How can we ensure that our state of mind does not depend on external circumstances? Can we change what we think to influence our emotions and alleviate difficult moments? It’s possible! We should only learn to choose those thoughts that make us feel good. These are 7 advice that will help you put it into practice.

Choose your thoughts and become a positive person

• Do not focus your attention on the problem, orient yourself to look for solutions. How many times have you blocked yourself in a complicated situation? When something worries us, it is very common to continually think about it, but the fundamental thing is to go one step further and look for solutions. Not only will it help us get ahead, but we will grow on a personal level and learn from it.

• Focus on what you can do and it’s under your control. In any difficult situation there is always something we can do to overcome it, so do not waste your time with superfluous details and think what is in your hands to face it.

• Reflex from the freedom to choose your answer, considering your principles, wishes and values. Don’t you know what decision to make in an uncertain scenario? Take your time and try to value all options objectively. Your values ​​and principles will always help you make the right decision.

• Discriminate those thoughts that prevent you from moving forward in the new context. Here is the most complicated point: learn to discard those thoughts that create discomfort. Keep in mind a great certainty: what we think defines our mood, regardless of what happens around us. But, how do we control our thoughts? Avoid going around something that worries you and act as soon as possible to solve it, do not victimize yourself, go ahead and above all try to bring out the positive side of all experiences. If you think negative, frustration and dissatisfaction will increase, so there is no point in focusing on it. Turning the page and facing the situation with a positive attitude is the key to everything.

• Take the initiative, act. You decide what your mood is, so don’t waste time and invest it in feeling good. To do this you will have to take action and find solutions to what concerns you most, so what are you waiting for?

• Focus on the present and moderately on the future. Don’t let situations that you haven’t yet experienced or problems that you don’t know if they will happen, upset you. Although you must bear in mind that all our decisions have consequences for our future, live the present with a positive attitude and tomorrow will come.

• Challenge your own thoughts and become aware of what you can learn. In a difficult situation, thinks that not everything is negative. A complicated moment is always an opportunity to learn and grow as a professional and person. Do not get carried away by fear of change and identify the opportunity that each situation offers you, this way you will face it with more confidence and optimism. Besides, you always have to see everything with perspective and surely you identify good things. Being grateful right now is one of the best practices. Still don’t know the benefits of giving thanks? They are multiple and not only for our environment but also for ourselves.

Optimism is always the best strategy to move forward, so do not waste time and put into practice these advices that will help you to grow as a person and as a professional. Practice positive thinking and enjoy the benefits!.

People first | A project by Eurofirms

People First es un espacio de inspiración donde compartimos contenidos con un eje común: las personas. Desde distintas ópticas y sectores, abordamos varios temas, tendencias y noticias de interés humano.

La entrada 7 ways to keep positive thinking aparece primero en People first.

There are already initiatives such as the “Beyond GDP” movement, which calls for more real measures of a population’s well-being. Some countries have taken initiatives to create indicators of quality of life, such as air.

This interest in discovering what gives well-being to citizens beyond money and their day-to-day work explores aspects such as physical and mental health, continuous learning, environmental quality, connectivity… Values that no company should lose sight of if it wants to attract talent. Because, just as there is a great mobility of workers between countries because of their opportunities and their good standard of living, employees also value feeling at ease and this is due to multiple factors.

Asking workers for their hapinesss

Did you know that the happiest countries in the world are Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland, according to the annual UN “World Happiness Report”? It is interesting to note that in these countries, both native citizens and immigrants are happy. Why? Quality of life, which is fundamental to well-being. So why not invest in studying how to achieve it and measure it in business? According to the study Excellence and Values, elaborated by Eurofirms and IESE Business School, 7 out of every 10 employees are not happy in their work. A fact that shows there is still a long way to go. This same study highlights the keys to social and business sustainability, which will certainly help to improve the well-being of people in the company. And what are the most outstanding ones? A fair salary, motivating, and giving opportunities to learn, generating healthy and stress-free work environments, strengthening identification with the company’s mission, and contributing to society are the keys to reaching excellence.

And it really shouldn’t be complicated. For sure, if you ask in your work environment how to be happier, you would get common answers like autonomy, partnership, comfort, flexibility, holidays… Although there’s also talk of the sense of belonging, vision of the future, and support as values for achieving happy workers.

But how do you know what makes your company’s workers happy? It is not enough to imagine or implement universal values. It is necessary to ask questions and carry out surveys to obtain relevant data and adopt effective measures.

As an example, Cyberclick, a company specialized in the optimization of online marketing campaigns and digital advertising, measures the happiness of employees daily, sending an e-mail at the end of the day with the following three questions and a final space for contributions:

• In what mood have you arrived today?
• In what mood are you leaving today?
• From 1 to 10, how much do you like what you have done today?

Besides, with the monthly happiness test, more long-term issues such as salary, conditions, and working environment are measured.

In the market exist tools and applications to measure happiness in the company such as Celpax, Happydonia, Happyforce, etc… All agree that connecting with workers, know them better, listen to their ideas and suggestions, and redounds to an increase in their motivation and productivity. And especially, it avoids losing talented workers due their dissatisfaction has not been detected in time. Real contact with the people on the team will also help us take the pulse in a more humane and closer way.

Happy workers are, therefore, beneficial to the company and themselves. The price for achieving this will probably be to change the mentality of their managers towards a new type of leadership. Would you dare to measure happiness in your company and to applying new measures?

People first | A project by Eurofirms

People First es un espacio de inspiración donde compartimos contenidos con un eje común: las personas. Desde distintas ópticas y sectores, abordamos varios temas, tendencias y noticias de interés humano.

La entrada Can happiness be measured? aparece primero en People first.

It is understood that, when arriving at work, people have to disconnect from their personal life and emotions and focus on their efficient and professional aspects to perform to the maximum. The reality is that only when people are at ease and behaves as they are, they work better and contribute to creating a good atmosphere in the office.
It is this awareness that is leading companies to change their corporate culture and invest in employee wellbeing or worker welfare. The challenge is to create positive environments in which workers can show themselves and interact frankly, are motivated and valued for their creative contributions, and in which it is common to feel optimism, trust, appreciation, and respect.

This requires a shift from the paternalistic business model to the empowerment of workers, based on trust in their ability to make good decisions, aligned with the company values.

A productive work enviroment

The company must, therefore, focus on promoting job satisfaction and recognizing the contributions of its employees. Here are seven valuable proposals to achieve this:

• Implement work-reconciliation measures to promote a work-life balance.
• Avoid fixed positions and encourage each worker to leave their comfort zone, proposing new ideas, connecting with other professionals, and incorporating new knowledge.
• To create a culture of learning from failure, to erase the fear of making errors, and to learn corporately from mistakes.
• To promote contact between the company’s professionals to build a team spirit, in which the achievement of one is that of all, or that new projects in common arise.
• Incorporate in the daily life of the company techniques of self-knowledge and emotional balance such as mindfulness, chikun, yoga, or meditation, in addition to promoting the practice of sports. Both are powerful ways to reduce stress and increase personal happiness.
• To offer personal help with emotional problems, and to recognize the well-done job.
• To propose meetings and activities to have a good time and for the team to get to know each other better, it is fundamental!

Being happy at work, also a personal challenge

Ben Shahar, a professor at Harvard University specializing in positive psychology and author of books such as Practicing Happiness and Choosing the Life You Want, reminds us that the key to being happier is to be constant.

Achieving happiness -according to Ben Shahar- requires having breakfast and a good meal to have energy available during the day, practicing sports to keep stress and sadness away, comfortable dressing and shoes, walking with a good posture facing front, enriching oneself with new experiences, emptying the “to-do list” from time to time to feel light and listening to music that brings good humor, among other small habits which bring us closer to happiness.

But an assertive attitude is also necessary to show oneself as one is in all situations, a good face, and gratitude to others. While pursuing one’s goals with professionalism, but without becoming obsessed, willing to fail and try again, with more knowledge.

Professionalism, energy, and satisfaction with what you do are, therefore, the key to facing the great vital challenges that people and companies have been standing for some years now. The whole team is vital to accomplishing this. The company needs employees who are empowered, interested in learning, with a shared vision, positive relationships, and a sense of belonging. And a lot, a lot of support.

Do you dare to place these keys to happiness into practice?

People first | A project by Eurofirms

People First es un espacio de inspiración donde compartimos contenidos con un eje común: las personas. Desde distintas ópticas y sectores, abordamos varios temas, tendencias y noticias de interés humano.

La entrada 7 keys to being happy at work aparece primero en People first.

Happiness, excellence, diversity… they illuminate brand new names of executive positions in the last years. The most recent to do so is “Welfare.” According to Expansion.com, they already have an executive director of welfare at Telefónica and Santander, while at Apple workers have an exercise and welfare center of more than 9,000 m2 and trails for running or walking. The objective is to achieve human resources that keep the right balance between work and relaxation, computer and physical fitness, through good habits.

Fit and Stress-Free Workers

The Welfare Officer, different from other senior executives focused on creating a happy and healthy work environment, has the purpose of ensuring that the company’s staff stays in good physical shape and avoids stress, by:

• The evaluation of the emotional welfare of workers.
• A proposal for a safe and healthy working environment, especially regarding how work is organized and what is expected from employees.
• It has to create training programs and propose competitive tests that will promote physical activity, fun and companionship among workers.
• It has to make known the nutritional basis for staying healthy and energetic at any age, and make sure that the staff in the canteen or the vending machines are fed correctly.
• And offer health and stress management resources, such as good measures for getting a good night’s sleep and proper management of personal and professional life.

But also, promoting new working methods such as standing or moving meetings, which avoid sedentarism and promote creativity. Or suggesting spaces in the corporate headquarters that allow to alternate intense work with networking or rest.

“We are on the verge of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to each other,” states the book Chief Wellbeing Officer: Wellness as a Strategic Tool. A book that bets on creating passionate and cooperative working environments that encourage deep learning.

Good sustainable work environment

According to the World Health Organization, “a healthy workplace is one in which workers and managers work together in a process of continuous improvement to protect and promote the health, safety and welfare of all workers and the sustainability of the workplace.

The director of welfare, therefore, must perform his task through continuous contact with all staff of the company, to assess their needs and the success of their initiatives, or listen to proposals. Informal meetings, recreational and educational workshops as well as after-hours and weekend activities can be useful. It must also have a good internal communication channel, to inform and encourage the participation of all workers.

A Corporate Welfare program in the company provides an improvement in the health, welfare and safety of workers in a sustainable way, and so in productivity. It reduces absenteeism while enhancing work motivation and loyalty to the company. Improves brand image and develops a climate of growth and innovation. It achieves, in short, more dynamic and motivated employees and a good atmosphere in the office.

People first | A project by Eurofirms

People First es un espacio de inspiración donde compartimos contenidos con un eje común: las personas. Desde distintas ópticas y sectores, abordamos varios temas, tendencias y noticias de interés humano.

La entrada The new welfare manager aparece primero en People first.

The UN has declared Finland to be the happiest country in the world. The Finns have a well-functioning health system, flexible working hours, and excellent conditions for reconciling work and family life. They even make their immigrants feel happy.

According to Eva Hannikainen, press and culture attaché at the Finnish Embassy in Madrid, the key to Finnish happiness is trust. Finland is a young country, which has transparently built a society based on equality and free education from the beginning. It is a safe country, with good social support policies, where confidence in politics, justice, and among the inhabitants prevails, in exchange for a strong fiscal discipline that is normally accepted.

Hannikainen also points out from her country that it has hardly any gender gap in politics or business. Its inhabitants enjoy a good balance between personal and working life, with plenty of personal and family time. Paternity leave may be extended to six months.

The 2018 UN Annual Happiness Report takes into account variables such as GDP, social benefits, life expectancy, freedom, generosity, lack of corruption and the quality of life of immigrants. However, the scale used by the UN measures, rather than happiness, the vital satisfaction due to a good coverage of basic needs.

And here the Finns are good, they have the strength of the “sisu” or capacity to accept the life they have with a mixture of self-denial and fortitude, as The New Daily records. They are satisfied with their living conditions, whatever they may be.

Other international standards of happiness, such as the Gallup ranking, are based more on a mixture of positive emotions and objective conditions of well-being, considering that the latter are not a decisive factor of happiness. In these surveys, it is usually the Latin American countries that occupy the top positions.

Spain ranks 36th out of 156 happiest countries in the world, according to the World Happiness Report, and with the highest life expectancy. Their position is inferior in those rankings whose top positions depend on factors such as the quality of institutions, equality before wealth, mutual trust or lack of corruption

Working in Finland                                                                                        

According to Info Finland, integrity, punctuality and equality are valued in Finland. Discrimination is prohibited in any work, under the responsibility of the employer, who must also ensure gender equality.

The way of working is agreed in consultation with the workers, and all are committed to complying with the agreement. The work is not monitored continuously, but the judgement and integrity of each worker is trusted. Respecting agreements is sacred, as well as meeting deadlines.

It is customary to work flexibly, but if a schedule is agreed, it is met with exact punctuality out of respect for the rest of the workers. Besides, communication between them is very fluid.

The country is aware that in a few years there will be a shortage of labour, so it has organized an excellent reception of immigrant workers, with vocational training and legal qualifications, with good working conditions and job security. Although it is essential to learn the language.

Reconciling work and personal life and values such as equality and responsibility at work are some of the keys that make Finland the happiest country in the world.

People first | A project by Eurofirms

People First es un espacio de inspiración donde compartimos contenidos con un eje común: las personas. Desde distintas ópticas y sectores, abordamos varios temas, tendencias y noticias de interés humano.

La entrada Finlandia, the happiest country in the world aparece primero en People first.