The Happiness Trap and what it means for your workplace

For many years’ now, happiness has been touted as a choice. Wake up, choose to be happy, get on with being awesome and create a brilliant life, career and business. Not surprisingly, for years we’ve seen rates of anxiety and depression climb.

The Happiness Trap written by Russ Harris provides an optimistic and grounded view on our wellbeing and maintains that it’s OK, and totally normal to experience negative emotions like overwhelm, sadness, frustration, anxiety, disappointment, and fear.?

All humans are designed to experience the depths of despair, the lows of depression and the stress of being completely frustrated. Fortunately, we are also designed to experience joy, love, excitement, and hope. These are all normal emotions and part of our shared experience that make up the roller coaster ride we call life.

Many workplaces covertly encourage staff to ‘put on a happy face’ as they come to work and check personal issues and negative emotions at the door. Unfortunately, as emotions are bottled up, ignored or denied, they eventually emerge as short tempers, heightened anxiety, snide remarks and an inability to cope.

To promote wellbeing at work we must accept that emotions can be a veritable time bomb. The wellbeing of your staff and the way they feel at work can be your greatest asset or the undoing of your business. Learning to enable wellbeing within your team must start with the understanding and acceptance of our own and your teams’ emotions.

Need help? Have a look at www.jodiecooper.com.au and get in touch to talk through it.

Harris, Russ. (2007) The Happiness Trap. Exisle Publishing Limited