Six uplifting facts to put a smile on your face

Watching the news on TV or our smartphones can sometimes be a very sobering experience and it can be very easy to feel down about what’s happening in the world these days.

However, it is important to find little nuggets of happiness where we can. To help you along, here are some little uplifting facts to put a smile on your face:

1. Penguins and puffins ‘propose’ to prospective mates by giving them a pebble as a gift. Once they find a mate, they stay with them for life. Cows are pretty loyal creatures too and have best friends. When they are apart from their friends, they have been known to get stressed.

2. A man in Salem, Oregon in the US goes around hiding $100 bills in toilet paper to surprise strangers. No-one knows who the mysterious philanthropist is.

3. Every year, the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada as a way of thanking the country for their help and support during World War II.

4. There are vending machines in Turkey which give out food for stray dogs and cats when people put empty bottles into them.

5. Most countries in the world use Gross National Product (GDP) as a metric for measuring their prosperity, but in Bhutan, they also use Gross National Happiness as a key indicator of how they country and its people are doing.

6. Forgetful squirrels who can find where they put their acorns end up inadvertently planting thousands of new trees every year.

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How to lift yourself out of a rut at work

Unless your lottery numbers have just come up or you’re lucky enough to have a super-rich benefactor, most of us have to work for a living. Many people enjoy their job while others dread hauling themselves into work every and everyone else is somewhere in between.

No matter how you view your job, everyone at some point will experience some form of rut at work. This is a time when you struggle to motivate yourself to do the same work you have being doing for the previous months or years.

It’s a pretty natural phenomenon that working to a particular routine for an extended period of time will lead to a lull in motivation and interest.

If you find yourself in such a work rut, there are a number of things you can do to lift yourself out it. Whatever line of work you are in, it is understandable that you’ll come to a point where you feel you’ve gone as far as you can in terms of knowledge and motivation.

However, you can pull yourself and get inspired again by taking a step back and gaining a new perspective.

One thing you can do is talk to people who work in the same industry, but for a different company. You’ll probably not want to let your own bosses know that you are lacking motivation, so it’s a good idea to speak with like-minded people who understand your line of work, but who don’t have anything invested in you.

Seek out courses and additional training you can do in your spare time to give you a better understanding of your own job or to develop additional skills which can add more strings to your bow.

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