Rose City Mortgage

The Joy Team grew this week!

Welcome new member Rose City Mortgage!  Rose City Mortgage gives $100 to the charity of your choice when you close a loan with them.  And Carol McKeag selected The Joy Team as her charity of choice! 

Thank you Rose City Mortgage and Carol McKeag for helping us spread joy, optimism and inspiration to millions!

Look here to find out who else is a member of The Joy Team.

Carol McKeag and her billboard

Carol McKeag of Coaching for Life & Spirit believes YOU make a difference in this world.  She believes it so much she sponsored a billboard from The Joy Team to tell you.

Carol is a life coach, Living Your Vision coach and spiritual mentor. In addition to helping you see your own brilliance and find your center, she can unite you in marriage to the one you love.

Here’s Carol’s approach to life:

I am 100% committed to living my life joyfully, vibrantly, creatively and fully each and every day, contributing to the peace and spiritual growth of the planet.

You can see this billboard in Portland on N Interstate Ave, 50 feet north of Webster.  She also sponsored two other billboards in Portland: one on SE 82nd Ave, 100 ft north of Ogden St and another on SE Foster Rd, 150 feet west of 51st Ave.

Thank you, Carol, for spreading joy, optimism and inspiration!

Roy & Skai McKeag enjoying their billboard

Roy and Skai McKeag from Santa Fe, New Mexico, were out in Portland, Oregon, today enjoying the billboard they sponsored through The Joy Team.

Their message: Enjoy the moment.

It appears they are doing just that.

Thank you, Roy and Skai McKeag for spreading joy!

Ronnie Noize's Love Your Life billboard in Vancouver

The Vancouver billboard Love Your Life (brought to you by Ronnie Noize of SoHo Marketing Institute) is back up!

Thank you Clear Channel and Ronnie Noize for spreading joy in Vancouver!!!

Poster in the Volunteer Center window at Hough

Hough Elementary in Vancouver, Washington, has a poster from The Joy Team up in the window of their Volunteer Center, which faces the main lobby of the school.

A true community school, Hough is in the heart of downtown Vancouver and is one of the few schools to have its own foundation. The Hough Foundataion supports the children of Hough with a Family Services professional, music & food programs, clothing and more. 58% of Hough students are eligible for free or subsidized lunch.

Barbara Hammon, the Volunteer Coordinator, hung the You Make a Difference poster in the window after volunteer Kristin Shattuck brought it in and plans to give them out to school volunteers at the Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon next week.

Thank you Kristin, Barbara and Hough Elementary for making a difference and spreading some joy!

Poster

Got a window? You can spread some joy!

Seriously.  It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1) Pick a poster (8 designs, 2 styles,  3 sizes)

2) Download and print the pdf

3) Post it in a window and share a happy thought

Look at you putting out the positive!

Snap a photo and email it to us at: michele at thejoyteam dot org  (spam free version, you know what to do with it). We’ll post your photo and a link to your site here at TheJoyTeam.org.

While you’re at it, email this to your friends and encourage them to spread a little joy, too.  We could use it, don’t you think?

I spent a little time at the Farmers Insurance call center in Hillsboro, Oregon, and was amazed at how hard they work to keep their workplace a positive place.

Over the sea of cubicles (which is, let’s face it, not so joyous) float more than a hundred mylar balloons (very joyous).  There’s an on-site gift shop filled with cheerful items where employees can buy–nearly at cost–those balloons, paper sunflowers, painted pots, butterfly magnets and more.  And on the walls all around the building are huge motivational pictures, including these:

Si, se puede -- Yes, it can be done: Cesar Chavez

Kicked out of school for asking too many questions: Thomas Edison

Started with $750 and won 32 Oscars: Walt Disney

He failed to get a job at a university: Albert Einstein

Was told he would never make a living playing guitar: John Lennon

A single mother on welfare: J.K. Rowling

Didn't make the high school basketball team: Michael Jordan

Lost hearing and vision at age 18 months: Helen Keller

She sat in the front of a bus: Rosa Parks

If Walt Disney can start with $750 and go on to create a magical empire,  and a guy who couldn’t make his high school basketball team can lead 6 world championships, and a single mother on welfare can write the Harry Potter series, and…then anything’s possible, right?

Si, se puede.

That’s a pretty great attitude to surround your employees with.

Thank you, Farmers Insurance, for spreading joy, inspiration and optimism at work!

Welcome new member Empowering Grace!  Thank you Sharla & Empowering Grace for helping us spread joy, optimism and inspiration to millions!

Look here to find out who else is a member of The Joy Team.

Painted bus shelter in Vancouver, WA

Being happy has been credited with many things: improved physical health, longer life, and better mental health to name a few. Recent research shows that feeling joyful can also improve race relations by erasing some effects of racial bias.

A study published by Kareem J. Johnson and Barbara L. Fredrickson shows that feeling happy can eliminate what’s called “own-race bias.” Own-race bias is the phenomenon of being less able to distinguish the differences in people of other races than you are of people in your own race. (You may have heard the phrase, “They all look the same to me.”)

The study notes that previous research proved those with a positive affect are known to be more inclusive and see more similarities between social groups, as opposed to seeing more differences. To translate these findings to race, four short videos were used to induce feelings of joy, fear or neutrality and participants viewed 56 faces of mixed races in random order, half of which they had previously been shown, and asked if they recognized them.

The results showed an own-race bias remained in groups with induced fear or neutrality. But the groups with induced joy showed that positive emotions can eliminate own-race bias. Which is to say that happy people recognized faces of other races at the same rate they recognized faces of their own race.

That’s pretty awesome.

So, what does all this mean, really? Here’s a hypothesis: happy people = inclusive people + happy people = racially unbiased people, so more happy people = more accepting society: thus proving happiness really can change the world.

Yep. Sounds about right to me.