Happy is good

Me- Happy in Goa

In her, always smart but never overwhelming style Kathy Sierra writes about angry negative people being bad for your brain. There’s a lot of detail and science in there, but it is really worth a read.

I first read the article a couple of weeks ago, but got pointed back to it by Russell’s piece about how planners shouldn’t be grumpy just to appear smart which I read yesterday. It reminded me of a conversation that I had with my mum over dinner a few months ago. We were talking about my ambitions (my mum’s good at stuff like that, she’s a very clever lady; she knows a lot about personal development and learning).

I said “I want to be the kind of person that everyone wants to work with, the sort of person that brightens up people’s days”. I think it was because I’d met someone just previously who I not only admired, but also thought “I could work with this person all day every day”.

So we started chatting about what it is that makes someone like this. And for me, it’s a mix of:

• Knowing some things (being smart-ish) – if you can offer knowledge people often want to work with you. But if you’re a miserable git and get-off on the fact that you know stuff, you become a bore pretty quickly.
• Being a nice person – I’m not pure evil, so I guess that’s a start.
• Being infectious – for me this is the really interesting one. I can only comment on this from looking around and seeing the other people who I consider to be infectious. The people that others gravitate towards, the ones who inspire. They’ve generally got a special blend of skill (it’s not always about knowledge) and disposition (usually it’s a type of happy, but I reckon thatapproachability and a willingness to listen is a big part of it too).

So I’m going to try to stay happy and see where it gets me.

Sorry, that was a bit of a self-indulgent ramble. I must be getting the hang of this blogging lark. But it is nice to see other people fighting the corner for happy.

(Interestingly I happened to catch The Apprentice last night. And it was really funny to see that of the two sacked blokes, Sir Alan Sugar commented that he was going to keep in touch with one of them. And It was pretty much just because he was a really nice guy.)