The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • What’s your world view

    Everybody has a world view. It’s the glasses through which you look at the world. Your world view will help you see some things clearly, but may also distort other things. One thing that is important though, is to know the assumptions inherent in your world view. When you think what you think, what assumptions is this based on?

    I do not claim to have the Answers (notice the capital A), but here’s some of the questions. These questions are totally basic, and can be found at the foundation of most world views. Most of these questions can probably not be answered conclusively, but which ever answer you choose to believe, will hold some implications for your world view.

    Obviously I did not come up with these questions. Many of them have been hotly debated for thousands of years; this is just a list of the ones I could think of. Let me know what you think, did I leave some questions out, and where do you stand on the answers?
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  • More things I enjoyed about Reboot6

    Hey, I forgot:
    * Seeing Collaboraid (started by my good friend Lars Pind) win the Reboot award for startup of the year
    * Helping Lars brainstorm for his wedding speech over a beer

    Collaboraid is a very worthy winner, and here’s a story that shows one of the reasons why. I’m glad to know that you can succeed and have fun working with openness and generosity, and I congratulate all the guys at Collaboraid. Share on!

  • Things I enjoyed about Reboot6

    Reboot6 is now over, and I’m totally beat from being the Open Space host. It’s the first time I’ve hosted this many people in Open Space, but it went very well (if I do say so my self).

    Here’s what I enjoyed most about Reboot6:
    * The excellent speakers
    * Cory Doctorow’s armoured T-shirt – possibly the coolest T-shirt in existence
    * Marc Canter singing
    * Reboot posts totally dominating blogbot this weekend
    * The first beer after the conference – man it tasted good
    * The excellent mood and energy even 10 or 12 hours into the conference
    * Thomas‘ hosting
    * Microsoft showing up with 20 people, 3 X-boxes and a big screen TV and being cool abut being semi-slammed at the conference
    * The barbecue
    * The openness that went into both the planning and the execution of the conference
    * The Honorary Reboot Award Winner, the guy who singe-handedly brought the internet to Denmark (or is that brought Denmark to the internet) in 1982. A quote from him: “I did say back then, that this thing might even become bigger than the fax”.

  • Warming up for Reboot

    I warmed up for the Reboot conference tomorrow by watching this clip of Douglas Rushkoffs talk from Reboot4, from which stems the following quote: “If a new technology doesn’t help you meet people or get laid – why bother”.

  • Acts of hope

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    One of my new friends, Filiz from Turkey, sent me a link to a very interesting article on activism. The main point that the article makes is that activism is for the long term. You can’t expect immediate results that clearly follow from your actions. You need to look at long term results,

    Also, you’re not saving the world. Here’s my favourite quote from the article:

    History is like weather, not like checkers. A game of checkers ends. The weather never does. That’s why you can’t save anything. Saving is the wrong word. Jesus saves and so do banks: they set things aside from the flux of earthly change. We never did save the whales, though we might’ve prevented them from becoming extinct. We will have to continue to prevent that as long as they continue not to be extinct.

    Brilliant stuff, read it!

  • Open Space on Open Space

    Every year, open space practitioners meet to learn more about the open space method from each other. This meeting is of course held as an open space meeting – I mean, what else?

    And this year, this “Open Space on Open Space” is in Denmark, on august 23-26. You can read about it here. I’ll definitely be there, trying to learn from and contribute to Open Space practice all over the world!

  • Quote

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    A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

    – George Bernard Shaw

  • Spreading happiness at work

    Last wednesday Project Happiness at Work had it’s first paying customer!! We held a seminar for 15 secretaries at nch, and judging from the feedback it was a great success. This is of course only the beginning, but it did prompt me to create a page for companies on the project’s website, outlining the products we intend to market to businesses.

    Over the next two months we’d like to find 10 companies interested in trying the workshop. The workshop is an excellent way to start spreading happiness in any workplace. It can be done in one or two days, with up to 40 participants. Afterwards the participants have all the knowledge they need to hold more workshops in the company themselves, and they also get all the necessary workshop materials. This can make the spread of happiness self-reproductive within the company.

  • Cutting up a whale

    The Copenhagen Zoological Museum cut up a whale today. Yep, a small whale (meaning 5 meters long and weighing 3 tons) was found dead in a fishing net, and though whales are normally cut up at the place where they’re found, this one was small enough to load on a truck, drive to the Zoological Museum and dismember in front of an excited crowd. The skeleton will end up in the museum.

    This I had to see. I mean, don’t we all secretly wish to see large oceanic mammals be cut up? I certainly do. It was kinda fund to see the inside of a whale, but I’m disappointed that nobody brought rice – it would have made sushi for hundreds of people. I even have pictures.
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  • Yes, and…

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    Lately I’ve been using a very simple but VERY powerful method called “yes, and…”. This method comes from improvisational theater, where it is the most basic rule. When you’re on the stage doing improv theatre, every idea proposed by another actor must always be accepted. You can add to it, but you can’t reject it – and you’d look pretty foolish on the stage if you tried. Hence the “Yes, and…”

    But “yes, and…” can be used in many other situations, and mainly it can be used to counter the ingrained tendency to say no, that many people today exhibit, particularly when pressed or stressed. It’s often safer , easier and more comfortable to say no.

    One case where “yes, and…” works especially well is when brainstorming for ideas. When people know in advance, that any idea proposed will be received positively, they feel much more free to suggest any ideas they may have. In this way you get many more ideas to work with. Ultimately, “yes, and…” can teach us a positive and healthy attitude of saying yes to life, and to whatever reality surrounds us.

    More info here and here. Try it!

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