It is with great pride that we can announce our next conference about happiness at work. The conference takes place on May 26 from 9:30-5PM at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen.

We have a great speaker lineup, including:

• Stephen Shapiro, author of Goal-Free Living and 24-7 Innovation.
• Robert Biswas-Diener, author of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth and Positive Psychology Coaching.
• Kim Axelsen, CEO of AFA JCDecaux.
• Knud Herbert Sørensen, HR Director of Middelfart Sparekasse (the happiest workplace in Denmark)

The themes of the conference are:

1. Happiness at work in practice: How some of the world’s happiest workplaces do it and what results they get.
2. Happiness at work in a recession: Why making employees happy is the best way out of a recession and how to do it.
3. Strengths at work: How to identify and apply personal strengths at work.

Most of the conference will be held in Danish. You can read all about it here (in Danish).

We also have 6 free, open events lined up for the first half of 2009. You can see the list and sign up here.

2008 for me has been the best year ever. So much interesting stuff has been happening that to even start to summarise it here is almost meaningless. Suffice it to say, that 2008 seemed to zoom by because so many cool things were always going on but now that I look back on it, it seems like a loooong year indeed.

Here are just a few highlights:

• My book came out in Danish and is a best seller.
• My book is coming out in Chinese.
• I gave more presentations and workshops than ever!
• I had gigs in Ireland, England, The Bahamas, The US, France and many other cool places.
• I now work with two wonderful and very cool associates: Jon and Lea.
• I spoke at the best business conference ever: WorldBlu Live in New York.
• I proposed to my girlfriend. She said yes.

I have taken less time for blogging than I’d like and will prioritize it more in 2009! Blogging is seriously one of the most inspiring, productive, fun and useful things I do – particularly because so many nice people read along and take time to give feedback.

Now I’m off to some Christmas celebrations (yes, Christmas is on the 24th. in Denmark) and then on to a week of snowboarding in the French Alps. In the meantime, you might enjoy some of my previous favourite posts on the blog or maybe some of the quickly growing number of links in the happy at work link collection.

But most importantly: I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Christmas and a spectacular new year.

I love this fun little movie called Validation. At 15 minutes, it’s a little longer than your standard oh-my-god-what-a-cute-kitten video, but it’s definitely worth it.

Related posts:

• Specific praise is good praise.
• The value of praise.
• Why “Motivation by Pizza” doesn’t work.

Now that 2008 is nearly over, it makes a lot of sense to reflect on the year that passed. Unfortunately, most people do this by looking back and making a tally of everything that went wrong. The things they should have done. The goals they should have reached. The progress that didn’t come.

I think you will learn much more if you turn this approach upside-down, so here’s my suggestion for a new-year’s exercise in happiness at work.

Simply because the best way to be happy at work in 2009 is to find out what worked for you in 2008 and get yourself more of that.

So think back on your working life in 2008 and answer the following 10 questions. It’s important that you write down your answers – it helps you to reflect more deeply about the questions.

1. What went really well for you at work in 2008?
2. What did you do that you’re proud of?
3. Who have you helped out?
4. How have you grown and developed professionally?
5. How have you grown and developed personally at work?
6. Who has really appreciated your work?
7. Who has helped you out and been there for you?
8. Who have you admired at work in 2008?
9. What have been some fun moments at work in 2008?
10. Which 5 things from 2008 would you like to have more of in 2009?

If you like you can share your answers in a comment here.

Have fun – and have a happy 2009 at work!

Related posts

• Get lucky at work – be positive.
• Research shows happiness is highly contagious.
• Top 5 business maxims that need to go.

Here’s an important thing to know about happiness:

“Happiness is a social emotion. It’s an emotion that we derive from social events… Happiness is not simply about me.”

A fascinating study published online yesterday in the British Medical Journal has confirmed what we already know, namely that happiness is contagious and that we are all affected by the moods of the people around us.

But his study goes a step further by mapping those connections and influences among nearly 5,000 individuals over 20 years and the

Here’s the skinny:

Fowler and Christakis were able to map the social networks of 4,739 individuals with data from the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing cardiovascular study. Participants in that study listed contact information for their closest friends, family members and neighbors, connecting the pair of researchers to more than 50,000 social ties.

The researchers used the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index — a standard set of questions psychologists use to measure happiness — to analyze the cheeriness of the study participants.

They found that when someone gets happy, that person’s friend experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. A friend of that friend experiences a nearly 10 percent chance of increased happiness, and a friend of that friend has a 5.6 percent increased chance of happiness.

That means a stranger’s good mood can do more to lift your spirits than a $5,000 raise, which only increased happiness 2 percent, Fowler and Christakis found.

Whoah!

So what about bad moods? Surprisingly (to me anyway), this study found that sadness is less contagious:

Sadness doesn’t infect a social group as reliably happiness does, researchers found. Within some friendship networks, sadness had a significant effect on the members of the group, but on others, the effect was very small.

Why? Because, the study says, sadness makes you pull away from others, thus giving them less exposure to your bad mood.

This is really interesting with respect to bad moods at work – because at work, if you have a really rotten day, there’s really no way to pull back from social interactions, meetings and conversations, exposing your co-workers the full brunt of your bad mood.

Related

• The Feel Factor – Why no workplace can afford to ignore how people feel at work.
• The Connnection Culture
• How to deal with anger at work.
• Top 10 reasons why constant complaining at work is so toxic.