The Solomon Factor

The Age of Happiness

Today I learned that the publishing industry has decided that the market is glutted with books on happiness. Hmm, given the current state of affairs on Earth, I personally think that there are no amount of books on happiness that would be too many. But, then again, I’m in the business of coaching people to happiness, so I may be more than a bit biased.

I did a quick search on Amazon. com which revealed that there are about 474K titles with the word ‘happy’ in them, while there are about half that many with the word ‘depression’ in them. This makes complete sense when you stop to think of how few people would be willing to be found on the stair-stepper at the gym, on the bus, or in the employee lounge reading a book whose title confesses to the world they have an interest in depression.

Just a few months ago, the University of Chicago completed one of the most thorough studies on happinessever done in the United States. The study examined happiness across age and racial groups and concluded that Americans grow happier as they grow older: As we age we grow more content, and although we have more health problems, we have far fewer difficulties overall. Not surprisingly, the baby boomer generation was the least happy of all groups surveyed (more on that in another post).

Calling For Manners

First I left a voice mail, then an email a few days later, and then another voice mail. And so it went for three weeks while one of my major (and, dare I say, favorite) clients, failed to respond to an increasingly urgent request to connect. Did I mention that she actually needed to have contact with me?

We’d previously danced this dance and, upon finally reaching her, I’d said, “Hi! It’s your favorite stalker.” We shared a long laugh and she’d thanked me for my persistent follow up, while apologizing for her poor performance in the same area. I thought we came to an understanding about my need to communicate more efficiently (after all, if she didn’t have time to get back to me once, what made her think that I had time to initiate contact five times?) Obviously we didn’t. And since, bottom line, she’s the client, I wasn’t in a position to push too hard on the accountability button (although, admittedly I pressed well beyond her comfort zone).

So I’ve been pondering – what the heck is going on with our business etiquette these days? Or is that an oxymoron? In all fairness to my client, she’s not alone. I, for one, have difficulty responding daily to the people I want to hear from, let alone managing all the unsolicited correspondence. Daily, I hear people complain about unanswered voice mails, spam and unopened letters. Obviously, good solid communication is at a record low, despite the fact that the sale of communication devices is at a record high.