborhood, gather your canvas bags or heavy-duty utility bags and head out for a brisk walk to do your grocery shopping. Since you’ll be carrying the bags of groceries back home afterward, you’ll want to be sure you can carry what you purchase—in other words, buy only what you need and what will fit into your bags. Walking while carrying groceries means you’ll be burning a lot more calories than you would be if you drove your car to the store, plus walking is better for the environment. Besides, you’ll be getting locally grown produce that is fresher and healthier for you compared to what you can find in a traditional grocery store. Now, that’s something to feel good about! 

When a job or project is too big for your one brain and your one set of hands, it’s time to delegate. If you’re not a manager and delegating isn’t typically your job, speak to your manager about it. The dictionary says that “delegate” means “to en- trust or hand over to another.” When your workload is lighter, you can focus more intently on every aspect of your job, meaning that you’ll most likely do your job better than you did when you were overloaded. Think of three tasks you could easily hand off to someone else (who is equally qualified for the job) and let that person get to work. Trust your delegates and give them time to do their best work. Every- one will benefit. 

If there is someone in the company or at your job site whom you trust and who shares your level of integrity and ethics, aligning with them could benefit your professional goals, especially if that person is a supervisor or further along the career ladder than you are. Having someone as a workplace ally means you don’t have to feel alone as you navigate through office politics, solve problems, and deal with difficult coworkers. A workplace ally can serve as your sounding board for new ideas, cheer you on when your day is filled with special challenges, and give you pep talks to lift you up when you need a boost. 

How can an audio book make you happy? Because of what it stops you from doing. Think about what you typically do during your commute. Do you talk on your cell? Think about your troubles? Curse the long line of cars ahead of you or at the guy who just cut you off? Instead of doing any of that, do something productive when you are forced to sit in traffic: listen to audio books. Buy some books about your area of business or your interests—maybe there’s an industry topic you want to know more about, or maybe there’s a new language you’d like to learn. You have to be on the road twice a day, so rather than wasting all that time, use it in ways that can return dividends for your future. You may even find yourself looking forward to your commute!