Being happy at work means growing as an individual. The funny thing is most of us don’t equate personal development with our jobs. We see them as separate entities that don’t belong together. I believe this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reason why personal development and happiness at work are forever linked together is simple. The better we are at cultivating relationships and productivity, the more we enjoy our jobs.

 

Artists at Heart

We are all artists at heart. I watched a George Carlin interview over at 43 Folders. He talked about the importance of enjoying the various parts of writing, performing and promoting (marketing). He became successful when he began to understand who he was. In the earlier half to middle half of his career he thought that he should be an actor because everyone else was doing it. He hated it. Success came easier when he stopped trying to be something he wasn’t and figured out what really made him happy.

“Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.”
- Deepak Chopra

By not forcing yourself to work hard (being a big bully) and allowing your desires to pull you like a giant work-happiness magnet to do great work, the pain (stress and worry) will be significantly reduced and success will happen.

Why It Works for Companies

Dwayne J. Clark, CEO of Aegis Living stopped reviewing sales numbers at his annual meeting and created a yearly inspirational meeting. He brought in spiritual, personal development, and relationship speakers (Deepak Chopra and Jack Canfield) to give back to his employees. Popular speakers cost over $80,000 for an hour’s time. They did this to show that they were serious about creating an atmosphere that would help people grow.

“From the day he launched Aegis with Bill Gallaher in 1997, Clark pledged to improve employees’ lives.”
-        Jim Berry of  Inc. Magazine (check out the whole article “Is it an annual meeting? Or an Episode of Oprah?”

Dwayne began to see a significant improvement with his employees. They were more compassionate toward each other. They were also willing to share personal problems with each other. He was able to create a community that supported each other.

The turnover rate at Aegis is 25% to 43% a year, compared to the industry standard of 70% to 120%.

By fostering personal development at your company, you can also promote better teamwork, happier employees, and of course improve the bottom line.

Your Career

When you take the time to develop your emotional intelligence and personal skills, you’ll reap the rewards at work. The better you understand your needs, the easier it is to fulfill them.

Next time you are caught in office politics, denied a raise or refused much needed appreciation, try to think of the situation as a chance to grow. Notice how it makes you feel and try to end the negative cycle and give appreciation to people you work with. Believe me, if you enjoy feeling a certain way then chances are they will too. You’ll probably notice that by taking the time to improve your happiness, your ability to be compassionate and your overall personal development skills, you will be able to enjoy your job even more.

I put a little resource list that I know you all will enjoy.

Three of my favorite personal development blogs are:

-        Steve Pavlina – Check out my Interview with Steve.

-        Positivity Blog – How to double your productivity (series)

-        Abundance Blog – Five Stress-Busting Techniques for Busy People

Three of my favorite blogs on improving your career through knowing yourself:

-        Penelope Trunk – How to go to a meeting when you want to sit home and cry

-        Get Rich Slowly – JD doesn’t post many career based articles, but How Do You Turn Passion into a Career? (And Should You?) is fantastic.)

-        Delightful Work – An Authentic Approach to Making More Money

Do you believe in personally improving yourself at your job? How do you bring more love, spirituality, and power into your working day?

If you enjoyed this post I have a good feeling you’ll like these:

• Day 8 of 30 – No Complaining
• 6 Exercise Hacks While You Are At Work 
• Digging a Little Deeper to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!

Being a man in today’s workplace isn’t easy. There are always more unwritten and official rules that we must follow. What was okay a year ago might have changed, but I believe the core principals of being a man in the workplace haven’t changed.

The core principals of being a man at work are timeless. I’m not talking about honor and draping your coat across copy toner that spilled on the floor. I’m talking about values that every man should possess in the workplace.

Here are the 12 ways to live consciously as a man at work:

1. Thinks Outside the Box

A man is able to think outside of the normal range of choices to find the best solution. He doesn’t keep going back to the same idea well, using old resources to solve a new issue. He dedicates himself to constantly create and has a willingness to listen to other people’s ideas no matter what level they are within the company.

2. Not Afraid to Make a Mistake

A man who isn’t afraid to make a mistake will be more willing to take a risk and win big. To be a great co-worker or boss a man can’t just do what is expected; he needs to try things beyond his comfort level and fail. Then use those failures as a way to make himself and the company better.

3. Gives Others Credit

He won’t take credit for other people’s work. If he would he knows that it will come around to bite him in the butt (Karma). He makes sure that no matter how good the idea is, he informs the powers that be that he supported the idea, but didn’t come up with it on his own.

4. Regulates His Emotions

A man understands that emotions are a part of working life, but he never ever lets them dictate his choices. He knows how to control his emotions so he doesn’t blow up at a colleague or staff member. All emotions pass and there is no reason to take out frustrations on someone that deserves to be treated with compassion.

5. Trusts Others

A man knows he can’t do it all alone. Whether he runs a one man business or is a CEO of 5,000 employees, when he needs help he asks for it. He trusts that the person he asks will do a good job. If a person or company fails him, he lets them know and if it happens more than twice he lets the employee go if necessary or takes his business else where.

6. Confident

A man trusts his own choices. He uses logic to ascertain the situation then trusts his instincts to come out on top. If he fails, he acknowledges it and moves on to the next pressing thing on his list.

7. Believes What He Says

He makes statements he believes in. He won’t make up information to cover his butt and he sure won’t say that he believes in an idea when he doesn’t. He isn’t afraid to put himself on the line for a good idea, but refuses to go along with a bad idea because the rest of the group wants him to.

8. Looks People in the Eyes

A man always looks people in the eyes because of rule # 6. He is confident in who he is and isn’t afraid to show it.

9. Respects His Superiors but Never Kisses Butt

A man respects his boss’s choices, but never kisses his/her butt to get ahead. If the boss has a bad idea he may voice his opinion, but doesn’t pout as he continues to work on the project that he doesn’t believe in. He knows that he isn’t perfect and neither is his boss, so the boss must be given leeway to make mistakes too.

10. Makes Quick Decisions with the Information He Has

A man gathers the best information that is at his disposal and makes the best choice he can with the information that he has and never looks back. His choices are only as good as the information that he has, so if he makes a mistake he doesn’t beat himself up because he tried his best to make a good choice.

11. Listens to Co-workers Opinions

A man listens to his co-workers before he makes a decision. He believes that there should be input from all levels before a project goes into effect. The collective mind is smarter than any single individual. But if they don’t like what he says then he must weigh out their opinions. If he still believes in his idea then he must go with it; hopefully everyone else will understand his choice.

12. Increases His Wisdom

Every great man improves at work by researching better ways to do his job, whether it be through classes, mentors, conferences, or reading a book. He does it to constantly improve himself and become more valuable to the people who depend on him.

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Steve Pavlina wrote an article “How to Be a Man,” which inspired this article. He also threw a gauntlet down on writing a post about “How to Be Woman,” so I took the challenge. You can read my article “How to Be a Woman at Work” right here and don’t forget to check out the comments where I got beat up by some of my readers and defended by others. It was a cool discussion.

With that being said, all of the traits could also apply to women. That’s the beauty of this day an age. The barriers and mental boxes aren’t as strict. We are growing as a working culture. We still have a long way to go, but I love the direction we are heading.

Related Articles:

• How to Be a Woman at Work
• Emotional Intelligence Improves the Workplace
• Work Bullies are Stressful

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Image courtesy of jpeepz

Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!

You read that title correct. In Google’s Zurich offices they have a slide in their building.

An awesome

shiny

big metal slide

that the employees can slide down to get to the cafeteria.

Working happy at its finest!

Raise your hand if you want to work for Google.

Yep. I thought so. That’s why working happy works. When people are happy they perform better.

Related Articles:

• Create the Work Atmosphere You Want
• 5 Smurf-tastic Tips to Work Like a Great Team
• 7 Tips to Process Your Stress Faster

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Image courtesy of  andrewarchy

Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!

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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Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!

It’s not positive thinking that makes people have a good outlook on life. It’s positive beliefs that build happy people. A person can think all the positive thoughts they want, but if they don’t truly believe them then they aren’t true for that person.

You’ve probably met people who are good at what they do and the only thing that matters is happiness. Whatever it is that made them confident goes to the core of their being. You’ve probably also met people who seem to be confident and content, but then you see their dark side. They lash out in a tough situation or maybe they give up right in the middle of a project. False confidence will always show it’s true face if you stick around long enough.

Real vs. False Truth

There is a big difference between real and false truth. They both look similar at the outset, but eventually it all flushes out.

There are many different kinds of fake confidence: covering an insecurity, trying to copy others, lack of talent and thousands of others.

There are many different kinds of real confidence: knowing and trusting choices, being creative and unique, talent, and thousands of others.

Real and false confidence are not easy to distinguish, but by watching and learning as people go along in their lives, you’ll see whether their beliefs come from their core or if it is just a façade. Some people have fooled me for many years. I had a boss that yelled at people when they weren’t doing a well and didn’t have any problems speaking his mind. At first I was impressed and tried to do my best, but after a few months his aura of confidence faded. It wasn’t anything he did differently; it just took a little observation to learn that he covered up his insecurities with yelling and micromanaging.

Real confidence comes from within a person and flows out naturally. It’s like a little kid who knows the answer to a test because she studied her butt off. The confidence just comes out because of all the hard work. The thing is many people can study hard and know all the answers, but they still don’t have the confidence to put themselves out there because they’re fearful of the consequences. They’re afraid to fail because the people around them will criticize their mistake. When a person is not afraid to make a mistake then true confidence will shine through. A mistake can be forgotten if done with good intentions, but a mistake out of fear is harder to forgive.

How do you cultivate true confidence?

By doing the best you can. That is all you and the world should ask. Only you know if you are doing your best. When I write these articles and blogs I’m putting all the effort and energy that I can into the work. Some are better than others and that’s just the fluctuation of being human. When I work on a report, I edit it once on my computer, print it out and edit it again, give it to a co-worker for inspection, and then read over it one last time so I know that it’s as clear and smooth as possible. I have gone overboard at times because I was feeling insecure and edited the report into the ground. On the other side, there have been times I haven’t taken the time to edit a report as thoroughly as I should because I was too confident.

Confidence is a daily balance that you’ll have to find as you go along in any business or personal relationship. The best way to develop your true confidence is by being compassionate and patient with whatever you are doing. Compassion will allow you to forgive yourself for your mistakes. Patience will help you learn from your mistakes and make the next try a little better.

I lacked confidence in my ability to speak publicly (that’s why I joined Toastmasters and I’ve improved by leaps and bounds, but still need more work); investing the family’s money (and again I’m not afraid to do it, but I’m learning by reading and talking to professionals); designing a good blog (and once again, I’m working on my skills); meditating well (I practice everyday); designing a great advertisement (I’m always looking at magazines for inspiration) and there are so many more things that I could improve, like playing the guitar and dancing. But I must tackle a few things at a time. When I spread myself too thin I get frustrated.

I’m confident in many areas like my marriage, my ability to write a well thought out idea, my smile, my conversation ability, laughing at a good joke, making a good joke, creating new ways to reach new customers and many other things. I may be confident in all these things, but I am still improving on a daily basis. We must always keep improving our skills, even the most basic things like writing a good email. When we improve in one area that we already feel comfortable in then we realize how we can always keep growing.

“If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
- Martin Luther King

There are only so many things that you can be good at and perform with confidence, so pick your battles and knock them down one by one. I have my list of things that I’m looking to build my confidence in. What’s on your list?

Download the Free eBook Work Happy the Google Way * Post from: Work Happy Now!