Curious as always, I read more about the coworking space “The Living Room” whilst being on a quest for new things happening in Málaga. Instead of contacting them, I decided to simply swing by. After a warm welcome, language-barriers immediately disappeared, as the local manager Ben speaks German, English and Spanish.
The Living Room. A name with a meaning that makes me feel comfortable: A space to live. It reminds me of togetherness, developing as a person, and being yourself. This makes their brand promise “sharing, thriving and laughing together” very clear!
I like coworking, which led to an open conversation and my experience from Berlin with coworking spaces was more than well received, which only get better when I started talking about well-being and happiness.
With well-being I refer to our motivational system, which provides the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin to drive our actions and make us happy. The above mentioned activities, if carried out successfully, serve as head lines and are fueled by those neurotransmitters:
- cooperative togetherness leads to serotonin
- freely being yourself and creating things of your own leads to dopamine
- feeling appreciated in an open social environment leads to oxytocin
Those activities are deeply-rooted human feelings we are all longing for. Feelings, which ultimately keep the globe spinning. The proverb says: Every man is the architect of his own fortune. Happy hormones are the necessary construction materials.
Think about it: During the French revolution the people demanded liberty for the dopamine, equality for the oxytocin, and fraternity for the serotonin. Aren’t those qualities exactly the same activities leading to well-being and happiness?
The same applies in the professional world. Most employee surveys surface desires for more space to work flexibly for dopamine, a shared culture amongst colleagues for serotonin, and flat hierarchies for the oxytocin.
Now back to The Living Room and their brand promise: Sharing, thriving and laughing together. Sharing stands for a cooperative win-win-win, where everybody cares about themselves, the others and the space as a whole, which fuels your serotonin. Thriving refers to growing and developing both as a person and a business owner bringing your dopamine up to new highs. Laughing demands everybody to make everybody else feel warm and welcome turning The Living Room into an oxytocin manufactury. Sharing, thriving and laughing together – ideal prerequisites for a (happy) coworking space.
The Living Room: Welcome to the space of well-being!
Joachim Klöckner is a celebrated minimalist, consults and holds interactive lectures on the subject of lightness and happiness and feeling good with things material and immaterial. For the past twenty years, he has cultivated a liberating lifestyle, focusing on essentials and adapted to needs of the world in general, reducing his possessions to a maximum of 50 objects that all fit into a single backpack. Joachim is an expert and supporter at Visionautik Academy and a contributor to Huffington Post.
Image source: www.br.de
