Jumping Our Way to Happiness

I do volunteer service with a local organization which provides workshops to teach people how to come out of their comfort zone, learn to make their highest potential blossom and find their inner happiness. We were organizing a marketing event to attract more people to our foundation and were thinking of creative ideas to get people’s attention toward our outdoor event. We thought that loud music was already too commonly used. We thought of asking people to fill out a survey to determine their level and origin of happiness and take a test on it. Alice, one of our long-time members, thought we could get an inflatable castle rental and ask random people to jump in it for 10 minutes straight to win a lunch sandwich and a free introductory session to our workshops.

The idea was a hit! First of all, the big inflatable castle attracted a lot of attention even from the people driving by our stand. We had a big sign that said “Learn to be happy” and quite a few people parked their
cars to come talk to us. One gentleman was very impressed by our marketing technique. He said he hadn’t jumped at all since he was a child. He had spent most of his adult life living in such a meaningless way, very routinely and without a sense of direction. His emotion had an impact on us members too.

It was our time to call it a day for our Saturday outdoor activity. We counted 90 sign-ups on our sheets, a number much higher than expected. We thought it was our time to enjoy the inflatable castle rental so a bunch of us went in and jumped for a little while. The exercise gave us such a rush of fresh energy that we decided to incorporate into our workshop activities. We are doing this again!