{"id":1541,"date":"2011-04-14T00:15:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T04:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/inspirationreport\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2011-04-13T17:27:40","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T21:27:40","slug":"free-hugs-and-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2011\/04\/free-hugs-and-happiness.html","title":{"rendered":"Free Hugs and Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some people out to spread the love. In London, England, there&#8217;s a group called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.actionforhappiness.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Action for Happiness<\/a> that has made it their members&#8217; sole mission to make other people just a little bit happier. They give out free hugs on the streets and perform other random acts of kindness &#8212; all in the name of positive social change.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;Despite the fact that we are getting richer, after 60 years we still haven&#8217;t managed to produce a happier society,&#8221; said Professor Richard Layard, head of the wellbeing programme at the London School of Economics. &#8220;We are asking people for an individual commitment to aim to produce more happiness and less misery. &#8220;The time is right. There is a worldwide hunger for something better, and we believe we can harness it.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the full story on <em>The Guardian<\/em>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/society\/2011\/apr\/12\/action-for-happiness-london-launch\" target=\"_blank\">Action for Happiness movement launches with free hugs and love<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Have you heard of other groups doing something similar? Are you someone who loves to give to others? Let me know! I want to highlight people who are brightening up their community&#8230; even if it&#8217;s just one hug at a time.<\/p>\n<p><em>Read More:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/Buddhism\/2009\/01\/10-Ways-to-Increase-Acts-of-Kindness.aspx\">10 Ways to Increase Acts of Kindness<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Love-Family\/Relationships\/Quiz\/The-5-Love-Languages-Quiz.aspx\">The 5 Love Languages Quiz<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Video\/Faiths\/Christianity\/Personalities-K-to-Z\/Sara-Lamar-Sterling-Giving-Back.aspx\">Sara Lamar-Sterling: Giving Back<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some people out to spread the love. In London, England, there&#8217;s a group called Action for Happiness that has made it their members&#8217; sole mission to make other people just a little bit happier. They give out free hugs on the streets and perform other random acts of kindness &#8212; all in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9,12],"tags":[103,71,110,105,104,109,667,666,107,108,106],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-deeds","category-happier-you","category-inspiring-people","tag-action-for-happiness","tag-charity","tag-community","tag-england","tag-free-hugs","tag-giving","tag-london","tag-love","tag-positivity","tag-random-acts-of-kindness","tag-the-guardian"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Free Hugs and Happiness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2011\/04\/free-hugs-and-happiness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Free Hugs and Happiness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are some people out to spread the love. In London, England, there&#8217;s a group called Action for Happiness that has made it their members&#8217; sole mission to make other people just a little bit happier. They give out free hugs on the streets and perform other random acts of kindness &#8212; all in the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2011\/04\/free-hugs-and-happiness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Inspiration Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-14T04:15:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-04-13T21:27:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jennifer E. Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Free Hugs and Happiness","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2011\/04\/free-hugs-and-happiness.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Free Hugs and Happiness","og_description":"Here are some people out to spread the love. In London, England, there&#8217;s a group called Action for Happiness that has made it their members&#8217; sole mission to make other people just a little bit happier. 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Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/538\/5388855270a03493105edfa3ec01cb16x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/538\/5388855270a03493105edfa3ec01cb16x96.jpg","caption":"Jennifer E. Jones"},"description":"Jennifer E. Jones is a writer, editor and Web producer. She has written for entertainment, trade and inspirational organizations for nearly 15 years. She has a Master of Education and a Master of Journalism degree from Regent University. However, her greatest skill is crushing anyone in a game of \"Name That Tune.\" In her spare time, she is an amateur home chef, a rock star marathon runner and wannabe novelist.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/author\/jjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1545,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/1545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}