In 2007, Chip Conley wrote one of our favorite business books, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. The book documented how, as the CEO of the large boutique hotel company Joie de Vivre, Chip used Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to create happier employees and customers during the last downturn. He’s out with his newest book, Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success, and it’s as good as the last one, ranking #7 on this week’s New York Times bestsellers list.

We asked Chip a few questions about how emotions and math can be combined.

DH: Why is the use of emotional equations helpful during difficult economic times?
Chip Conley: I believe that when the world is full of external chaos, we yearn for internal logic to help illuminate solutions in our lives. Rather than look for the light at the end of the tunnel, I found that using these equations was a way of lighting a metaphorical candle to create some emotional clarity.

DH: You define despair as suffering minus meaning (Despair = Suffering – Meaning). What does that mean?
CC: Viktor Frankl’s landmark book “Man’s Search for Meaning” was my salvation 3-4 years ago when I was going through a depressing time. I turned that profound book into this equation so that it could serve as a daily reminder or mantra on a bad day. Suffering is basically a constant in life. If you’re a Buddhist, that’s the first Noble Truth, but it’s just as relevant in a punishing recession and in many relationships. Meaning is the variable – it’s what you make of it. The way this equation works, if you increase the meaning of something and suffering stays constant, then despair declines. For me, it meant I was asking “What’s the lesson or learning in this?” Often, I had to think of life as sort of an emotional boot camp and that the way I created meaning from a challenging situation was to imagine what emotional muscles I was training – whether it’s resiliency, humility, compassion, or courage – that could serve me later in life.

DH: Tell us about your equation for Happiness (Wanting What You Have / Having What You Want).
CC:After I learned the Despair equation, I was fascinated by the opposite end of the spectrum: what are the ingredients for Happiness? I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Bhutan to spend a week with the folks who started creating the Gross National Happiness index in Bhutan nearly 40 years ago (today, more than 50 countries around the world have created a similar index). An alternative way of looking at this equation is Happiness = Practicing Gratitude / Pursuing Gratification. When you appreciate or want what you have, that’s a form of practicing gratitude, something that is foundational for many devotional practices – like Buddhism in Bhutan. In the U.S., we are proud of our “pursuit of happiness” and the fact that it’s even in our Declaration of Independence, but if you read some dictionary definitions of pursuit (“to chase with hostility”), you understand the risks associated in the denominator. Many of us pursue our goals or gratifications so aggressively that we end up on the hedonic treadmill constantly chasing the next shiny object or opportunity. When we’re bottom-heavy in this equation and too focused on pursuit, we lose track of our quickest means of creating happiness: the practice of wanting what we have or gratitude.

Chip Conley

DH: You say that Happiness is different than Joy. Tell us more.
CC:First off, I was lucky enough to spend time with some of the world’s psychology luminaries like Sonja Lyubomirsky (who wrote “The How of Happiness”) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (“Flow”). I was able to read what great philosophers and writers have written about the subject as well. For example, Socrates sums up the Happiness equation when he wrote, “He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have.” Similarly, the author JD Salinger wrote, “The singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid.” Happiness often comes from external “happenstances,” while joy seems to bubble up from a well deep inside. After talking with lots of “joy experts,” I came to the conclusion that there are two gladiator emotions that jump into the ring each day: love and fear. Think of a pie chart with just two pieces that represent these two emotions. Love crowds out fear and fear evaporates love. And, ultimately, the sense of elation that comes from focusing on love and diminishing fear down to zero is joy. So, the equation is Joy = Love – Fear. For me, Happiness is the emotion that propels me through my day and is more tangible in my life. But, as the guy who chose to call his company Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life), I’ve got a certain bias for the ephemeral, yet powerful emotion of Joy.

DH: So, have you really found combining emotions and math to be helpful in your life?
CC: Math is the study of relationships, the relationship of numbers. But, why not use it to understand the relationship of our emotions? If I can understand that the two ingredients that tend to create Anxiety are Uncertainty and Powerlessness, I can focus on what I do know and what I can control in order to reduce my sense of fear. It’s that simple.

It’s February and the DH Team is feelin’ the love for our awesome community. That’s why we’re inviting you to enter our Love ‘n Happiness Contest! Send us your ode to love ‘n happiness by completing a 4-line poem beginning with the classic line, roses are red, and score a chance to win fun prizes from the DH:shop.

Deadline to enter: February 10th, 2012

How to enter: submit your poem online via Facebook, Twitter (using hashtag #DHlove),  or our website. One entry per person, please.

Results: we’ll post our picks of the top 9 most creative poems to Facebook on 2/12 and let the community vote for their favorites. Final results will be posted to the DH website and Facebook page on Valentine’s Day, 2/14.

Prizes:
1st – 3rd place: win a DH t-shirt of your choice and a wristband 3-pack from the DH:shop
4th – 6th place: a DH coffee tumbler and wristband pack
7th – 9th place: a DH reusable shopper and wristband pack

For more details: please see our Contest Rules.

Need some inspiration? Try these on for size:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Do what you love
And be the real you!

Roses are red
T-shirts are fun
They can spread happiness
To you and everyone!

Wishing you good luck, happiness, and lots of LOVE!
The Delivering Happiness Team

Employees of Happy, Ltd., embrace a happy workplace.

Henry Stewart

DH guest blogger Henry Stewart is Chief Executive of the London-based Happy Ltd., a training company which has earned numerous awards including rankings in the World’s Most Democratic Workplaces and the UK’s Best Workplaces, and the Institute of IT Training’s Gold medal for Training Company of the Year. Download Henry’s book, The Happy Manifesto, for free, read his blog, or check him out on Twitter @happyhenry.

I often say that our most radical belief at Happy is this: you should decide who should manage people based on . . . how good they are at managing people. Because too often they are chosen on their core skill or how long they’ve been in the job.

We worked with one company who had a problem with their Marketing Manager. Let’s call her Sarah. Now Sarah was brilliant at marketing and vital to the company’s success. But she was not good at managing people and lost around half her staff every year as they moved to other jobs.

They came to us to help them solve the problem. They wanted to keep Sarah but needed to find a way to motivate and keep their people. The solution was, of course, simple. Sarah’s role got changed to one of Marketing Expert, where she spent all her time doing marketing stuff. We found the person in the team who was great with people and trained them to be the new manager. (Of course, if it had been at Happy, we’d have had the staff choose who it should be.)

The great thing about this solution was that it was win/win. Everybody gained. The happiest person of all was Sarah who lost the bits of the job that were stressing her out and got to spend all her time doing what she was great at.

Working with groups of managers, I’ve found many who absolutely love managing people. Its what motivates them, what gets them up in the morning and what they will remember long after they leave this job. But many others hate it. However much training they receive, they still aren’t great at it and they know it. It stresses them out and they would love it if they could have their seniority without having to manage people.

This is one of the most important steps to making your workplace happier. Make sure your managers are selected for how good they are at managing people and you will transform the lives of many of your staff. And that means they will stay and be motivated to do a great job. It is kind of common sense.

DH: Share a bit about yourself and where you’re from.
Amy Frost: I was born on an Air Force Base, grew up in the Air Force traveling all over the country.  My Dad was a B52 navigator.  I worked for the Air Force (Dept of Defense for 21 years).  My family is from Ohio.  I am from everyone and nowhere.  I learned early on that humor connected me to others and it helped me deal with being the new kid over, and over, and over.

DH: Tell us about your business or the company where you work.
AF: I LOVE working! I enjoyed a fulfilling civil service career with the military, serving in a variety of roles including contract negotiation and training facilitation. Since leaving the Air Force, I’ve been a teacher, trainer, speaker and coach for leadership and life coaching programs. I also am the National Training Director and Corporation Consciousness Officer for the Nonprofit Sector Foundation and have worked with many Employee Assistance Programs where I earned the nickname, “Queen of Triage.” My mission is to motivate and inspire individuals, teams and organizations to live and work consciously.  I believe the key to happiness is conscious living.

DH: How do you deliver happiness to your employees, customers and/or colleagues?  
AF: In my workshops with cancer patients, their family and caregivers, I teach them how to use humor in the healing process. Working with all my clients and with nonprofits, I find ways to value them, appreciate them and lighten up their way.  I send funny cards . . . I use fun props . . . I put giggle bombs in my emails. As Corporate Consciousness Officer for the Nonprofit Sector Foundation, one of my main focuses is making work FUN for us and all the profits, nonprofits, volunteers, funders and peeps we work with and for! I believe that happiness is fuel to help you do your mission and it is who we really are.  I know I have done my job when everyone I come in contact with is happier for it!

DH: What about DH, the book and/or the movement, inspires you the most?
AF: I love being part of a movement that is focused on creating a world that values people and appreciates hard work, that is creative and is FUN!!!

DH: Did DH nudge you towards making any changes in your life? If so, tell us more.
AF:I’ve decided to guest blog for DH and help as many people as I can.

DH: What is your take on happiness?
AF:My mission has always been to inspire, motivate and coach people to thrive in their work and lives.  My life experiences are like a piece of tapestry.  If I look at the “wrong” side, all my experiences seem unrelated like a bunch of strings.   On the “correct” side of the tapestry, the strings are all woven together to make a beautiful picture. I have always been focused on helping others and now I feel the need to be on my train, do my work and use my gifts and talents to do my mission. By learning to walk in faith on an uncertain path, as opposed to always taking the safe path, I have learned to trust the Divine Plan. I can now look at the CHAOS around us as Clarity Holding an Open Space not as something to be fixed.

I believe we are all born with a clean white board and we write our life and beliefs as we go.  Some beliefs hold us back from our dreams.  We forget that we have the erasers and hold the magic markers of our own white board.  We can rewrite worn out beliefs to ones that better serve our current dreams.  I want to tell people: “Live your passion and never give it up.  Exercise your faith muscle; keep building it up for those dark times when you need faith.  Most importantly, be grateful every step of the way, and HAVE FUN on the journey!”

DH: Is there a person (people), experience, or event in your life that was pivotal in shaping your current outlook on happiness?
AF: My father…he made a difference in the world and he was so funny.  He taught me how to be mission and people focused simultaneously.  We had so much fun together and his smile was infectious.

DH: What makes you really happy?
AF: Helping people get to their AH-HA moment.  Helping people see how amazing they are and helping them be that.  Deep connection with friends.  The way my husband looks at me.  Traveling . . . my pets . . . DISNEYLAND!

DH: What’s your favorite happy and/or inspirational quote?
AF: “Do small things with great love.”– Mother Teresa (She had a great sense of humor and is one of my mentors)

DH: What’s something weird that makes you happy?
AF: ORGANIZING! If I don’t watch myself, I start organizing my organizing!

You can train your brain to run a positive route. (courtesy of ushealthiest.org)

In the previous posts for this series, we’ve been discussing the playdough that is your brain and the fact that it can be “trained” to bring more happiness into your life.

But how does a brain really become happier?

There are 100 billion neurons in your brain. They make connections with one another at synapses, where chemicals called neurotransmitters are released. Each neurotransmitter is a signal, a coach belting out instructions from a playbook. Every neuron listens for the coach to say, “Hey, get in the game!” or “You’re not needed. Sit this one out.”

If a neuron is needed, it fires and sends a signal of its own. So begins a recruiting process (neurons that fire together, wire together), where the signal of one neuron tells a fellow neuron to fire.

It’s not so hard to see how a particular way of thinking gives the neurons repeated practice at running a given play. Over time, the same positive thought (“I am going to catch this ball”) reinforces the strength of the “positive” route that’s being run. And, as logic follows, a negative thought (“I don’t think I can catch this ball today”) reinforces the neurons’ familiar, “negative” route.

The key to creating a happier brain really means changing your designated plays, but research tells us that altering your thinking requires your mindful attention. Here are a few tips from Rick Hanson’s Buddha’s Brain for strengthening your positive neural circuitry:

• Turn positive facts into positive experiences. Good things keep happening all around us, but much of the time we don’t notice them; even when we do, we often hardly feel them. Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them–open up to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet; don’t just look at it–dig in!
• Savor the experience. Make it last by staying with it for 5, 10, even 20 seconds; don’t let your attention skitter off to something else. The longer that something is held in awareness and the more emotionally stimulating it is, the more neurons that fire and thus wire together, and the stronger the trace in memory (Lewis 2005).

Fireworks at the Beijing Olympics. (photo courtesy of myopera.com)

Enjoyed by the young and old, fireworks are imbued with happiness.  We have China to thank for them.

Some believe that China set off the first fireworks circa 200 B.C. after throwing green bamboo into a bonfire. Air pockets in the bamboo expanded from the heat, exploding with a noise that warded off evil spirits. It was a practice that became routine for the Chinese until they later invented gunpowder.

The origin of gunpowder is an interesting story of its own. You may choose to believe that its beginnings occurred some 2,000 years ago, when a cook accidentally mixed charcoal, sulfur, and salt peter (potassium nitrate), substances which were frequently used in the culinary or medical fields. Once lit, the concoction went up in flames.

The alternative story, a bit sexier in my opinion, says that between 600 – 900 A.D., Chinese alchemists were searching for a pill of immortality. In the course of their experimenting, they discovered a mixture containing salt peter, sulfur, and arsenic disulfide gave off a bright and extremely hot flame when heated. It was powerful enough, in fact, to burn the alchemists’ shack to the ground.

However gunpowder was discovered, most agree that its main purpose at the time was for weaponry and that the first celebration with fireworks may have been a military victory.

courtesy of myopera.com

The firecracker as we know it is believed to have been made by rolling the paper of bamboo into a tube, then adding gunpowder and a fuse. A Chinese monk, Li Tian, of the Song Dynasty, is dubbed the official inventor.  Marco Polo than brought fireworks to Europe during the thirteenth century.

Fireworks are a universal sign of celebration. Thank you, China, and Happy Lunar New Year!

Upcoming Events for Delivering Happiness

Monday, January 23rd

Delivering Happiness CEO Jenn Lim is speaking at Monday’s DLD (Digital – Life – Design) Conference in Munich, Germany! Jenn will be a panel member for a discussion on the secrets of success, giving her insights on why happiness is key to a successful and sustainable company culture.

Founded in 2005, DLD is a global conference network on innovation, digital media,  science and culture which connects business, creative and social leaders, opinion-formers and investors for crossover conversation and inspiration.

You can watch Jenn’s appearance on the panel stream LIVE on UStream here: http://new.livestream.com/dld and we’ll be live tweeting all the fun (bright and early) at http://twitter.com/DHMovement! So join the DH Team and Community for this awesome event! The fun starts at 8:55 AM EST and ends at 10:05 EST.

Thursday, January 26th

Inspire Las Vegas: Inspiration is poised to strike at 7 p.m. at The Beauty Bar. All proceeds go to the Nevada Homeless Alliance.

Tuesday, January 31st

Inspire San Francisco: Be inspired at The Happiness Institute from 6:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. (on Twitter at #inspiresf)

Big on community, family, and happiness. Meet resiliency researcher, author, professor, coach, and blogger, Mollie Marti.

Dr. Mollie Marti

DH: Share a bit about yourself and where you’re from.
Mollie Marti: I’m a Midwest girl, growing up 12^th of 13 kids in a close knit family. My husband and I live near our families, raising our kids on an Iowa apple orchard. My educational background is as a lawyer and a psychologist.

DH: Tell us about your business or the company where you work, and how you got started.
MM: I’m a resiliency researcher on a mission to mentor leaders to thrive and serve. I do this through speaking, writing, and mentoring. In addition to my leadership resilience company, I’m an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Iowa and  am in the process of founding a charity to help communities in crises more quickly recover and build greater resilience. The starting point for most things I do? People — and their ability to grow themselves and uplift others — fascinate me.

DH: How do you deliver happiness to your employees, customers and/or colleagues? 
MM: Hopefully in small ways, throughout the day, every day. It truly is the small moments of gifting our time, attention, respect, and appreciation that make others happy.

DH: What about DH, the book and/or the movement, inspires you the most?
MM: While I’d be a supporter of the Happiness Movement — being happy and joyful is good for you and those around you — I’m a raving fan of the Delivering Happiness Movement. Intentionally contributing to others’ happiness and well being is what defines the success of one’s life.

DH: Did DH nudge you towards making any changes in your life? If so, tell us more.
MM: The DH book inspired me and gave me practical tips to bring more value to others’ lives, especially to my employees so they can take better care of our clients. Hearing Tony speak to our community and interacting with the DH bus crew brought these lessons to life. The passion, creativity, and service-focus were apparent in every DH team member I met.

DH: Is there a person, experience, or event in your life that was pivotal in shaping your outlook on happiness?
MM: My life’s greatest mentor was Judge Max Rosenn. I went to study with Judge upon graduating law school. I went to learn the law and his love and wisdom transformed my life. When my life deconstructed from a heart virus a few years back, I used his life philosophy and lessons to intentionally rebuild a happy and fulfilling life one block at a time. I recently wrote a book so others can apply this wisdom called Walking with Justice: Uncommon Lessons from One of Life’s Greatest Mentors.

DH: Why is happiness important to you?
MM: Happiness – both creating and sharing — is an important part of purposeful living package. Researchers see the same attributes showing up. For example, longevity researchers began studying people who live an unusually long life. Upon closer examination, they also found more happiness, healthier habits, higher productivity, greater purpose, and deeper connection with others. These are all pieces of a meaningful human experience.

DH: What makes you really happy?
MM: Fully experiencing the big things . . . through the little things. Savoring love, service, and connection through those precious moments of snuggling with family, working in my community, walking our pups through the orchard, belly laughing with friends, or standing in awe of nature. I thrive on experiences — adventuring and making memories with my loved ones.

DH: What’s your advice to someone who wants to start making happiness a priority but doesn’t know where to begin?
MM: Wanting to make happiness a priority is a start. It’s a sign of awareness. Nurture this by keeping a running Joy List of the people and experiences that make you happy. Set a strong intention of experiencing more joyful moments, which will direct your attention to opportunities for happiness. Work toward a practice of doing something every day that makes you happy. Protect and celebrate these joy makers.

DH: What’s your favorite happy and/or inspirational quote?
MM: “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.” ~Margaret Bonnano

DH: What’s something weird that makes you happy?
MM: I’m a vegetarian . . . who loves the smell of barbecue chicken. It makes me happy every time even though I have no desire to eat the chicken. It cracks up my kids to see me by the grill saying, “Mmmm . . . I love this smell!”

There are two caped crusaders for happiness: your mind and your brain. (photo courtesy of www.3niu.edu)

If you read the previous post in this series, you know we’ve got neuroplasticity on the, errr, brain. Or should we say, mind?

In Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, neuropsychologist Rick Hanson defines the relationship between the mind and the brain as an integrated system. How one “makes” or exactly shapes the other isn’t known–and the answer to that question may be akin to determining how the earth revolved around the sun some 350 years after Copernicus made the observation that it did.

It’s reasonable, says Dr. Hanson, to define the relationship as “the mind is what the brain does.”

The mind includes the neural signals that regulate such things as your stress response, your knowledge of how to do something, your hopes or dreams, and your personality tendencies.  Essentially, the mind is the information that is being moved around by your brain. Your interactions with the world and your own body will also contribute to your mind’s “make-up.”

How does knowing that the mind and brain are thought of as individual but collaborative performers matter? Quite simply, it gives us deeper insight into the power of neuroplasticity,  and why this attribute can pave the way for happier thinking.

As Hanson writes, ” . . you can use your mind to change your brain to benefit your mind–and everyone else whose life your touch.”