Are You Happy?

 

Are you positive? If not, you probably won’t be as successful as you could be. We often hear the refrain “Be positive,” but do we really take it to heart? Or are we too caught up in “being successful,” in “reaching the goal,” or in finding the right person to consider how important it is to be happy?

I recently watched a great TED Talk by Shawn Achor, CEO of Good Think Inc., a Cambridge-based consulting firm that researches positive outliers (people who are well above average) to understand where success and happiness intersect. Achor does an excellent job in this short talk explaining how important it is to think positively. What I liked is that he gives some real practical advice on how to get started. I also appreciated his argument that if we think success will make us happy, we will never really be satisfied — because the bar of success is constantly moving. 

In the last three years, I’ve traveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we’ve done is we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.

Notice he doesn’t say success isn’t important. Success is good. The problem is when we put success first, as if our happiness is dependent on our success. Be happy first, then let success flow out of your happiness. You will find that you’re a much more peaceful and content person—and more successful. 

Too often, though, people focus on the task and the goal as the means to their happiness. When they do this, they get caught up in all the negativity that goes along with it—and the fear.

While working with college students at Harvard, Achor found that students didn’t build on the happiness and success of being accepted into such a distinguished college. Instead, “no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.” 

Through his research, Achor has found that when people are positive and happy first, they are more successful.

If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

So how do we become more positive in the present? Each person’s path will be different, but Achor does give some helpful advice to get started. He’s found in his research that people who do these things every day for about a month actually become more positive and more successful. 

  1. Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had during the past 24 hours. This allows your brain to relive the positive experience.
  2. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters.
  3. Meditate. This allows you to get over the cultural ADHD that we create by doing multiple tasks. Meditation helps you focus on the task at hand. This is important because we don’t realize how we never really focus on any one thing. This affects our performance level. I’ve also found that it affects my memory. When I’m thinking of too many things, I’m not really present with any one thing, and my mind can’t focus—it doesn’t take hold in my brain, and I forget.
  4. Conscious acts of kindness. Achor gives people a simple recommendation: When you open your inbox, write someone one positive email praising them or thanking them. I think this step, though, could be broadened to incorporate anything—helping people with their groceries at the store, giving a gift to a neighbor, etc. Of course, writing a sweet and encouraging email is a good way to start. I know I feel better after I send a random email of praise to someone who didn’t expect it—and I know they do too.

What do you think? Can we be more successful if we’re more positive first and don’t let our happiness hang on achieving that next best thing?

Are you happy? If not, maybe it’s because you’re waiting for something outside of yourself to make you happy. When you do that, you’re giving other people—and things beyond your control—power over your life. Happiness based on accomplishments, people, or events doesn’t last for long. Happiness only lasts when it comes from within.

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  1. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    One of my best friends lost everything society would normally equate with happiness and success. He ended up living on a boat in the marina with no more worldly goods than would fit in the bed of his Ford Ranger. In that solitude and simplicity he found true contentment and happiness. Faced with being in the same rhetorical boat I hope I find the same peace and joy.

    • #31
  2. D.C. McAllister Inactive
    D.C. McAllister
    @DCMcAllister

    Metalheaddoc–I understand. I got sucked into a talk by Andrew Solomon about identity politics. 15 minutes of my life I wish I could get back. but it did give me some insight into what moves the left and inspires them. So maybe it wasn’t such a waste. Still, dealing with the arrogance of the left is difficult to say the least.

    • #32
  3. D.C. McAllister Inactive
    D.C. McAllister
    @DCMcAllister

    Genferi–the modern art ref was to another post with similar frustrations in general.

    • #33
  4. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    Ms. Denise, thanks for the post.
    Isn’t this one of the good things about Ricochet?
    I can completely ignore TED, until some intelligent conservative on Ricochet recommends something there as being worth my time.   It happens infrequently.  Usually I get a bit of advance information and a reason why I might be interested.
    I can leave off the stuff that is only the progressives filling their echo chamber with more blather, and go straight to the good stuff.   

    I routinely listen to NPR.   On rare occasions I will provide a link to an NPR account in a comment at Ricochet, if it is particularly informative or timely or useful somehow.   I listen so some of y’all don’t have to.   I appreciate the same service from some of y’all with respect to TED.

    Viva Ricochet.

    • #34
  5. user_358258 Inactive
    user_358258
    @RandyWebster

    DC, 
    Both sides AREN’T guilty.  They want to tell me how to run my life.  I don’t care how they run theirs.  There’s no equivalency.

    • #35
  6. D.C. McAllister Inactive
    D.C. McAllister
    @DCMcAllister

    Randy–I didn’t explain myself too well. I was using my IPhone, and to be honest I don’t express myself too well there (does anyone else have that problem??). Anyway, I agree it’s not a moral equivalency. That’s what I meant by they’re pushing their PC ideas into policy. Liberal extremism has gained a foothold in actual law. Conservative agendas haven’t. So who’s the real threat? Liberals. I understand that. My problem is that I’d like to see us try to undo stereotypes in the culture and build bridges there. It’s hard, but I think some inroads can be made to those in the middle who are vulnerable (the lo-info vote, for instance). Anyway, I just don’t want our side to react all the time to their side to the point of missing opportunities to appeal to the more reasonable people (even if they aren’t well-informed) in the middle. If that makes any sense. (though I might sound like a squish at this point). I mean that in terms of cultural issues, not legal or constitutional issues–which we need to stand strong and fight on.

    • #36
  7. D.C. McAllister Inactive
    D.C. McAllister
    @DCMcAllister

    MJBudda–much obliged. That is what I try to do. I try to find points of contact with the culture and build something from it. The rest of it, I discard because it is pretty awful.

    • #37
  8. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    “The culture” is not what is printed in the NYT or broadcast on NPR. That is propaganda. I would argue (and have argued) that the ‘profession’ of ‘journalism’ is such that a non-liberal newspaper/newsprogram is just impossible (see, e.g., the reporting in the WSJ or even on Fox). One essential step in cleansing the culture, therefore, is to destroy ‘journalism’ and its existing organs. Citing the NYT and its ilk (as Peter does), or writing for them (as Ross Douthat and now the Volokh crowd do), is objectively* dangerous in that it reinforces the role of these organs of deceit in perverting the culture for the incurious and the credulous (or just those who don’t obsessively follow these things like we do).

    Which is why I consider citing NPR or TED as dangerous, not matter how insightful the needle amongst the haystack of liberty-crushing ‘Conventional Wisdom’.

    * In that special sense of ‘objectively’ that means doing something I disagree with. Cf, generally, Marxism-Leninism.

    • #38
  9. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    I’m as happy as a guy in his boxer shorts with a big bowl of popcorn and Netflix can be.

    • #39
  10. user_189393 Inactive
    user_189393
    @BarkhaHerman

    “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
    ― Abraham Lincoln

    I for one do not believe that happiness is based on circumstance.  Of all things in life, circumstance are the easiest to change.  Happiness is intrinsic.  Thinking positive is essential to it.  The world view of a person is either of scarcity or abundance.  The scarcity angle focuses on the zero sum gain idea; while the worldview of abundance focuses on creation, not mere distribution of existing resources.

    The only way to be happy, for me, is to create abundance each day.  Of thoughts, materials and  emotions.

    • #40
  11. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Misthiocracy:  I’m as happy as a guy in his boxer shorts with a big bowl of popcorn and Netflix can be.

    I think that there is transitory happiness, which might be temporary contentment with popcorn and Netflix; and then there is happiness when one looks around and sees one’s wife, one’s children, one’s grandchildren, one’s friends and neighbors, and finds one’s life to be a worthwhile gift of God and worthy of appreciation.

    • #41
  12. Byron Horatio Inactive
    Byron Horatio
    @ByronHoratio

    I’m fortunate in that I’m the only person in my family that doesn’t suffer from clinical depression.  I don’t why but it appears to have missed me in the genetic lottery.  I’m extremedy happy.  I derive most of my joy from my wife, animals, and joking around at work.  I go out of my way to pull childish pranks, tell fibs to impressionable subordinates, and generally laugh at other peoples’ expense.  

    I dont do journaling per se, but I do frequently write character sketches of people I meet ( always at their expense) and share with a friend or two who enjoy the same thing.  

    I think the the key to happiness is maintaining a certain degree of childishness and 12 year old humor.  If I could manage to hide a whoopee cushion on some of my peers ‘ chairs, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

    • #42
  13. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    D.C. McAllister:

    Every time I mention TED Talks, NPR, or modern art, I get condescension. And we wonder why we can’t build bridges in the culture. Best to stick to the echo chamber. Like anything there is good and bad at TED. There have been some talks on autism that have greatly encouraged my family, for instance. There’s liberal drivel that I’ve turned off 5 minutes in. But to dismiss it out if hand? Are we really so close-minded? Maybe we are. So, back to the citing only “acceptable” conservative sources…….

     DC. Please don’t give up on citing TED talks or anything else. I learn more from your posts than most anything else I do on the internet. And keep deciding to be positive. 

    BTW, I decided years ago (I’ll be 65 in a few days) that happiness is more a decision than a circumstance. I’ve met plenty of people who seem to ‘have everything’ but are miserable and plenty of others who have ‘nothing’ but seem to be very happy in life. Things will not MAKE you happy.  Other people will not make you happy, you will decide either way.

    • #43
  14. user_44643 Inactive
    user_44643
    @MikeLaRoche

    I tend to be a rather cynical sort myself, alas.

    • #44
  15. user_44643 Inactive
    user_44643
    @MikeLaRoche

    Per Mickey Gilley, I prefer the power of positive drinking. ;-)

    • #45
  16. MaggiMc Coolidge
    MaggiMc
    @MaggiMc

    I’ve been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember.  At some point I found a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking that someone had left on a bookshelf at church.  I may have been 9 or 10 at the time.  I read it from cover to cover more than once.  I haven’t read it again in years–I wonder how it stands the test of time.  Would it be considered the TED talk of its day?  Anyway, I don’t know if it made such an impression on me because I have a naturally positive disposition or if my positive disposition is the result of encountering influences like that book.

    I am essentially a happy person.  Is that because things generally go my way, or is it the reverse?  The lowest point in my life was in my very young adulthood.  I fell into a trap of giving other people the power over my emotional well-being by being dependent on others’ good opinion of me.  I’m grateful that some maturity gained on my part and good advice from older adults I trusted helped me see that behavior as being recipe for unhappiness.  I decided to take 100% responsibility for my own well-being, and that has served me well thus far.  

    Based on that transformative experience, I will say that for me happiness was a decision.  It involved concrete actions and resolutions to myself that took time and effort to accomplish.  So, it was not an “all in my head” decision, but that was definitely part of it.  I couldn’t say how someone with clinical depression, health issues, or a significantly different upbringing from mine (stable, religious, middle class) would fare in the same circumstance.  I can only encourage stable, happy adults to pay attention to the young people around them.  The friends who were there for me when I needed it were invaluable.

    • #46
  17. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    Yes, I am happy. This is definitely a choice. I’ve followed my dreams, worked hard through under-grad and grad school like it was a job that paid me cash, knowing that work would one day re-pay me in all sorts of blessings!
    I’ve loved family, carefully maneuvered and honored my debts, cared for neighbors and for friends. I strive to be content with the blessings I have.
    With my apologies, on a bad day, I am as miserable & cynical as Grumplestiltskin. The good thing: and this too shall pass until all that remains is contentment & joy.

    • #47
  18. Pony Convertible Inactive
    Pony Convertible
    @PonyConvertible

    I sincerely believe that no man in the history of the world has had a better life than me.  I have never been seriously ill or injured, I have never been hungry or thirsty.   I have always slept comfortably in good shelter.   I have a great wife and family.   Still, I have sometimes struggled with being happy.   Looking back, I think the happiest time in my life was when I went 3 years without watching even one minute of TV.  It brought my focus back to me, my personal life, family and friends, instead of all the negative things in the world beyond my control.

    • #48
  19. Southern Pessimist Member
    Southern Pessimist
    @SouthernPessimist

    One of the best lines in my favorite movie was delivered by Chloe in the Big Chill. When asked if Alex acted happy before he committed suicide, Meg Tilly paused and shyly replied, “I don’t know. I have not met many happy people. How do they act?”
    I suppose if you have to ask yourself if you are happy you are probably not but I ask myself that all the time. Mrs. Pessimist has been keeping a gratitude journal for years and I think it has added immeasurably to her bountiful happiness.

    • #49
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