The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

My top 10 feel-good movies

April 1, 2016

Life

I’m going completely off-script in this post to talk about something unrelated to happiness at work but still close to my heart: Feel-good movies.

I have a weakness for feel-good films and I’m not ashamed to admit it :)

I love the fact that these movies show the world as a warm and happy place where good things happen to nice people, where everything eventually has a happy ending, where people can be themselves and are accepted for who they are and where second chances can be found by those who don’t succeed at first.

This may even be a more accurate portrayal of how the world actually is. I know it’s more common to see the world as hard, unfair and dog-eat-dog but there are equally compelling arguments that show that the world favors those who are nice and cooperate. And feel-good films reflect that.

So here is my top 10 list of feel-good films – in no particular order.

The Fisher King (1991)

Terry Gilliam’s visually stunning film has Robin Williams in one of his most challenging and touching roles. It is a beautiful story of redemption and forgiveness and of love and madness.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“There’s three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, and a navy blazer.”

Down by Law (1986)

A black and white minimalist masterpiece from Jim Jarmusch with an incredibly unlikely main cast of Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni. This is quite simply one of the most beautiful movies ever made. You could blow up pretty much any single frame of this movie and hang it as a poster.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“It’s a sad and beautiful world.”

Strictly Ballroom (1992)

The fascinating thing about this Baz Luhrman movie is that it is both a tremendous parody of a dance movie AND a tremendous dance movie. It’s about not being afraid of being different and not living in fear.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias!”

(Living in fear, is only half-living.)

Love Actually (2003)

The ultimate romantic comedy, feel-good movie and Christmas movie rolled into one. The all-star cast includes Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and Billy Bob Thornton. At our house, we have friends over every year in early December and watch it together.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“Okay, Dad. Let’s do it. Let’s go get the shit kicked out of us by love.”

Amélie (2001)

This movie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet leans slightly into the magical realism genre without becoming too weird.

Favorite quote:

Narrator: Amélie still seeks solitude. She amuses herself with silly questions about the world below, such as “How many people are having an orgasm right now?”

[scenes of various orgasms taking place]

Amélie: Fifteen.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

3 leading actors known mainly for being in action movies play drag queens and while Hugo Weaving and Terrence Stamp are both fanastic Guy Pearce especially takes to the role as a duck to water. A wonderful movie about being different. Look out for the scene where they walk out of theie bus in small-town Australia in full drag – it was shot on an actual street in Australia and the reactions you see are genuine.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“That’s just what this country needs: a cock in a frock on a rock.”

Dodgeball

Sure this is ostensibly a screwball comedy (and it is really, really funny) but it’s also a heartwarming story of friendship and being yourself.

My rating: 9/10

Favorite quote:

“Here at Globo Gym we’re better than you, and we know it.”

Stardust (2007)

Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer whether he works in comics (his Sandman series is the very best of the genre) or in novels. This beautiful movie is a classic fairy tale with some cool twists.

My rating: 9/10

Favorite quote:

[the pirates have just discovered Captain Shakespeare in drag]
Skinny Pirate: What’s the problem?
Captain Shakespeare: It’s my reputation.
Skinny Pirate: No. No. Don’t be silly. Nonsense.
Old Pirate: It’s all right, Captain. We always knew you were a whoopsie.

Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

While filming his big-budget superhero movie The Avengers, Joss Whedon needed to relax. So he got some friends over to his house for a couple of weeks where they shot Much Ado About Nothing in black and white and with modern costumes but with the original Shakespeare text. It is hilarious, it’s a feel-good love story and you can just tell that everyone there had a great time making it.

My rating: 10/10

Favorite quote:

“I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue.”

Field of Dreams (1989)

The ultimate movie of second chances. Goes directly into magical realism but without losing its sense of fun and humanity.

My rating: 9/10

Favorite quote:

“Is this heaven?”

“It’s Iowa.”

More feel-good films

Honorable mention goes to these movies:

A wonderful life
Slumdog millionaire
Russian pizza blues
Eat drink man woman
Pane e tulipani
Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Cafe)
The Intouchables
Pleasantville
Good Will Hunting
The snapper
Hable con ella
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Mitt liv som hund
Royal Tenenbaums
Shawshank redemption
Smoke
La vita e bella
What’s eating Gilbert Grape
Moulin Rouge
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Oceans eleven

Your take

Have you seen any of these list? Did I forget your favorite feel-good movie? Write a comment and let me know what you think.
For anyone who didn’t quit yesterday, get our best tips on becoming happier in the job you have

April 1, 2016

Happy At Work, Quit

International Quit Your Crappy Job Day was yesterday – March 31.

The day is our attempt to convince more people who hate their jobs that quitting IS an option – and often the best option.

But of course we realize that quitting is not for everyone. Maybe you’re not that miserable at work or maybe you’re simply not currently in a position to quit for financial or other reasons.

So if you are unhappy at work but not ready to quit, the important thing is that you do something to become happier at work.

And to the effect we have gathered a list of resources here. These are some of our best tips on becoming happier in the job you already have. We share them in the hope that they can help more people become happy at work.
IKEA UK voluntarily raises wages for lowest-paid workers

March 31, 2016

Happy At Work, Happy companies, Leadership, Motivation
This announcement from Pernille Hagild, Ikea’s HR Manager in the UK and Ireland, is beyond awesome:

We will adopt the Living Wage (as defined by the Living Wage Foundation) from the 1 April 2016. This means all our co-workers across the UK will receive a minimum of £7.85 per hour and £9.15 per hour within London. The Living Wage is a hot topic in the press at the moment so we feel it’s important to explain why we have made this decision.

Ikea has seen that the UK minimum wage of GBP 6.75 is too low to allow many of their employees to live well and have therefore decided to voluntarily raise salaries to follow the recommendations of the Living Wage Foundation.

Why? Because Ikea’s values are not only about doing good for the customer but also extend to the employees. Pernille puts it like this:

Ikea is a values-driven company. We are guided by a vision “to create a better everyday life for the many people” and this vision includes our co-workers as much as our customers and the communities touched by our business. Providing a meaningful wage to all of our co-workers, that supports their cost of living, is an important part of our values which are fundamental to who we are.

Of course this is not cheap:

The initial £7.5million investment is a big one for us and will benefit over half of our co-workers here in the UK. We have been discussing this for the past year and the thought behind our decision is pretty simple: it is the core of our values to treat people equally and decently. We believe in paying a fair wage for all co-workers regardless of how old they are and that also takes into account where they live.

Will it make employees happier?

It does however raise the question of whether this will make employees happier. Do salaries matter?

Here’s what we think: Wages have the power to make us unhappy if we perceive them to be unfair or if they are so low that we spend a lot of time and energy worrying about our finances.

Once salaries reach the point where they are fair and allow us to live comfortably, further raises do not increase happiness.

This move specifically addresses those issues and can take away much potential unhappiness for many of Ikea’s employees.

That being said, it’s also noteworthy that Ikea UK does this voluntarily and out of a genuine desire to improve their employees’ lives. This means that the move might have an actual positive effect beyond just reducing financial unhappiness because it strengthens the relationship between employees and employer, by showing that the company cares about them.

It’ll be really interesting to see how this plays out.

I love everything about this. I strongly believe that if your business can’t afford to pay the employees a living wage, then you don’t deserve to be in business.

The fact that Ikea is a long-term client of ours and that Pernille Hagild is a friend of mine who helped introduce a similar move in Ikea Denmark years ago only makes it MORE awesome :)

Related posts
TODAY is International Quit Your Crappy Job Day. Happy quitting!

March 31, 2016

Happy At Work, Quit
Are you unhappy at work? Have you been wondering for a while if maybe it’s time to quit?

You’re in luck: Today is International Quit Your Crappy job Day. This is your chance to get away from a terrible boss, meaningless job, toxic workplace culture, boring tasks or whatever is dragging you down.

Because no one should stay in a job they hate. It hurts your career, your health and private life.

At the web site www.internationalquityourcrappyjobday.com you can:
- Test yourself to see if it might be time to quit
- Read interesting articles like 5 Myths About Quitting or the 10 Worst Excuses for Not Quitting
- Read inspiring stories of people who found the courage to quit bad jobs
For anyone who is unhappy at work, the site may help you consider the options and get some clarity in how to proceed.

So we wish everyone a happy and productive International Quit Your Crappy Job Day 2016 :)
New study: We know employees leave bad bosses – but maybe they also leave good ones

March 14, 2016

Happy At Work, Leadership
This is so far just a small study of employees at one company, but the results are interesting. Researchers Ravi S. Gajendran and Deepak Somaya summarize their study as follows in HBR:

We began our study by surveying over 700 employees at a large multinational IT firm. We asked them to assess their manager’s leadership quality…

Eighteen months later, we went through the list of survey responders to see who had left the company… and… interviewed these former employees, 128 in total, to find out why they left the firm, how their new job was different from their previous one, and — most importantly — if their perceptions of their prior employer had changed.

These were the results:

What we discovered was surprising. Good leadership doesn’t reduce employee turnover precisely because of good leadership.

Supportive managers empower employees to take on challenging assignments with greater responsibilities, which sets employees up to be strong external job candidates.

So employees quit for better opportunities elsewhere — better pay, more responsibility, and so on.

I can already hear the lousy managers out there saying “See – I told you there was no reason to treat my people well.” :)

But that is precisely the wrong lesson to draw here. Though the researchers themselves conclude that “Leadership does not beget retention,” I don’t think that’s warranted yet. That is too broad a conclusion to draw based on a study of one workplace.

I’m sure there’s something to the idea, that if you lead your employees well, they’re more likely to grow and develop to the point where they are able to find work elsewhere or start their own businesses. It reminds of the old quote:

What happens if we develop our employees and they leave?
What happens if we don’t, and they stay?

Other studies have shown that the quality of the leadership strongly affects absenteeism, motivation, creativity and productivity, so even if we accept that good leadership has no effect on retention, it still improves business results.

The study also did not take into account whether employees ever came back to their old workplace with new skills and experience.

Finally, as I have often said, even if good leadership did not have a single proven positive effect on business outcomes it would still be the right thing to strive for, because we know that bad leadership hurts an employee’s career, health and private life.

Related posts
- Bad bosses – Why they’re bad and what to do about them
5,000 people took our “is it time to quit” test. These are the results.

March 14, 2016

Happy At Work, Quit

If you are not happy at work, we have a simple test you can take to see if it might be time to quit.

So far 5,000 people have taken the test and you can see the results above.

Please note that we can make no inferences about how happy or unhappy people are at work in general based on these results, because the people who take this test are clearly not a representative sample – they will skew strongly towards the unhappy.

You can take the test yourself here.

And remember: March 31 is International Quit Your Crappy Job Day.
The next time someone asks “How are you?” – try this :)

March 11, 2016

Happy At Work

From the video description on youtube:

This is how this Subway employee greeted every single customer who said “How are you?”
Hate your job? March 31 is International Quit Your Crappy Job Day

March 8, 2016

Happy At Work, Quit
Too many people hate their jobs but still stay in them. This is what we know:
- Around 20-40% of employees are unhappy at work
- Hating your job can harm your career, your health and your private life
- Many people are reluctant to quit and stay for too long in bad jobs
This is clearly a recipe for disaster for everyone who feels stuck in an unhappy work situation.

We want to change that, so we’ve declared March 31 to be International Quit Your Crappy Job Day and have created a web site to match at www.internationalquityourcrappyjobday.com.

Here’s our announcement:

On the site you can take a test to see if it might be time to quit and you can read a number of articles about quitting, including:
There are also a ton of stories from people who found the courage to quit bad jobs. This one is my favorite.

So if you are not happy at work, take a look at the site. Or if someone you know and love is stuck in a crappy job, consider sharing the site with them.

We want more people to quit, but more than that we want many more people to realize that they have that option. Because if you hate your job, but believe that you are not free to quit and get away, the situation gets much, much worse.
Woohoo: We now have partners in 15 countries

March 7, 2016

Happy At Work, Woohoo Partners

Our Woohoo Partnership program is constantly growing and we now have partners in 15 different countries:

Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia,Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA

See the full list of partners here.

We are looking for many more partners around the world so if you want to work with happiness at work, read all about the Woohoo Partnership program here.
Join the Woohoo Academy in Copenhagen or NYC

March 7, 2016

Academy, Happy At Work
We have just announced the next two Woohoo Academies, which take place:
- June 21-24 2016 in Copenhagen, Denmark
- October 18-21 2016 in New York City, US
We have held 2 editions of the Woohoo Academy already, one in Copenhagen and one in Prague. It’s our 3-day intensive, in-depth training for anyone who wants to learn all about happiness at work.

Here’s what participants said about the training:

The Woohoo Academy was, without a doubt, the best training I have ever experienced (and I’ve participated in many trainings). It was very well organized, and provided the latest research, practical strategies and opportunities to engage in many meaningful experiential activities.

– Danielle, Canada

I have attended many motivational and leadership courses over the past 20 years and never came out with so much clarity as after this course. It was interesting with so many nationalities, experiences and angles to the same topic. The value vs time spend for me was immense as my entire organisation over 100 people will benefit directly.

– Monika, Czech Republic

My main reason for going to the course was to got a broader perspective on happiness at work. I wanted to learn more about the theory behind joy, people, work, meaning and succes in businesses. The course gave me a lot of confidence on this topic and I’m convinced that within a copple of years this will be a very important part of leading a business.

– Tamara, Netherlands

The training is for:
- External consultants who want to build a business delivering happiness trainings to clients
- HR staff, managers and internal facilitators who want to get the knowledge and tools to make their organization happier
For us, the Academy is a huge pleasure too. It lets us take a deep dive into many of the things we’ve learned about happiness at work over the years, which we find incredibly fascinating, but which we rarely get a chance to share because it goes into more depth than most of our clients need.

Read all about the Woohoo Academy and sign up here.