workhappi

life with benefits

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How to Start Becoming a Leader Today

How to Start Becoming a Leader Today

Oftentimes, people feel like they don’t need to be working on leadership skills because they’re not a leader yet. They’re not a Thought Leader, presenting to hundreds of people. They’re not a Manager, with direct reports looking to them for a career advice. Or, they’re not the “Lead” on the project.

If you reframe those “I’m not yet’s…” into “I could be somedays…” you can actually take some great…

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A Guide to Crafting Your Personal Purpose Journey

Personal Purpose Journey

Now that your company found some purpose (that was fast!), I wanted to write about personal purpose. There’s a lot of information around “finding your purpose”. Seriously, google it. You will become overwhelmed.

What I’ve been loving though, is this post on The Impact Trap, as it’s making this experience feel more human and flow-y. Overall, finding your purpose has to be a journey. Your purpose…

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5 Steps to Delivering Effective & Actionable Feedback

Delivering Effective & Actionable Feedback

Feedback is a pretty essential thing in order to make people feel like they’re cared for, and that they’re doing a good job. Positive and critical feedback both helps an individual learn how they can improve and grow while understanding that their manager is investing in them.

However! Feedback isn’t so cut and dry. Have you ever seen those funny drawings of ineffective client feedbackon a…

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Meeting Madness and How to Combat it

Meeting Madness!

The image above cracks me up every time. I saw it once while attending an eight-hour workshop in a client space, so I thought I’d share out one approach from an Inc article on reducing meetings:

Limit meetings to six people. If there are more than six people in your meeting it’s lost efficacy – some members will be multi-tasking and less engaged in the conversation. Keeping the group small and…

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The Purge (No, Not the Ethan Hawke Movie)

The Purge (No, Not the Ethan Hawke Movie) http://wp.me/p2IH6w-3y

I just finished up three moves in the past week (it’s very complicated, believe me). While sitting in a pile of bobble-heads, I was forced to remind myself of my purge tactics, and thought I’d share. It’s one simple question.

When buying something new, ask yourself: Would I want to pack this into a box and take it to a new apartment or house? If not, don’t buy it.

For stuff I already own, I ask…

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Take a Vacation to be a Better Employee

Take a Vacation to be a Better Employee http://wp.me/p2IH6w-2E

Hi All! I was busy celebrating my friend’s wedding but I have one post for you this week about vacationing. Then I’m going to GO on vacation! I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, but hopefully ya’ll will enjoy reading past posts while I’m out.

In an article from Forbesabout employees taking vacation, they found, “Only 25% said they use all their paid days each year and 61% said that while they’re…

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What to Say Instead of "I'm So Busy!"

The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider

I absolutely love this article for the NYTimes Opinionator by Tim Kreider about the Busy Trap. It highlights that our answer to how we’re doing is how busy we are – even children. Tim has a great outlook on introducing a bit more play, removing unnecessary distractions and finding space for himself.

Something that I try to do when people ask me how I am? Rather than lament how busy and…

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Stressed? Try These 11 Tips Right Now!

Stressed? Try These Tips!

Stress is bad. For real. It causes all kinds of psychological issues like anxiety and low motivation. Women and millennials are feeling the heat the most according to American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey taken from a Business Insiderarticle. Also, Millenials are the worst at finding smart and healthy coping methods. Instead they’re smoking, drinking, napping,…

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Sleep is the Best! 12 Ways to Get More ZZZs.

Sleep is the Best!

After all this reflecting, habit-making and to-do lists, it’s time to talk about resting up to do all this stuff. Sleep is the best. The best. I love it so much. What’s crazy is that in a world of instagram, pinterest, facebook, netflix, hulu and other amazing things on the world wide web, we’re having a really hard time with sleep procrastination. I know, you’re like, wtf, procrastination is…

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Nine Ways to Reflect More

The Point of Reflection

Okay, I’m still on a New Years stint, and will remain until my gym stops their New Years Resolution sales. I mean, c’mon, we don’t all really want to take a class called “AirBarre” do we? I do. Oh my goodness I do, please stop filling up. On the subject of resolutions, one friend disclosed, “I have the same resolution every year! Lose 5 pounds!”, and another explained he never makes resolutions…

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Back from Breaking & Five Habit-Making Tips

Back from Breaking & Habit-Making

Hey old friend! So good to see you again! Over the past couple of months I took a mental break from updating this website and it was pretty great. I would see an article, click on a link, or wrap myself in a conversation that made me go “oh boy, that would be great for a post!”, but, with a busy year-end quarter at work and my own personal enjoyment of binge-watching all of Gilmore Girls, I’m…

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10 Surprising Employee Engagement Ideas

Surprising Employee Engagement Ideas

Hi Guys!

Employee Engagement. Hot topic, per usual. I found a couple articles talking about interesting ways to encourage employee engagement, overall employee happiness while reducing burnout. Without further ado…

Pay people to take a vacation– no seriously. People need breaks, and with the number of Americans who don’t take their full vacation time each year, this is a really good way to…

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8 Ways to Be a Good Manager

But I'm A Manager?! A To-Do List

I’ve been talking a fair bit of smack on managers, and this post is a continuation. Just kidding, it’s actually a mash-up of traits of strong managers so we can follow suit.

Good managers are truly hard to find, and it’s really important to find them. That Gallup study states that a manager effects engagement 70% (positively, or negatively). So why has it become so difficult to hire strong…

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Running 24/7 Can Burn You Out. Four Action Steps to Take Today.

Beyonce and Obama Only Have 24 Hours a Day, Too.

You know that mug, “You have as many hours in the day as Beyonce”? I love that mug. (Available for pre-order here). I love it not because it reminds me that I have not yet found my flawless diva fame, but instead, it’s a reminder that in order to do that, I better start prioritizing what’s actually important to me.

As a society, between smart phones, text messages and constant communication,…

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The Three Key Factors in Employee Engagement

Feeling the Passion (at Work)

From the Gallup study I wrote a few articles about employee engagement and just how important it is. Guess what? Still important, still a problem. Good.co covered in an article how Dale Carnegie came out with “Engaging Employees: What Drives Employee Engagement and Why It Matters”. The headline gets right to heart of it, that “United States businesses lose $11 billion annually as a result of…

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Got Purpose? It Might Extend Your Life.

Got Purpose?

As I’ve started writing about what makes people happy at work, I’ve gotten into a lot of conversations around “Do what you love”, “Find Passion in the everyday”, and “Do what drives you.” During a lunch, someone asked me if my issue was capitalism (and it may be) but I do think it is a little more than that. (Although I am for sure trying out the Work Uniform, black pants everyday anyone?) As…

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Company Culture: Defining it Properly

Company "Culture"

Culture is a funny, funky thing. And a lot of articles speak about it as a nebulous force that could make (or break) your company.

Kathryn Jarrell from Xplane wrote a fun article for Medium on 3 Ways Your Organization May Be Misusing the Word Culture, which I’ll share here so we can level set.

To start, as a company, you need to define your organization’s purpose and mission statement. And…

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