Across the country, billboards where you might expect to see a product being advertised are instead promoting one important announcement: Be happy.
Michele McKeag Larsen began sharing kind phrases on billboards with her nonprofit organization The Joy Team in 2010, and has since posted more than 100 messages throughout the cities of Vancouver, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Phoenix. The positive thought organization has also expanded its efforts beyond the billboards over the past five years, spreading happy messages through the world via sidewalk chalk and social media, and bringing joy and nutrition to children struggling with food insecurity.
“The more you surround yourself with positive messages, positive images, positive people, the better life gets,” Larsen, 46, told The Huffington Post. “Sometimes the people who need it don’t realize that they need to go looking for it, and so stumbling across it and feeling that shift, or seeing it because the billboards are up for four weeks, starts to change something in their brain. And if that’s the little leg up that they need to move in a different direction, that’s pretty powerful stuff.”
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“For a word person, it’s hard for me to put it into words how good it feels to do this,” said Larsen. “The feeling I get when I hear one of the billboards has made a difference in someone’s day … It just makes me so warm and fuzzy and I get tingly and I’m on sort of a happy high for a little while. Just knowing that I’ve made a shift for someone, I’ve helped lighten them up and made their day better, I’ve increased their sense of well-being for maybe 10 minutes. How cool it is that I can do that.”
This article is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post highlighting the contributions of Go-Givers — people who are looking beyond a “Go-Getter” approach to success and redefining success to include the importance of giving back. To nominate a Go-Giver of the Week, email gogiver@huffingtonpost.com.
