In 2012, the United Nations proclaimed March 20 every year as the International Day of Happiness, citing the pursuit of happiness as a fundamental human goal.
At Page One, we definitely make the pursuit of happiness part of our work. We believe that happy employees are more productive, and do better work, resulting in happy customers. From bringing our dogs to work to company lunches, there is a lot in our company culture to encourage happiness all the time.
As celebration of the International Day of Happiness, I’ve decided to share several happiness activities and articles with my coworkers, as well as on social media so followers of Page One can cultivate happiness in their own lives for tremendous personal and professional benefit.
To start, I encouraged everyone to keep an envelope of happiness, inspired by a gift my aunt gave me for my birthday a few years ago - my Joy Jar.
Each year in early January we turn to the previous year in reflection, and ahead to the new year about how much better it will be. So often I hear friends lamenting about how terrible the previous year was … every year. Could it really be that every year is terrible, and only in the shininess of hope for the unknown we will find happiness? Or is it that hardship is simply a stronger marker in our memories?
The gift my aunt gave me was an empty jar and a pile of slips of blank colorful paper. “This is a Joy Jar. Every time something nice happens, you feel accomplished, proud or happy, write it on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. At the end of the year, dump out the jar and remember all the joy the year brought,” read the accompanying note. The results were so powerful for me the first year the cascading rainbow of wonderful memories spilled all over my kitchen table. I had definitely had a hard year, but I now looked back on all the things that made it a very good year, too.
This is why the first International Day of Happiness activity I shared with my Page One coworkers was an empty envelope and a little stack of yellow slips of paper, encouraging them to write good things about their workdays. March is a long month, with spring in sight but with plenty of cloudy days. This way we can feel a month full of sunshine in one envelope.