Today stress is guaranteed

We live in such busy, always connected, challenge-filled times they even have their own acronyms: VUCA, BANI, RUPT, TUNA. It’s not a question of if we’re going to get stressed but when. The costs of stress are so large and severe we accept them as a part of life. A staggering 80% of the total non-transmissible disease burden. A saddening 70% of premature deaths are stress related. US $1 trillion is lost in reduced productivity, excluding indirect costs. These are just some of the figures from the World Health Organisation.

“The problem isn’t that we get stressed. The problem is there is no simple way to learn wellbeing and avoid getting stressed in the first place,” says Dan Lyons, Happy Shifting Gym cofounder and CEO, “While the true cost of lost hope, ambitions and potential are inestimable, the most important thing is these are costs which can be avoided.”

Flat-packed happiness

More of it is never bad, less always is, and it’s always a win for people at life and work. Yet, the question husband and wife cofounders Dan Lyons and Montse Ventosa set out to solve was, if wellbeing is so important, why don’t more of us do it? That was the seed of the idea behind flat-packed happiness. Happy Shifting Gym, based on their work over the last 20 years, 500 workplaces and 2 million people is the result.

Taking IKEA as a model, where great value furniture is made accessible to anyone. With brilliant design, all the materials you need in the box, all finished by the customer. Happy Shifting Gym does the same but for happiness. Happy Shifting Gym is the first place to learn happiness proactively. Simple to use. With everything you need in one place. To enable anybody to have more control over, and to be more able to shift their happiness.

From stuck to shift

There is also a neurological connection to flat-packed happiness. It involves neuroscience, the father of positive psychology Martin Seligman, and some elephants. Seligman originally thought that stress and depression came from a state called learned helplessness. That when facing overwhelming demands from the environment which we cannot overcome, we learn to give up. A part of the brain called the dorsal raphe nucleus activates and we enter what Seligman termed learned helplessness. Think the elephant tied by a thin rope its whole life, who forgets they can escape as a far stronger adult.

Less well known is that Seligman went on to discover the learned helpless part of his work was the start, not the end of the story. He demonstrated that the learned helplessness part of the brain can be deactivated by its nemesis, hope. By actively practising hope, the brain neurologically short circuits learned helplessness.

That’s why Happy Shifting Gym, is a gym

Happy Shifting Gym is an any-screen platform where gym members practice micro-learning wellbeing workouts. These workouts are the equivalent of building the flat-packed furniture. It is the act of intention behind the workouts, regardless of the outcome, that neurologically powers up wellbeing.

Happy Shifting Gym helps anyone to learn happiness with 360 second weekly wellbeing workouts. In 360 degrees, with all the Drivers that build wellbeing in one place for the first time. In 360 days of neuro-powered learning.

Happy Shifting Gym helps members to learn to shift their happiness on their own terms, meaning workplaces can support their employees not only to build their wellbeing ability, but also to do so in a way that incorporates diversity, equality and inclusion. Supporting people to be themselves and unlock their unique potential.

Happy Shifting’s goal is to support ten million people to shift their wellbeing and with Happy Shifting Gym, for the first time anyone can learn happiness proactively, reducing the likelihood of getting stressed and ending up in burnout, before it happens.

The genesis of Happy Shifting Gym came when Happy Shifting cofounder and CEO, Dan Lyons left Richard Branson’s Virgin aged 28

When he joined Virgin, he couldn’t have been happier. But despite it being the job of his dreams, after four years, in a very senior role for his age, and through no real fault of anyone at Virgin, Dan was stressed, miserable and burnt out.

Working to rebuild his wellbeing, Dan wondered how many others and how many other workplaces faced similar problems, and the colossal waste of dreams and potential this created. Dan realised that rebuilding wellbeing was slow and difficult, and that it would make much more sense to have avoided getting burnt out in the first place. And this was the light bulb moment. The problem was not that he got burnt out, painful though that was. But that nothing existed to stop getting burnt out in the first place.

Fast forward to today, and 20 years later, wellbeing issues have never been worse. To coincide with World Happiness Day, Happy Shifting Gym opens its waiting list. Workplaces and individuals can sign up to the wait-list here.