Today, when our calendars are filled with predictable meetings and gatherings that could have been emails, even the smallest bit of joy can be the difference between a mundane experience and one we all look forward to.
We think about this a lot at GetSomeJoy. Our joy-infused wellness trainings, experiences, and resources help communities and companies spread joy in unexpected places.
The Community Literary Therapy Wall, for example, is an experience of ours that sparked joy at the 2022 Black Joy Parade in Oakland, California. The Wall prompted visitors to reflect on and share what gives them joy with questions like:
- What are you doing to get some joy?
- What does joy mean to you? How does it look, feel, sound, taste?
- What meal or dish represents joy to you? Why?
Our Community Literary Therapy Wall installation has since gone on exhibit at Oakland Public Libraries to inspire more connection. Now we’re adapting it for the virtual world to give you — and your communities — the space to explore, reflect, and share joyful stories and resources.
Check out the Virtual Community Literary Therapy Wall and try one (or all) of these ideas in your next event or meeting.
1. Build reflection exercises into the experience
Keeping your teams engaged and happy is crucial for maintaining good performance. In fact, feeling authentic at work leads to better outcomes in nearly every category, including increased productivity.
Use reflection exercises as a check-in or team activity to share some unexpected joy and encourage teammates to pause and consider their emotional wellness.
2. Help attendees find common ground
We can never truly know what others are going through. But by offering a shared experience, like the Literary Therapy Wall, your attendees can feel a sense of belonging and immerse themselves in the experiences you’ve worked so hard to create.
At your next event, use the Literary Therapy Wall to provide accessible avenues for inspired connection with a framework for exploration. If you’re hosting your events on Hopin, here’s how you can incorporate a Digital Literary Therapy Wall into your event experience.
3. Offer breaks between sessions
Even when your agenda is packed with the most insightful content delivered by truly engaging speakers, your audience is going to need a break. Otherwise, the cognitive overload will cause them to feel fatigued and become easily distracted.
Encourage attendees to share what brings them joy in between sessions. It only takes a few moments to enhance your guest wellness experience while demonstrating your commitment to sharing valuable tools and resources.
4. Foster community connection beyond events
Events are fixed in time but communities are always on. Luckily, you can continue to prompt your community — whether it’s a professional industry group or your company workforce — asynchronously with communication tools like Slack.
Pro tip: Create a Community Literary Therapy Slack channel to solicit prompts and responses to make conversation about wellness an everyday part of the work experience. Here’s how you can integrate the Wall into your Slack conversations.
5. Create a collaborative environment
We do our best thinking when our minds are free from distraction. So before your next brainstorm or workshop, consider starting off with the Wall to establish an immersive, collaborative environment.
Inspire creativity and innovation with human-centered connection around personal passions, family and cultural traditions, and recipes via collaborative integrations.
Inject joy and foster community — from URL to IRL
We hope these ideas will spark more joy for you and your communities. You can find the virtual version of our Community Literary Therapy Wall on Miro’s Miroverse.
And if you prefer a physical experience, connect with GetSomeJoy to bring a Community Literary Therapy Wall to your public space, conference, office, library, et cetera.
However you implement your wellness initiatives, make sure you have an engaging entry point to connect people to one another, and to available resources. Being intentional and specific goes a long way toward collective wellness when you incorporate micro-engagements for maximum impact.
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