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Halloween is upon us...I know a lot of people who claim this spooky day as their favorite holiday. What makes Halloween so fun and special? Find out now on a spooky edition of the Happiness Playbook!
YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJCE2mr6QBhXUgeoQx4HnzA
PLAY OF THE WEEK:
This week I want you to increase the psychological safety, and thus risk taking, for those around you by sharing a risk you took in the previous week with someone close to you and any positive outcomes or lessons learned. Might seem insignificant, but each time you do this over the next week, you will be nudging the culture of those around you closer to psychological safety.
Come join the conversation and play with us!
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Remember that Life is a team sport, so let's play together!
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TRANSCRIPT
Halloween is upon us. Whether it's trick or treating or fun costume dance parties. There's a lot to love about Halloween. I knew a lot of people who claim this spooky day as their favorite holiday. What makes Halloween so fun and special?
Find out now on a spooky edition of the happiness 📍 playbook.
For our highlight reel today, we've got a Halloween themed one and industrial designer in Mexico recorded a time-lapse video, showing how he used shipping boxes.
Corrugated cardboard and art supplies to build a spooky model for Halloween.
Carlos said, I like to build things and I started making videos of it to keep me entertained during the pandemic.
He's shooting this video from his home in via the coasts, Mexico in the video, I'm using an Amazon box, corrugated, cardboard, clay, and some trash to make a haunted mansion. What a great example of except in build and how fun that he's literally taking unused items and trash and creating an amazing spooky model. What trash is coming your way in life that you can't accept and build upon to create something beautiful. Check out the video of the time labs in the show notes hit is something else.
Okay. Our post-game analysis here last week, we discussed the importance of deep thinking. I invited you to set aside some time and do some deep thinking about a topic. How did it go? Did you do it or did she get too busy? If you haven't done it this week, do it just 10 minutes will make a world of difference. I took 10 minutes to do some deep thinking about a big project I have coming up and the insights I had were game changing.
Trust me, you don't want to skip this play of the week.
And for today's team huddle, we've gotten MVP to listen to, and that is Heather Brown. Let's get you pumped up and share some excitement from Heather. She said, This is such a positive and encouraging effort to help others improve the level of happiness in their lives. I've only listened to two podcasts now, but I'm a hooked Heather we're hooked on you and your positivity. Thank you so much for being on team happiness and for spreading the love, your amazing.
Hallo ween. Whether you love it or not. It's here. And I don't know about you, but you better believe I'll be monster mash and into the night in trick or treating with my kids this weekend. I love fall and I've always enjoyed Halloween. And I'm not the only one it's worth noting that adults more and more are embracing the holiday and dressing up. Wavy.com has a great article highlighting this trend. They say Halloween used to be kids stuff. To quit dressing up was almost an important Rite of passage.
It meant you were one step closer to becoming an adult, but not any more today. Adults have become avid Halloween revelers, especially young adults.
Just in 2005, only half of adults celebrated Halloween. But today that number has grown to over 70%. Those between 18 and 34 years old, participate at the highest rate. And they're also the holidays. Biggest spenders. Shelling out almost twice as much on their costumes as older adults and children.
Isn't that interesting. And I being in that very demographic, I'm 32 years old at the time of this recording. love Halloween and I love dressing up and we do that every year and we go all out, but we know kids are good at playing. They're experts at play. But as adults, we often forget how or we choose to exercise more responsible muscles, which is necessary.
But deep down as tragic. If playfulness is lost in that transition to adulthood.
Now we find ourselves with a holiday that is a great opportunity for us to tap back in to that playful spirit. So. Why is Halloween so fun for so many people? When you stop and think about what Halloween is, especially here in the U S where the majority of our listeners tune-in we all get together, dress up, eat sweets, have dance parties, listen to fun music.
There's a lot to enjoy about Halloween, but one of the key features of Halloween is that almost everybody is in on it. This group buy-in lowers the stakes for others to join in the fun and participate. The low stakes allow us to go big. You think of the costumes, the decorations, it's kind of this one-time thing. And everyone is.
He is going all out.
So it really allows and gives permission for people to join in the fun.
Now all of you listening in on team happiness, understand the power of letting go and playing. But it's often overlooked just how important it is for us as individuals and groups to promote these environments. And to lower the stakes and help others feel safe, letting go and playing.
Halloween does just that. We learned from Google and their report, the five keys to a successful Google team, where they discovered that the most important attribute of successful teams was psychological safety, which means feeling comfortable, taking risks on the team without feeling insecure or embarrassed.
They found that individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google. They're more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates. They bring in more revenue and they're rated as effective twice as often by their executives and managers.
Healthy risk taking is an essential part. Of growth and happiness. And it is so important that we are not only taking risks and letting go and playing in that way. But that we're playing a role in promoting the environment where risk taking is encouraged and embraced. That is one of the key ingredients to Halloween success in popularity.
Aside from letting go and playing, which is a key ingredient to Halloween success.
There is plenty of looking outward and accepting and building going on as well. You've seen it, family and friends get together and coordinate costumes with themes and go all out. You all know? There's there's that one family or. One friend, who's always scheming and coordinating and it's a lot of fun. Actually. I re and I take great pride and satisfaction in coordinating our costumes.
Last year, we went with a Disney Pixar up theme. And, uh, Amaria was literally the house. She had some helium balloons and I had made a little up house out of cardboard and paper and she had it on a string. And then she had a shirt where we had painted.
Paradise falls on it. It was, it was something else. I was Mr. Frederickson. Obviously we had Doug and Kevin, the bird,
and then our son who wasn't even one at the time dressed up as Russell and he had a little scout outfit on and everything. It was awesome.
A few years before that we actually went labyrinth themed. And I dressed up as David Bowie's goblin king. Tights wig and all it was pretty fabulous and kind of terrifying. Abra was, was Sarah and I, my oldest daughter, who is just one at the time was baby Toby. And we had her in the little ones with the red stripes. It was awesome.
If, you know, you know,
But it's always a fun opportunity to accept and build on those around you and get creative and think outside the box and whether it's with costumes or just. Going along with somebody to a party or a corn maze. There's a lot of acceptance build going on. But it's not just coordinating costumes and accept and build where we see play theory coming in.
The decorations and yard displays are another way for people to look outward and delight those who pass their house. I've seen some pretty elaborate house decorations in my lifetime, as I'm sure you have too. And this is also nice for the trick-or-treaters because research clearly shows a direct correlation between the magnitude of decor around the house and the quality of the candy being given at said house. So that is always a nice clue.
As to where you want to spend your time trick or treating.
There's lots of reasons why Halloween is a fun holiday and there are tons of examples of how play theory is really making the holiday successful and fun, but for our play of the week, I want you to increase the psychological safety and thus the risk taking for those around you. Uh, by sharing a risk you took in the previous week with someone close to you and any positive outcomes or lessons learned. So just like we see in Halloween where we see this safe environment for people to.
Go big. Let go and play and take some risk. I want you to do that at a micro level. This might seem insignificant at first, but each time you share a risk, you took. And the positive outcome or lesson learned with somebody around you. You will be nudging the culture of those around you, closer to psychological safety and thus risk taking, which will. Dramatically increase the growth and happiness of these individuals.
If you want to go the extra smile this week. You can lower the stakes for someone by inviting them to do something outside of their comfort zone. With you, this is another way for you to create that psychological safety is by accompanying someone, whether it's a party social gathering or something else that's outside of their comfort zone.
Be there for them. Provide them a little bit of that social support and help them feel comfortable taking that risk. 📍
Halloween is fine, and we can learn a lot from it. Remember this week to let go and play lower the stakes for those around you and encourage healthy. Risk-taking. Except in build. Get creative and coordinate with others to build more magic in your life. But most important of all, remember that happiness is a skill and life is a team sport, and we are so glad to have you on the team.
Catch you next week. Week.
