Happiness. It’s Contagious… I Hope!

I feel bad that I’ve let this blog slip. In part because some­times I strug­gle with all the social noise and the feel­ing of irrel­e­vance sets in. Though, in large part it’s because I’m freak­ing busy!

My days are full of Actional (I’d love to tell you how great we’re doing, but alas we’re a pub­lic com­pany, and I can’t yet!) and my evenings Where’s Your Heart?. Things are mov­ing at Where’s Your Heart?. Slower than I’d like, but mov­ing. I’m learn­ing a lot about me as I go! And, it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing process.

I’d like to re-start my writ­ing with some more about Where’s Your Heart?, the foun­da­tion I’ve setup. I’ll share the mis­sion, the objec­tives, and some fas­ci­nat­ing research in this area.

Where’s Your Heart?’s mis­sion is to “improve our lives through altru­is­tic liv­ing”.

Devel­op­ing a suc­cinct mis­sion state­ment is inter­est­ing. I changed ours a lit­tle today. I saw NY Sports Club’s had the phrase “improv­ing lives through exer­cise” on their employee badges — clearly, they like the rhyme and rhythm.

I had been work­ing with the mis­sion “improv­ing people’s lives through altru­is­tic liv­ing”, and after read­ing the NYSC badge I asked myself why the word “people’s”? That word is self-evident. What am I try­ing to say? I decided that one of the things that sep­a­rates Where’s Your Heart? is that we’re not work­ing in the abstract… improv­ing some­one else’s life (improv­ing some­one else’s life is a side-effect of our char­i­ta­ble efforts, it’s what dif­fer­en­ti­ates us; I’ll save that for another post). We’re improv­ing our lives with our activities.

Where’s Your Heart? oper­ates in what’s real, tan­gi­ble, and expe­ri­en­tial. (It would be more accu­rate to say we will oper­ate!)

Though, per­haps what we’re tap­ping into is not mea­sur­able. (Ironic, con­sid­er­ing how often I rant about mea­sur­ing things at Actional… this post, and that post.) And, that’s OK.

I also got some inspi­ra­tion from a cou­ple of arti­cles I read this week that talk about how feel­ings spread socially. The first one is short, and maybe not so inter­est­ing, but I’ll include it to help you under­stand the breadth of the research going on in this area. The arti­cle is titled “Sec­ond­hand Blues” in Psy­chol­ogy Today and talks about how depres­sion spreads between peo­ple, and the impact it has on chil­dren of depressed parents.

The sec­ond, an arti­cle in the NY Times Mag­a­zine titled “Is Hap­pi­ness Catch­ing?”, how­ever was fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. I found two key points very interesting:

1. The naysay­ers in this arti­cle are dis­put­ing the research, not the find­ings. The find­ings that human behav­ior is con­ta­gious are well accepted (if com­pletely unproven).
2. Using a model based upon these find­ings, the best way to lose weight by cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the social con­ta­gion aspects would be to diet with friends-of-friends; loose con­nec­tions in your extended network.

These two things are at the core of Where’s Your Heart?’s mis­sion and oper­at­ing objec­tives (even though I hadn’t read the research before this week — I’ve got friends in high places!).

I believe that the good feel­ings we get when doing some­thing good are real, that they can be shared, and that when shared, they’ll improve our lives dra­mat­i­cally (and improve the world we live in… but that’s another story).

I also believe that social com­put­ing will break many of the cur­rent “metaphors” of what we iden­tify with, and that by con­nect­ing around more mean­ing­ful things we share in com­mon with oth­ers will change the world for the bet­ter. Instead of being grouped “arbi­trar­ily” — by prox­im­ity, or nation­al­ity, or career, we can con­nect by com­mon pas­sions, beliefs, and causes on a more global level. Bring­ing peo­ple together and cre­at­ing a com­mon iden­tity in a very per­sonal way, will enable Where’s Your Heart? to meet our objec­tives and carry out our mission.

The objec­tives?

Where’s Your Heart? will help peo­ple cre­ate, sus­tain, and share that feel­ing (you all know what I mean, though we might describe it dif­fer­ently!). And, by doing so, we’ll accom­plish the mis­sion of improv­ing our lives.

Oh yeah, and a side effect will be to help an awful lot of other people.

Crazy, right?