We can’t always be feeling great, smiling at every customer and co-worker as we tackle every job with robot-like efficiency. We are human and our emotions fluctuate. Right now I don’t feel like writing, but my fingers and mind keep on going, so I continue for my future, to help you, and because tomorrow I will be glad that I pushed another good article out. That’s right I’m not working happy, but I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.

Now you know the truth. I’m not always working happy. Please don’t tell your friends.

We all have bad days and sometimes we need to fake it. Seth Godin is a blogging wunderkind. Okay, I guess he isn’t that young but he’s a great blogger at any rate. He wrote an article Pretending that you care that has some great insight.

No, you can’t always hire exceptional people for these jobs. No, you can’t always invest enough time to train them sufficiently. But yes, you can make, “pretending you care,” a barely acceptable alternative.

It doesn’t take much to take the edge off an encounter.

[Boy does this sound cynical. How inauthentic! How manipulative! Isn't it better to just hire people who actually care? Of course it is. But as far as I can tell, that's a lot harder than it looks--because so many organizations are organized around policies, not caring, and because so many employees have been trained not to care.

So, the essence of the lesson here is this: if people start out pretending to care, next thing you know, they actually do care. They like the positive feedback and they like the way being kind makes them feel. It spreads. It sticks.]

Read the whole article here.

Sometimes we need to fake it to get to where we need to be. I know that you don’t always feel like working on that boring project, writing that last email of the day, or calling one more sales lead, but no one wants you to pack it in because you don’t feel like doing it. Your company wants you to fake it like any good professional.

What was the last thing you faked? I’m not talking about what goes on in your bedroom. I’m wondering when was the last time you faked your happiness on the job and eventually became happy.

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What is Alltop you ask? Alltop is a site that takes the best blog feeds from all types of categories and displays them on their site. Their description of what they do goes like this…

Alltop’s Purpose

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — ”aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

I have officially become a valued source to the work happy industry. I know that to become a self actualized person I shouldn’t need validation from outside sources, but I can’t help it. The inclusion of my blog feed into their site makes me proud.

So take a look around and see if you can discover any other great sites. My recommendations would be…

1. Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk
2. Escape from Cubicle Nation
3. Passion, People and Principles
4. Three Star Leadership Blog
5. The Chief Happiness Officer

There are so many great sites and I hate to pick only a few, but I wanted to give you a head start. So check them out and be impressed, and If you don’t want to miss any more of the action from Work Happy Now then subscribe to my blog feed and get your daily work happiness fix.

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Oh yeah! I almost forgot, it was pointed out to me that my Google PageRank is at a 5. The scale goes from 1 being low to 9 being so crazy good that it makes you pee your pants. Being at a 5 in less than 3 months is pretty good. I want to thank everyone who has left a comment. When you join in with the conversation it makes this blog 10x better. Just think, when this site explodes you’ll be able to say you were there from the beginning. Okay maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but that’s what this site is all about – living your work dreams. Thanks, now it’s back to work leaving comments, editing my next blog, and online networking.

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I’m back from Iceland and I’ve got some great feedback from everyday working Icelanders. We hear how wonderful other countries’ working environments are, but it’s not that different from America. They too have problems with…

• Communication

• Retention of Employees

• Motivating Their Staff

It’s not any easier working in Iceland than it is in America, India, or Australia.

They are paid three times as much as we are paid in America, but they also pay three times as much for their food, gas, and other necessities. It really all balances out. It’s amazing how a free market does that.

Icelanders live very similar to middle class Americans. They live in average size homes and have extra spending money for the movies, a night out, or mini lobsters, lamb, fresh fruit, and a myriad of other wonderful foods.

My uncle works for an Icelandic computer company and he has a work hiking group that he hangs out with every week. This promotes healthiness and camaraderie. I know that we have these clubs in almost every big company. So why are Icelanders working happy?

I believe the culture of their happiness comes from how they treat each other.

They tease each other and aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves. You may wonder, how does this make them happier? When you can laugh at yourself or a co-worker it eases the tension. They don’t hold on to these emotions. They let it go and just move on to the next part of their day. I know not all Icelanders are this way, but many of them are able to laugh off the stress.

I recently wrote a post called Inside Out Shirt Day. At first I wasn’t sure if I should publish it because I might look like a boob. After a minute of running it through my mind I decided to go for it because I’m not perfect and we should understand that mistakes are a part of work. We should learn from these mistakes, but also be able to laugh at them, so it doesn’t feel like the world is going to come crashing down on us.

I know most of us are capable of enjoying a good laugh at other people’s expense, so next time a co-worker makes fun of you, don’t get upset. Why not laugh with them? You’ll be harnessing your inner Viking. Just put your ego aside for that moment and let out that laugh. Just maybe you’ll feel like a working happy Icelander.

What was the last mistake that embarrassed you? Come on, you know you want to share.

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