I’m involved in a happiness survey project right now. I get an email twice a day with a short series of questions that ask me things like how well I slept, if I’m interacting with anyone, and how I feel right now. I don’t have the result yet, but by in large, I’m a pretty happy person, and feel extremely blessed.

So the question comes – Do you ever take the time to check your emotions, level of satisfaction or happiness during the day? How do you feel in the middle of a challenging day, or at the end of the day?

I ask, because there’s most likely an opportunity to amplify your happiness, or help your employees biggie-size their own happiness.

Bottom Line Results

As a manager or business owner, you should be interested in the research that has been conducted on happiness. It turns out that happiness can go directly to your bottom line.

Specifically, research shows that happy employees have, on average, 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, and their creativity is a factor of 3 times higher.

Research by Shawn Achor shows that employees who score highest on social support and alignment are 40% more likely to receive a promotion the following year, have higher job satisfaction, and feel 10 times more engaged by their jobs.

Pretty heady stuff, huh?

Motivators

The real story is what actually allows us to get onto the happiness pathway (and stay on it) for real results at work and at home. Our motivations – intrinsic or extrinsic, are often found to be at the core.

Daniel Pink’s great book Drive talks about three main things that lead to a deeper motivation – autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Similarly, Heidi Grant Halverson speaks to the self determination theory, which calls out the following three areas that satisfy our basic psychological needs:

• Competence
• Relateness
• Autonomy

What To Do

If you want to grow your happiness, and your bottom line, here’s one thing you can do:

Make a list of three of your goals, and test them against the checkpoints above. If they don’t feed into, or are not fed by the checkpoints, you might wish to consider altering or disengaging from your goals.  Start now!