Aha! Leadership Icon

10 Ways to Feel Happier, According to Science

by | Aug 27, 2024 | Feelings, Gratitude, Habits, Productivity, Stress Management

10 Ways to feel happier according to science

More than a feel-good state of mind, happiness is described as a “fundamental human goal.” It comes with myriad benefits, including improving our health and even helping us live longer. Happier people are also more likely to make decisions quickly and contribute to society by voting and volunteering.  

And while happiness can be a loaded subject, with many contributing factors that often aren’t in our control, science shows that there are plenty of surprisingly straightforward things that can help us feel satisfied.

Of course, happiness is not something that happens overnight; it’s a process that’s consciously cultivated with intention and purpose. But if you’re looking to embark on that journey, consider starting with some of these 10 science-backed tips.

1. Set a Regular Exercise Routine 

Prioritizing movement is a popular tip when it comes to increasing happiness — and with good reason. Exercise is shown to ease anxiety, increase life satisfaction, and boost serotonin levels, which helps combat negative feelings. Even lunchtime walks are shown to “improve enthusiasm, relaxation, and nervousness at work.” Still not convinced? This report about walkable cities found that when someone swaps long commutes for a walk, “their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.”

2. Prioritize Your Sleep 

We’ve all likely experienced firsthand the intertwining relationship between sleep and happiness. According to Harvard Medical School, “poor or inadequate sleep can cause irritability and stress, while healthy sleep can enhance well-being.” Additionally, a 2018 study found that those who had quality sleep experienced greater life satisfaction.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a minimum of seven hours of sleep for adults and suggests a number of tips to sleep better, such as removing electronic devices from bedrooms and waking up and going to bed at the same time every day (even on weekends).

3. Embrace Family Routines 

Family dinners, regular play outings, and reading time are all common components of family bonding, and studies show these routines have a lasting influence. A 2014 study found that family-centered routines are associated with higher social-emotional health in children, along with an increased sense of belonging and security. Another study showed routines help families build resilience, which is linked to happiness.

Whether you’re a kiddo or an adult, WebMD also notes that establishing regular weekly routines helps reduce stress, boost health, and better prioritize downtime and rest.

4. Build (and Maintain) Friendships 

Friendships are powerful — in fact, some research shows they may be even more important than familial bonds as we get older. The author found that family and friend relationships were linked with better overall health and happiness. However, as people aged, the link only remained “for people who reported strong friendships,” Time reported.

How many friends do we need for maximum happiness levels? According to a CNBC interview with Eric Barker, author of Plays Well With Others, people with five or more close friends feel 60% happier than those without the same number. And individuals who view their manager as a “close friend” are more than twice as likely to enjoy their job.

5. Share Kindness

Kindness can change our brains, literally. The Mayo Clinic explains that kindness boosts our serotonin and dopamine, two neurotransmitters that allow us to feel satisfaction and pleasure. Other research has shown that when people fully engage in acts of kindness, the acts are linked to reducing anxiety and depression.

Eager to reap the rewards of kindness? You’re in luck because one study showed that even performing acts of kindness for just one week created a boost in happiness.

6. Practice Mindfulness Through Meditation 

If you struggle with slowing down, a meditation practice is shown to be a deliberate way of cultivating more mindfulness, which is associated with a sense of purpose in life and higher happiness levels.

Psychology Today explains, “Monitoring your ongoing experience may make you feel happier by helping you slow down to appreciate things or to notice more of the happy things that are going on around you. You may begin to pay more attention to the trees and flowers, enjoy the feel of the sun on your skin, or bask in the warmth of your partner’s or child’s loving gaze.”

7. Know and Use Your Strengths 

Instead of focusing on weaknesses (we’ve all got them), celebrate your strengths. By identifying your strengths and leveraging them, you can increase your self-awareness, improve your relationship with yourself, and boost your happiness, per Psychology Today.

While strengths can certainly include skills you’d put on a resume (language skills, specialties, etc.), they can also be your unique qualities, like love of learning, kindness, curiosity, and hope, to name a few.

8. Express Gratitude 

Harvard Health puts it simply: “giving thanks can make you happier.” In the 2021 article, a study is cited that showed people who wrote a gratitude list were happier than those who wrote about daily irritations. Similarly, a group of participants who wrote a letter of gratitude to someone for their kindness showed immediate boosts in happiness, “with benefits lasting for a month.”

If you want to express more gratitude, consider writing a thank you note, keeping a gratitude journal, or starting a gratitude meditation practice.

9. Smile!

Sometimes the key to a brighter day is simpler than you may think: turning the corners of your mouth up and showing a smile. Science shows that you can actually trick your brain into feeling better by smiling. How? When we smile, dopamine and serotonin are released in the brain, which in turn can boost your mood. However, if the idea of forcing a smile isn’t your thing, consider putting on a TV show that makes you laugh, call someone who puts you in a good mood, or think about a joyful memory.

10. Set Achievable Goals for Yourself

Did you know that simply the act of setting goals can increase your happiness levels? It’s true, according to a study by the University of Basel in Switzerland that showed psychological well-being can improve when you have goals that seem attainable to you regardless of the outcome. Power of Positivity recommends starting out with smaller goals and building from there, as little steps can make big goals less intimidating and more actionable.

Source: Marika Price Spitulski

“We do not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy.” 
– Shawn Achor

Did you know this about disc?

DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication

Get Advice is available on your Catalyst profile:

  • From your Catalyst homepage, click on the Get Advice tile.
  • Select your topic: Connecting, Collaborating, Getting Buy-In, or Managing Tension.
  • Search for the colleague you want to understand better.
  • Review the personalized insights and tips.
  • Take action—and achieve your goals! Visit Catalyst today to explore this feature!


Below are some options the Get Advice feature includes:

5 Benefits of Team Building for Remote Teams

by | Aug 7, 2024 | Adaptability, Engagement, Leadership Development, Setting Expectations, Working from Home

5 Benefits of team building for remote teams

In today’s digital era, remote work has become standard, giving employees flexibility and autonomy. Yet, maintaining strong team bonds remains a challenge. At Aha! Leadership, we see team bonding as essential, not just a bonus, for our success. Here’s why:

1. Fostering Trust and Collaboration
Regular team bonding activities help build trust among team members. When trust is established, collaboration becomes seamless. Employees feel more comfortable sharing ideas, asking for help, and working together towards common goals.

2. Enhancing Communication
Team bonding events provide opportunities for open and relaxed communication. These interactions can break down barriers, making it easier for team members to connect on both professional and personal levels, ultimately improving day-to-day communication.

3. Boosting Morale and Engagement
Engaging in fun and meaningful activities can significantly boost team morale. When employees feel valued and connected, their engagement levels rise. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and committed to their work.

4. Promoting a Positive Work Culture
A strong team bond contributes to a positive and inclusive work culture. It fosters a sense of belonging and community, which is especially important in a remote work environment where physical interactions are limited.

5. Supporting Mental Well-Being
Remote work can sometimes feel isolating. Team bonding activities offer a much-needed break from the routine, providing mental and emotional support. It helps employees recharge and return to work with renewed energy and focus.

What are ways your team commits to nurturing connections?  Would enjoy hearing and learning from you!


Robyn Marcotte
Founder – Aha! Leadership

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”. 
– Jim Rohn

Did you know this about disc?

DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication

Agile EQ Edition

Everything DiSC Agile EQ doesn’t just measure a person’s EQ. It provides a foundation for improving EQ by focusing on observable behaviors that are measured by DiSC.
Agile EQ helps learners understand their emotional responses by using both the language of DiSC and a new concept called Mindsets. The Agile EQ Mindset map helps learners recognize what behaviors are associated with the different mindsets(below).

Effective Leadership: 3 Keys to Seeing the Future Through the Fog

by | Jul 23, 2024 | Change Management, Engagement, Influence, Leadership Development

3 Keys to seeing the future through the fog

Effective management is a solution to many of the problems companies face today – as well as in any work environment.

But what does effective management mean in our current climate?

How do managers need to evolve going forward?

What new skills do they need to acquire or enhance?

1. Managers as coaches

A manager is no longer a “boss” or a delegator, but instead acts as a coach and facilitator of success for their team members.

To be an effective coach, managers must engage employees regularly so they can:

  1. Have meaningful conversations that allow them to understand each employee’s personal situation, preferences, strengths and professional goals
  2. Involve employees in establishing performance goals
  3. Set expectations and systems of accountability

This builds trust. Furthermore, by accentuating their strengths, helping employees plot their career paths and guiding them toward opportunities that will help them accomplish those goals, managers can boost:

  • Employee confidence
  • Feelings of inclusion
  • Engagement

Engaging employees in this way also helps to eliminate common areas of frustration and perceived disrespect. If a manager knows who their employees are as people, including their personal challenges, desires and innate tendencies, they can cater their management style to each person’s needs. Because everyone is wired differently, managers can’t expect to treat everyone the same and expect consistently good results.

As an example of how employees can be so vastly different, Gallup recently conducted a survey of 15,000 workers asking them whether they prefer, post-pandemic, that their work and personal life are separate or blended. Surprisingly, the result was 50% in favor of separation and 50% in favor of a blend. Now think about the people you manage – and imagine the friction that could be created if you didn’t know which category each of your employees prefer.

2. Effective leaders as deliverers of a consistent culture

In times of uncertainty, organizational culture can be a powerful differentiator between good and great workplaces. A culture with desirable qualities can:

  • Attract and retain star employees and, as a result, elevate the customer experience.
  • Can help employees to be more resilient and enable companies to better weather tough times.

Despite the increased focus on employee wellness in company culture, Gallup has found that the number of employees who strongly agree with the statement “my employer cares about my wellbeing” has dropped from nearly half to less than a quarter. This is a major problem, and managers must work to combat this perception and help to close the gap between executive leadership and employees.

Managers are the leaders who employees interact with the most. To many employees, their direct manager is the face of the company and represents the brand and culture to them. Therefore, managers have the most regular opportunity to embody and model the organizational culture to employees.

3. Effective leaders as architects of resiliency and engagement

Leaders must build resiliency and engagement in their employees to counteract negative emotions, such as change fatigue. To do this, they must balance flow and burnout.

  • Flow is the state at which employees experience challenges, but they rely on their strengths and manager’s guidance to perform at their best.
  • Burnout is when employees experience challenges plus barriers in their way.

Both flow and burnout share “high challenge” in common. Challenge is good and you don’t want to remove it from the workplace. What effective leaders should remove from the workplace are the barriers that hold employees back and frustrate them, so they can help employees accomplish what they need to do.

There’s also the recent phenomenon of quiet quitting, which really just means that employees are not engaged. If managers understand their employees and their personal situation, and take steps to intervene, quiet quitting doesn’t have to happen.

As Gallup has found, the average engagement level in the U.S. is at 32%. At great companies, regardless of geographies or industries, engagement levels are consistently at 70% or higher. What this statistic tells us is that high engagement is achievable and that leaders have an important role to play.

Source: Insperity

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” 
– John Maxwell

Did you know this about disc?

DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication

DiSC is a valuable tool for managers. It gives you insight into your own management approach. And it helps you understand when and how to adapt your approach to the people you manage. Get a quick overview of how it works.

Management Video

Five Benefits Of Doing Nothing

by | Jun 19, 2024 | Feelings, Flexible Schedule, Stress Management

5 Benefits of doing nOthing 

In the spirit of walking our talk we are taking a 5 day company holiday! July 1-5

In 1370 AD, the first public clock tower was erected in Cologne, Germany, and from that day forward, the clock has been running our lives.

And I know that when I read stats like these, they make me crazy:

  • According to Arwen Curry, before Edison invented the light bulb, the average person slept eleven hours a night. 
  • A Senate subcommittee in 1967 was told that by 1985, the average American would work only twenty-two hours a week for twenty-seven weeks a year. (Technology and Social Trends, Kerby Anderson)
  • By 2007, the average American worked nearly four more weeks per year than in 1979. (“Vast Majority of Wage Earners are Working Harder,” Lawrence Mishel)

 

There’s no a complete solution to our overly time-conscious lives, but scheduling a day to DO NOTHING productive is a great starting point.

Yes, you read that right. Schedule a day to DO NOTHING productive. No work. No grocery shopping. No checking “have-to’s” off your list.  

Many societies throughout history have baked this practice into a weekly rhythm called the Sabbath. Many of you remember a time when stores were closed on Sundays. 

After all, DOING NOTHING has several benefits:

    1. Relaxation: Doing nothing allows you to recharge your batteries.
    2. Creativity: Doing nothing allows your mind to wander and can lead to increased problem-solving skills.
    3. Increased productivity: Doing nothing can increase your productivity in the long run. It allows you to return to tasks with renewed energy and focus.
    4. Improved decision-making: Doing nothing allows you to reflect on your choices and consider different options.
    5. Improved relationships: Doing nothing can also allow you to connect with others and strengthen your connections, which research shows is THE key to long-term success.  

Source: Brian Rutherford, leadercast

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer”. 
– William S. Burroughs

Did you know this about disc?

DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication

Level of activity

  •  Top – tend to be fast-paced and are often described as assertive, dynamic, and bold.
    • They tend to exert effort to change their circumstances.
  • Bottom – tend to be more moderate paced and are often described as calm, methodical, and careful.
    •  They are more inclined to adapt to existing circumstances.

Level of acceptance

  • Left – naturally more skeptical in nature and are often described as logic-focused, objective, and challenging.
    • They instinctively withhold trust from people and ideas until those outside elements can be thoroughly vetted.
  • Right – naturally more receptive in nature and are often described as people-focused, empathizing, and agreeable.
    • They are biased to see the people and ideas around them as favorable and are thus inclined to trust them.

Leading With Empathy – Without Ignoring Execution

by | Jun 4, 2024 | Adaptability, Feelings, Respectful Workplace

Leading with empathy without ignoring execution

Yes, you can have it all: empathy and performance.

Leaders’ minds often toggle between focusing on business needs and tending to employees. Yet, there’s more overlap between leading with empathy and executing on goals than many of us realize. Leaders really can do both without one being at the expense of the other.

The value of leading with empathy:

The benefits of leading with empathy outweigh any misconceptions as to why a leader shouldn’t show empathy.

Showing empathy engages others. Engagement and performance are highly correlated. When engagement is higher, performance also tends to be higher.

Furthermore, empathy is a relational skill. When relatedness is stronger, the bonds of a team are stronger. The team can face complex challenges successfully when team members:

  • Truly “see” each other
  • Understand who has the capacity to take on more responsibility
  • Accept mutual accountability for team performance

Showing empathy when leading employees can be transformative for your team.

How to prioritize both empathy and execution:

Conversations are the simple key to balancing both empathy and execution because they’re the place where compassion and action converge – a formula for success.

When leaders are reacting to mountains of challenges, and the pressure to perform is high, it’s easy to skip conversations with team members and attempt to drive results via email and directives distributed at meetings.

This tendency seems like a direct path to the desired outcomes, but it also eliminates nearly all opportunities to:

  • Connect with team members
  • Uncover the challenges they are experiencing
  • Offer empathy and compassion to help them through

Typically, when leaders are feeling stressed about deliverables, they double down on managing tasks and cancel one-on-one meetings with team members. But there’s a better choice. When the pressure is on, meaningful, efficient one-on-one meetings are pure gold. Leaders may think they don’t have time to connect, but the missed opportunity cost can be significant. Connect with the team.

At their best, these conversations happen with a team member – rather than to them. They’re collaborative conversations about collective goals that explore how the manager and employee can solve problems together. It’s time to confirm “we’ve got this.”

How do you find time to have conversations with each employee when your days are jammed with other meetings and tasks? The answer can be simple: optimization. Master shorter, more intentional one-on-one meetings. A three-minute conversation can often change everything for the better.

Here are some tips for having short conversations that show empathy and drive performance:

  • Be fully present in the conversation. “See” the other person.
  • Help your employee define what the next successful step is.
  • Clarify any resources that are needed to perform well.
  • Offer recognition and instill confidence in their ability to be successful.
  • It really comes down to listening! Maintain a judgment-free space for your team member to share their current state.

If you’re looking for questions to start off the conversation, try some of the following:

  • Ask open-ended questions to learn what employees are thinking and feeling:
    • What are your plans?
    • What are your obstacles?
    • What is success for you?
    • What does the situation look like from your point of view?
  • Consider additional questions like:
    • How can we achieve “X” (a specific outcome) and help you navigate “Y” (the challenges of your workload, stress level, etc.)?
    • What resource would be most useful for you now, to help you perform well during this sprint?
    • What could you do today to recharge and prepare yourself for the challenges ahead this week?
    • What is your biggest challenge right now that is having an impact on your ability to perform at your best?
    • What elements of this challenge boost your energy? How can we configure the work to keep your energy level high through this next high-volume period?

When a leader invites open dialogue and seeks to understand a team member’s readiness to perform at their best, valuable information flows. Only then can you work together to co-create solutions that deliver results and address the team member’s needs. These are moments when trust can be fortified. Be ready to connect, listen and support.

Source: Insperity Staff, Insperity

“If you are asking how to create a more empathetic workplace, you’re already way ahead of everybody else”  
– Daniel Lubetzky

Did you know this about disc?

DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication

What Is Everything DiSC Work of Leaders?

Everything DiSC® Work of Leaders lays out a clear path for leaders at all levels to make the connection between their DiSC® style and real-world leadership demands.

It brings together best practices from 300 experts in over 150 organizations, the important work of the most prominent scholars, and over four years of additional research and development to provide participants with an actionable path toward more effective leadership.

Work of Leaders video