This document outlines a three-step plan to raise awareness about happiness in Seattle: Step one involves asking people in public places what makes their city happy and collecting responses on post-its. Over 500 responses were gathered and analyzed. Step two analyzes the data through word clouds and lists to show which words were most common. The top themes that emerged were community, culture, and social connection. Step three communicates the results through a panel discussion with videos. The goal is to increase awareness of prioritizing happiness over solely economic measures and advocate for policies that support well-being. The next steps outlined are to measure happiness and make policy recommendations.

1. Make Seattle Happy Report:
A Blueprint for Raising
Awareness in Your Community
about the importance of happiness as a guide
for the future of our nation, neighborhoods
and personal life
PART ONE: RAISING AWARENESS

2. Part One:
Raising Awareness
Our goal: to increase awareness
of the importance of happiness
as a guide for public policy and
social change

3. Guiding us for this work:
UN Resolution 65/309
“Towards a Holistic
Approach to Sustainable
Development” adopted
August 23 2011.
An invitation to replace
Gross Domestic Product
with Happiness on a
national level.

4. The Make Seattle Happy Project
Conducted by Make It Happy and
The Happiness Initiative

5. Step One: Ask People
“What Makes Your City a Happy Place?”
 find a public place with lots of traffic
wear a sandwich board
with the question on it
offer people a post it and sharpie pen
collect the post-its on your board
take lots of pictures
shoot lots of video
This step is part of Make It Happy’s Happy Post project.

6. We took over 100 photos
check them out at
www.flickr.com/photos/thehappinessinitiative
and click on the set “raising awareness”

7. We produced videos.
view the videos at
www.happycounts.org/raiseawareness

8. Step Two: The Data
 we created a word cloud, which shows
graphically which words were used most
frequently
other ways include lists, clusters, posters
NOTE: It is important to communicate that the
data collected is not from a scientific sample, and
for raising awareness only!

9. What Makes Seattle Happy? A Word
Cloud from 500 people’s responses

10. community
culture
education & learning
environment
governance
material well-being
health
psychological well-being
social connection
time balance
Word Clouds in the Domains of Gross National Happiness

11. Step Three: Communication
 we held a panel discussion where we shot
videos of the panelists and participants
we created a poster of all the post-its as a
backdrop for our panel discussion
 there are many other ways to communicate –
social media, world-café style events, TEDx style
talks, etc.

12. Videos of panelists and participants:
view the videos at
www.happycounts.org/raiseawarenessreport

13. What about negative media?
Sometimes happiness work elicits negative media. If
this happens:
 Fly high – Rather than respond directly, issue a
press release stating the purpose of your project,
linking it to the importance of happiness for
government, and the current status of society and
the environment with a system guided primarily by
consumption, money and economic growth.
Camps you can’t win in: Fly higher. As much as
they may try to incite, keep to your purpose.

14. What next?
Part Two: Measuring Happiness
Part Three: Policy Recommendations
Visit happycounts.org to gather tools and
resources for grassroots activism in your
community
towards a new economic paradigm
your happiness counts.
count your happiness

15. Make Seattle Happy: A Blueprint for Raising
Awareness in Your Community.
Please use these materials to raise awareness about the
importance of happiness and well-being, the happiness
movement and the aim of a new economic paradigm.
These materials may be used or reproduced for any non-
commercial use. For more information, inquiries or
comments, please email info@happycounts.org or visit
happycounts.org
Report compiled by: Laura Musikanski, JD, MBA
Editing team: Eldan Goldenberg, James Bradbury
Copyright © The Happiness Initiative 2013