10 Steps to Happiness Today

In Lead With Your Heart, we measure success with a happiness stick: What has your business done or what is it doing to make your customers, employees and communities happy by making lives and the planet better? In today's post, I offer 10 easy steps that you can take today in your life and in your business to make yourself and others happier. Please add your own. I encourage you to share these and your ideas with others:

Business Life

1. Pick up the phone, call a customer and thank them for their business. Let them know how much you care about their business.
2. Take a fellow worker out to lunch.
3. Volunteer to take on a new challenge and do all you can to create a huge success.
4. Reward a good worker by giving them the afternoon off.
5. Use social media to share information others can use to better their business or their life.

Personal Life

1. Hug yourself and say I love you.
2. Surprise a family member or a friend with a gift not tied to an occasion.
3. Don't worry about things that you have no control over.
4. Smile and say hi to strangers you pass.
5. Mentor a student.

Bonus Tip

1. Forgive someone's mistake, error in judgment or hurtful action.

To spread happiness and to get others to think about it and to share happiness with others, I am tagging the following people who lead with their heart. Please be a leader of this grassroots move focused on happiness and leading with your heart. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write one post about happiness--what it means to you, your customers or your fellow workers in the context of business or to recommend a way or two people can be happier in their own lives. In either place--business or personal-- how can we together make the world a better place to live and or work, while growing prosperity in however you choose to define prosperous?

1. CK
2. Drew McLellan
3. David Reich
4. Mack Collier
5. Toby Bloomberg
6. Sean Howard
7. Ryan Karpeles
8. Karen Hegmann
9. Valeria Maltoni
10. Gavin Heaton

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

Hey Lewis ... thanks for the tag. I have been thinking (and not blogging) about this very topic for the last couple of weeks. Your book has been interesting (and am still digesting it) ... and quite inspiring. I was planning on making my first major post for 2008 on something close to this topic, but you have now given me even more direction. Thanks, my friend ... and have a HAPPY 2008!

[Jim Rudnick]

great post again....and now I've got 10 brand new links to check out....this is a GOOD idea, Lewis...maybe you could somehow put up a Top 10 list each month say or quarter...especially if it'd be filtered as having "heart" for all of us to check out...

;-)

Jim

[Lewis Green]

Gavin,

Great to hear from you, and I look forward to reading your post on the subject.

Jim,

Great idea! I will try to make this a priority.

[Karen Hegmann]

Lewis

I'm honoured to be tagged as someone who leads with their heart. Thank you!

I think that, in the business world, it's not always easy to lead with your heart - but it can be done. When it comes down to it, people are human and relate to someone who is genuine. I would encourage everyone to just be themselves, and somehow it will all work out in the long run.
In terms of making the world a better place to live and work...I would say "don't forget the little things." It's too easy to get caught up in the day to day stuff, but in the end what matters is who you love and care for (or what in the case of a puppy) - and who loves you back.
When it's our turn to kick the can, noone will care how many cars or homes we've owned - or how much designer clothing we've had (OK, maybe some of these are good..). People will remember you for the character you had, and the way you treated others.
That's my two cents worth.

[Mary]

Hi Lewis,

Thank you for the tips and great post. I will certainly put your book on my next must read list. FYI: I just finished another must read book called Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff. I love one of Marci's quotes, "When you're happy for no reason", you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them...you live from happiness, rather than for happiness". Enjoy!

I will return for more wonderful posts!

Mary :>)

[Wanda]

Those are some great tips. I will have to remember them.

[Toby]

Hi Lewis - With my pup Max next to me as I type, I would have to say happiness is a cold nose and a friendly woof. Thanks for the tag and all you do to bring a smile to people's day.

[Lewis Green]

Toby,

Max sounds like a great friend. My little hairball is call Emily (the cat), and she follows me around like a puppy. I don’t think she realizes cats are supposed to stay aloof.

Lewis

[Sean Howard]

I'm it! Yay! ;)

[Becky Carroll]

Lewis, great suggestions (and great list of people, too!). :-)

I especially like the first suggestion of calling and thanking a customer today. While you are on the phone, why not call a family member you haven't spoken with in a long time and say hello, or drop them a note. Nothing warms the heart like a note from someone you haven't heard from in a long time.

Rock on, Lewis!