Merry Blissmas to all and to all a happy life!

Merry Blissmas – Celebrate Joy and Happiness Every Day

This morning I read a post from Brad Morris, Honorary Gratidude. He shared how he and his girlfriend, Ally, journeyed through their neighborhood to offer help, in almost any format, as a way of creating income. What they actually created were incredible connections and reminders of the abundance of joy in not just their lives, but the lives of those who they touched that day.

Over the course of the year we tend to wait until this time of year to celebrate that abundance of joy and happiness in our lives. My mission is to create more awareness of the effects of celebrating “Blissmas” every day; that is to say, share your own happiness and passion with others in order live a blissful life – and quite possibly increase the happiness level of the people in your life - the Bliss Effect!

Recently a study was conducted by Harvard Med School’s Dr. Nicholas Christakis and University of California, San Diego’s, Dr. James H. Fowler on, “How Social Networks Affect Mood”. The study suggests that “happiness is influenced not only by the people you know, but by the people they know.” Happiness spreads through social networks like a virus”. It can affect people we don’t even know. The most significant changes found by the doctors were seen in the first three degrees of separation. The study found that your happiness levels increase:

15% in immediate contacts;
10% in 2nd degree contacts, a friend of a friend
6% in 3rd degree contacts a friend, of a friend, of a friend
Wow! It is so empowering to know that we all have the capacity to create more joy simply by knowing happy people.

Fowler said, “We need to think of happiness as a collective phenomenon – If I come home in a bad mood – I may be missing an opportunity to make not just my wife and son happy, but their friends, too.”

Working from home means being there when my kids arrive after a day at school or my husband walks in from work. I notice immediately that when any one of them arrives in a great mood, everyone wants to hang out and tune in. They all feel the energy and want to soak it all up –it’s quite magnetic. If, on the other hand, any one of them is in a bad mood, everyone scatters to another part of the house, including the dogs!

Each of us contains within us the capacity to change the world, to make it a better place – by creating our own blissful empire and by sharing that happiness, gratitude and joy with others. This past Thursday, I had the privilege of sharing these findings at the Third Thursday Networking Luncheon hosted by Dean La Douceur. More important was that each person in that room shared something that made them feel a little more blissful, creating an opportunity to make someone else a little happier. Taking control of your own happiness, again, means your positive mood will affect others, especially those closest to you.

Additionally, the study found that people with smiling faces on Social Networking sites, like Facebook, tend to cluster and group together, creating that happiness or bliss effect, on line as well! It amazed me to know that my cheery face can brighten someone’s day, even if their thousands of miles away. “It thus seems to be the case, online as well as offline, that when you smile, the world smiles with you.”

Go ahead, post that smiling face of yours on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Networks For Women, The Bliss Network Community, MommyMillionaire and Twitter, etc… Realize that each moment, each smile, can be an adventure, a celebration, and a chance to make a difference in someone else’s life, starting with your own! Create the bliss effect in your own Social Network.

Merry Blissmas to all and to all a happy life!