One of the books that I’m currently reading (Leaders Eat Last, by Simon Sinek) had an interesting chapter about brain chemistry. It talked about four of the chemicals that our bodies make and how they influence us. Here’s my second grade understanding of the topic:

The first two are the selfish chemicals: endorphins and dopamine. The endorphins come with both laughter and exercise and they help mask pain. The dopamine is a reward and incentive for progress and meeting goals. Dopamine is also the chemical associated with many addictions (to gambling, to social media, etc.). The other two chemicals are the selfless ones that encourage us to interact with people: serotonin and oxytocin. Serotonin leads to feeling appreciated and liked and comes when we (or people we love) earn awards or experience success. Oxytocin comes with doing things for other people or shaking hands after making a deal. It helps create trust. This is the one we feel when paying it forward or doing acts of kindness for people. We really need a healthy balance of all four.

The book is about how good leaders can create a work environment that encourages a healthy amount of all four – some competition and some collaboration. Unhealthy work environments are often heavy on the dopamine – lots of competition and little feeling of safety.

Fortunately for all of us workers, while the leader sets the culture of the work environment, anyone can work to make the environment better by doing some simple acts of kindness.

In fact, people get oxytocin just from watching others doing acts of kindness. So if you tell me a story about something kind and helpful that you’ve seen, I get the warm fuzzies and start feeling good about the people around me. So let’s start telling our stories. If you hear a good story, pass it on. If you see a good deed, share it. Let’s make our world a little bit better by telling stories about the good we find in it.