Delight

Delight, noun: great pleasure. 

We all know what it’s like to be delighted: 

It’s the feeling you get when you receive a gift that you were not expecting, 

Or when a customer service representative not only solves your problem, but offers unexpected value like a discount code or free product to compensate for your troubles and time. 

The scientific term for this phenomenon is reward prediction error, which is “the difference between the reward being received and the reward that is predicted to be received.” 

The better the reward is compared to what was expected (a positive error), the more likely one is to feel delighted.

More familiar and down-to-earth ways of putting it include under promising and over delivering, going above and beyond, or exceeding expectations. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re operating as a business, as a friend, or as a colleague — making others happy and delighted in any context is one of the most compassionate things you can do for others and yourself. 

And to borrow from one of the terms above, a great way to be intentional about delivering happiness starts with posing the question: “in what ways can I go above and beyond to be kind to those that I care about and aim to serve?”