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How to start a movement

Movements are awesome and they are everywhere!

According to Seth Godin, a movement has 3 different main elements:

  1. Powerful Story - a story that is worth to spread it (like TED, I know :)
  2. Connect - a platform or space where members of the movement can meet and interact with each other and with the movement builder or organization.
  3. Clear call to action (s) - you should provide a clear to action(s) that can be easily executed in a short time to the movement members.

Example of a movement on happiness that I built with a friend

"What makes YOU happy?​

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Back in 2010, I started building a movement with a friend to spread happiness called: “Happy Post Project. Here is a brief summary about how I built it:

  • Powerful Story - Happiness is important for our lives.
  • Connect - Initially, we created a FB page and a website where people could immediately learn about our project and to connect with each other by becoming Happy Post ambassadors.
  • Call to Action - Spread happiness by asking people to write or draw anything that makes them happy on a post-it note. Our main goal was to collect 100K Happy Post messages around the globe for a massive installation in NYC. (HPP video)

Results

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  • In less than a year, the simple idea of asking people “what makes them happy” on a post-it note grew to 30 different countries.
  • Over 100K Happy post-it notes were collected.
  • Lots of media coverage. (i.e. ABC News)
  • The Happy Post Project connected more than 5 thousand people that donated their time and energy to bring the Happiness message to their own communities. (TEDx video of a 7 years old girl delivering a speech about Happy Post in Saudi Arabia).

At the end, I ended up leaving my job in a health insurance company in Boston to keep building other projects around the idea of spreading happiness for a better world. It’s been already 5 years since we started Happy Post. Looking back, building my own movement about something that I deeply cared about was the best decision that I could take. (videoof HPP team asking 1000 New Yorkers: “what makes them happy”)

Why join/create a movement?

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There are many reasons why we should join movements, below some of my suggested ones:

  • To Connect with people that share your passion.
  • To bring more Purpose to your day to day. Remember, movements are build around an idea that is greater than ourselves.
  • To Learn more about the idea that makes you feel alive.
  • To Act upon things you care about. Movements allows you to work towards specific projects or ideas .

And off course, don’t forget to ask yourself every day: “What Makes you Happy.” (: