The yearly World Happiness Report for 2024 was published last week and Finland was yet again chosen the happiest country in the world, for the seventh year in a row. Woop, woop!!
As a Finn, and a happiness enthusiast, I’m of course delighted!
Yet as happy as I am of the results, what I’ve been observing in today’s work life, though, in Finland and elsewhere too, is that people are increasingly stressed. Even exhausted.
In today’s work landscape, stress and burnout are on the rise, impacting individuals and organisations worldwide. Despite efforts to optimise performance, the well-being of employees often takes a back seat.
The trend in performance optimisation has long been to perfect the processes and operating systems in order to enable and support higher levels of performance. Which, naturally, has also been expected to lead to better financial results.
As noted earlier, we’ve in many ways failed to expand our focus wide enough, to include the wellbeing of our people in the picture, too.
Yes, we definitely have honed the systems and processes part. So much so that these “money-making machines” are well oiled and performing.
But what about the people leading and operating them?
What have we done to optimise their performance?
Until the past ten years or so, it was widely considered that success leads to happiness and health. But research has for a long time shown that the opposite is actually true.
Happiness drives our health.
But not only health. It drives
- our ability to earn more money
- our productivity and performance and
- our health and longetivity.
It also drives
- individual behaviour
- organisational behaviour and
- social behaviour.
As such, happiness is our true, often untapped, competitive advantage. Waiting to be utilised.
Are you practicing happiness and thus optimising your own performance on a regular basis? How about your team?
Imagine what kind of superpower happiness could be in your life and business!
There is a simple (but not simplistic) five step process that I facilitate for individuals, teams and organisations to learn and practice happiness on a behavioural level.
If you’d like to hear more about this sustainable practice, get in touch. Let’s hop on a call and I’ll tell you more about it to explore if it’s the right solution for you and your business in cultivating happiness as a competitive advantage.
Much love,
Paula
xx