I have to admit something to you guys. I have been telling myself a lie for a very, very long time! But what’s ironic about this lie is that I actually believed it was true. I 100% believed that this was a way of pushing myself to the next level. I simply believed that this was the formula for happiness. My formula for happiness probably looks similar to what you believe or have believed in the past:
Hard Work + Success = Happiness
I mean the equation makes since, right? If I work hard, I will become successful, and being successful will make me happy.
I believe that most people are successful, each in their own way. So, according to this equation, most people should be happy, but remain unhappy even amongst all of their success. Why?
Shawn Achor’s book, ‘The Happiness Advantage,’ answers that very question:
“If success causes happiness, then every employee who gets a promotion, every student who receives an acceptance letter, everyone who has ever accomplished a goal of any kind should be happy. But with each victory, our goalposts of success keep getting pushed further and further out, so that happiness gets pushed over the horizon.”
That leaves us asking, “What is the correct formula for Happiness?”
“Thanks to cutting-edge science, we now know that happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement—giving us the competitive edge that I call the Happiness Advantage. Waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.”
With that being said, our new formula for Happiness should look something like:
Happiness + Optimism + Hard Work = Success
So, I have to be happy before I can experience success? How can I be happy when my kids scream all day long and there is so much laundry to fold that I have run out of laundry baskets and I am using boxes instead? How can I be happy when my work environment is a toxic place? How can I be happy when I am going through a divorce and I am processing complicated emotions? How can I be happy when I see others getting pregnant and my body can’t seem to get it right? How can I be happy when my spouse just died? How can I be happy when I am looking at my child lying in a hospital bed and I feel so helpless? How can I be happy when ___________________?
The truth is that happiness has little to do with our experiences and everything to do with our mindset. John Milton once said, “The Mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.”
Mr. Achor once visited Soweto, South Africa to speak to children at a small school. This town had no electricity and scarce running water. He asked the students, “Who here likes to do schoolwork?” He asked this thinking that all students, no matter their location, did not like doing homework. However, he found quite the opposite. 95% of the students raised their hands. He later asked one of the adults why the children enjoyed their schoolwork. He said, “They see schoolwork as a privilege, one that many of their parents did not have.” From this experience, Mr. Achor started to realize just how much our interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality.
Shawn Achor has had the privilege of studying at Harvard University in the field of Psychology. He continued that education by living at Harvard and studying the happiness of college students. He took the information he gathered from observing these students and used them to design and complete a survey of 1,600 high achieving undergraduates. “The result? Surprising and exciting conclusions about what causes some to rise to the top and thrive in challenging environments while others sink down and never become what they have in them to be.”
From this study, Mr. Achor was able to isolate 7 specific, actionable, and proven patterns that predict success and achievement.
“Together, these Seven Principles helped Harvard students (and later, tens of thousands of people in the “real world”) overcome obstacles, reverse bad habits, become more efficient and productive, make the most of opportunities, conquer their most ambitious goals, and reach their fullest potential.”
Let’s take a closer look at these valuable 7 Principles!
1. THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE
“For untold generations, we have been led to believe that happiness orbited around success. That if we work hard enough, we will be successful, and only if we are successful will we become happy. Success was thought to be the fixed point of the work universe, with happiness revolving around it. Now, thanks to breakthroughs in the burgeoning field of positive psychology, we are learning that the opposite is true. When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.”
How would you define happiness, now that you know happiness comes before success? Would you define it as a person who is just happy all of the time? No. The truth is “not even the all-knowing Google has a definitive answer to this question. That’s because there is no single meaning; happiness is relative to the person experiencing it. It’s based on who we each feel about our lives. In essence, the best judge of how happy you are is you.”
What does happiness do for our bodies? “Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that not only make us feel good, but dial up the learning centers of our brains to higher levels. They help us organize new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and retrieve it faster later on. And they enable us to make and sustain more neural connections, which allows us to think more quickly and creatively, become more skilled at complex analysis and problem solving, and see and invent new ways of doing things.”
Studies have proven that if you think of something that makes you happy before you complete an exam, give a presentation, or do just about anything that is making you nervous, you are able to outperform your peers. You could use visualization to see yourself excelling at whatever task you have to complete, you can recall a time when you crushed your goal, or do something completely unrelated to the task at hand, like watch a funny SNL skit, call your mom, or go for a walk or run. Remember “Even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive edge.”
Here are 7 activities that Mr. Achor suggest for a quick boost of positive emotions. “If performed habitually over time, each has been shown to help permanently raise our happiness baseline.”
Meditate
“Research shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness, lower stress, and even improve immune function.”
Find Something To Look Forward To
“Anticipating future rewards can actually light up the pleasure centers in your brain as much as the actual reward will.”
Commit Conscious Acts of Kindness
Mr. Achor challenges you to pick one day a week and make a point of committing 5 acts of kindness. He reminds us that in order to reap the psychological benefit, you need to do these acts of kindness deliberately and consciously.
Infuse Positivity Into Your Surroundings
“Making time to go outside on a nice day delivers a huge advantage; one study found that spending 20 minutes outside in good weather not only boosted positive mood, but broadened thinking and improved working memory. The smartest bosses encourage employees to get a breath of fresh air at least once a day, and they reap the benefits in heightened team performance.”
Exercise
“Physical activity can boost mood and enhance our work performance in a number of other ways as well, by improving motivation and feelings of mastery, reducing stress and anxiety, and helping us get into flow—that “locked in” feeling of total engagement that we usually get when we’re at our most productive.”
Mr. Achor relates a study that proves the effectiveness of exercise. Depressed patients were placed into three different groups with each group being given a different coping mechanism: antidepressant medication, exercising for 45 minutes three times per week, and a combination of both. “After four months, all three groups experienced similar improvements in happiness. The very fact that exercise proved just as helpful as anti-depressants is remarkable, but the story doesn’t end here. Of those who had taken medication alone, 38% had slipped back into depression. Those in the combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31% relapse rate. The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9%!”
Spend Money (But Not on Stuff)
“Contrary to the popular saying, money can buy happiness, but only if used to do things as opposed to simply have things. Spending money on experiences, especially ones with other people, produces positive emotions that are both more meaningful and more lasting.”
Exercise a Signature Strength
“Studies have shown that the more you use your signature strengths in daily life, the happier you become.”
To learn what your signature strengths are Mr. Achor suggests visiting www.viasurvey.org and complete their survey. I actually completed the survey and found out that my Top 5 Signature Strengths are: Kindness, Spirituality, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Fairness, and Judgment.
My girls and I celebrated “May Day” by picking out flowers, putting them in tin cans adorned with candy and a note, and delivering them to our neighbors. Without fully focusing on my results of the survey, my girls and I performed this simple act of kindness. This brought my heart so much joy!
How can we use these 7 Activities to boost happiness in the work place or your home environment (because I know some of you are stay-at-home Mommas or Daddys like me)? Let’s look at a few examples of businesses who focus on their employee’s happiness:
Google: “Is famous for keeping scooters in the hallway, video games in the break room, and gourmet chefs in the cafeteria.”
Patagonia: Has adopted a “Let My People Go Surfing” policy. This means that whenever employees feel the need to surf, they grab a surfboard from the office closet and hit the waves.
Danish Car Company: Focuses on the “Order of the Elephant.” They have a 2’ stuffed elephant that employees pass to each other when someone does something exemplary.
In the Bostwick household, during the summers, we have “Fun Friday!” This is where I load up the girls, they get to choose what we get for breakfast, and we head to the park! We eat our breakfast at the picnic table and then they get to run wild! They have actually been asking for “Fun Friday” to come back!
Before becoming a full-time mom, I was a full-time employee in a District Court. I probably had more fun there than anywhere else I had worked. Why? It was because of the people I worked with! We left funny notes on each other’s computers, we brought in treats for each other’s birthdays, we had the best training trips ever, we had luncheons for the employees of the whole courthouse (one of the bailiffs made the BEST Éclairs I have ever tasted!), and I even awarded a few of my co-workers gold stars (a piece of paper on which I had drawn a gold star) when they had done something nice for me. We had inside jokes, talks while walking up and down the stairs, and several hunts for the “good pens.” The judge that I worked with, a very busy man, would always stop what he was doing when I came into his office with a question and look me in the eye. He heard my suggestions and actually gave them a try. I felt valued as not only an employee but as a person! I miss that place!
As you can see, even the smallest moments of happiness in our workplaces or homes, can make all of the difference! I challenge you to find ways to make your work and home environment happier places to be!
2. THE FULCRUM AND THE LEVER
“Our power to maximize our potential is based on two important things: (1) the length of our lever—how much potential power and possibility we believe we have, and (2) the position of our fulcrum—the mindset with which we generate the power to change. Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified—ready to move everything up. Simply put, by changing the fulcrum of our mindset and lengthening our lever of possibility, we change what is possible. It’s not the weight of the world that determines what we can accomplish. It is our fulcrum and lever.”
Mr. Achor gives an example of being in a long boring meeting. We’ve all been there, right? You know the one where the speaker is monotone, you already know the information, you’re past the point of doodling, almost asleep, and you’re left feeling like this is a huge waste of your time? He suggests instead of viewing this as a huge waste of time, change your mindset to view this meeting as an opportunity. What kind of opportunity you may ask? An opportunity to learn at least 3 new things from. Sometimes, you may not be able to learn anything from the content of the meeting. However, you can learn how to or not to give a presentation, what would make this presentation better, or maybe even how to best handle difficult questions. The truth is, there is always something to learn and if you’re learning something, then maybe this long boring meeting isn’t such a huge waste of time after all!
I like it when authors include some sort of an exercise that I can complete on my own to further my understanding of a certain topic. Mr. Achor included just that. To me, this is an exercise to find meaning in your daily tasks. To complete this exercise, take out a piece of paper and turn it horizontally. Then answer the following, drawing an arrow to the next item:
A task that is devoid of meaning → What is the purpose of this task? →What will it accomplish? → What does this result lead to?
I answered these questions based on being a Stay-At-Home Momma and found purpose in my responsibilities that have been devoid of meaning for quite some time. It was almost like a weight being lifted off of my shoulders.
Please remember, “You can have the best job in the world, but if you can’t find the meaning in it, you won’t enjoy it, whether you are a movie maker or an NFL playmaker.”
A Note to Employers:
“When a manager openly expresses his faith in an employee’s skill, he doesn’t just improve mood and motivation; he actually improves their likelihood of succeeding.”
“What we expect from people (and from ourselves) manifests itself in the words we use, and those words can have a powerful effect on end results.”
Mr. Achor suggests that Employers ask themselves the following questions every Monday:
(1) "Do I believe that the intelligence and skills of my employees are not fixed, but can be improved with effort?
(2) Do I believe that my employees want to make that effort, just as they want to find meaning and fulfillment in their jobs?
(3) How am I conveying these beliefs in my daily words and actions?”
Remembering that our mindset has the power to turn something boring into informative, something painful into a learning opportunity, and something negative into a positive is our greatest tool to becoming happy!
3. THE TETRIS EFFECT
Have you ever played video games all day or went on a Netflix binge of a show and when you were finished your mind was still in game mode or your Netflix show made your mood change? This is essentially what Mr. Achor refers to as “The Tetris Effect.”
Let me give an example of this from the book. Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry completed a study where they actually paid 27 people to play Tetris for multiple hours a day, for three days in a row. Yes, they were paid to play video games! This may sound like fun, but just wait until you hear the side effects! “For days after the study, some participants literally couldn’t stop dreaming about shapes falling from the sky. Others couldn’t stop seeing these shapes everywhere, even in their waking hours. quite simply, they couldn’t stop seeing their world as being made up of sequences of Tetris blocks.”
How could this happen? What is really going on with the people from the study? “The Tetris Effect stems from a very normal physical process that repeated playing triggers in their brains. They become stuck in something called a “cognitive afterimage.” You know those blue or green dots that cloud your vision for a few seconds after someone takes a flash photograph of you? This happens because the flash has monetarily burned an image onto your visual field so that as you look around at the world, you see the same light patter—that afterimage—everywhere. This isn’t just a vison problem—playing hour after hour of Tetris actually changes the wiring of the brain. Specifically, as subsequent studies found, the consistent play was creating new neural pathways, new connections that warped the way they view real-life situations.”
That’s great Amber, but what does this have to do with happiness? Have you ever met a truly grumpy person, a real-life Eeyore? I am pretty sure that we all have. “These people usually aren’t trying to be difficult or grumpy. Their brains are just really outstanding at scanning their environment for negatives—at immediately spotting the annoyances and stresses and hassles. Their brains have been honed and trained to do so through years of practice. Unfortunately, our society only encourages this kind of training. Think about it: In the work world, as in our personal lives, we are often rewarded for noticing the problems that need solving, the stresses that need managing, and the injustices that need righting. Sometimes this can be very useful. The problem is that if we get stuck in only that pattern, always looking for and picking up on the negative, even a paradise can become hell. And worse, the better we get at scanning for the negative, the more we miss out on the positive—those things in life that bring us greater happiness, and in turn fuel our success. Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.”
If we focus on the negative, all we will see is the negative. We know this is true. The good news is that the opposite is true as well: If we focus on the positive, all we will see is the positive. Mr. Achor says, “Just as our brains can be wired in ways that hold us back, we can retrain them to scan for the good things in life—to help us see more possibility, to feel more energy, and to succeed at higher levels.”
When we focus on the positive, 3 important tools become available to us:
Happiness: “The more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel.”
Gratitude: “The more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become.”
Optimism: “The more your brain picks up on the positive, the more you’ll expect this trend to continue, and so the more optimistic you’ll be.”
How can we retrain our brains to focus more on the positive and in-turn gain the important tools of Happiness, Gratitude, and Optimism? Mr. Achor suggest writing down 3 Good Things That Have Happened to You Today! By doing this your brain is forced to review your day and search for the positives. You brain will be forced to focus on things that made you laugh, things that made you smile, feelings of accomplishment, things that made you feel hopeful or loved, or times spent with people you care about. This also forces the negative thoughts out of our brains, because of the mere fact that our brains can only focus on so much at once. Wow! Isn’t it amazing how something so simple can do so much for our happiness?
He also suggests to say 3 Things You Are Grateful For around your dinner table each night and to include your children. This teaches your kids to focus on the good things and also hold you accountable for completing the task!
I challenge you to focus on 3 Thing You Are Grateful for each day! Track your progress and see the improvement after a week, a month, 6 months, or even a year! Imagine the different person you will become!
4. FALLING UP
Did you know that your mind creates 3 different mental paths after a crisis or adversity?
(1) The path that keeps circling around where you currently are
(2) The Path that leads you toward further negative consequences
(3) The Path that leads us from failure or setback to a place where we are even stronger and more capable than before the fall.
When we are faced with a crisis or adversity, our mental path is oftentimes clouded. This makes it difficult to notice the 3rd and better path to follow. However, “by scanning our mental map for positive opportunities, and by rejecting the belief that every down in life leads us only further downward, we give ourselves the greatest power possible: the ability to move up not despite the setbacks, but because of them!”
When I experience failure, even though it takes me awhile, I change the question I ask myself from “Why me?” to “What can I learn from this?” and that makes all of the difference. It’s a way I can remove my focus from negative and place it on the positive.
Mr. Achor sums this up perfectly, “The people who can most successfully get themselves up off the mat are those who define themselves not by what has happened to them, but by what they can make out of what has happened. These are the people who actually use adversity to find the path forward.”
To me, being able to find the positive in a clearly negative situation is all about changing your perspective. Mr. Achor gave an example of this that really opened my eyes on how to do just that. Imagine yourself in a bank with 50 other patrons. Suddenly a bank robber enters and fires his weapon only once, shooting you in the right arm. None of the other 50 patrons were physically injured. The next day, you return to work and describe the event. Do you describe the event as unlucky or lucky?
Some of the responses he hears include:
“I could have walked into any bank, at any time. This kind of thing almost never happens. How unlucky is it that I happened to be there? And that I was shot?!”
“I entered the bank perfectly healthy and I left in an ambulance.”
“I could have been shot somewhere far worse than my arm. I could have died. I feel incredibly fortunate.”
“It’s amazing that nobody else got hurt. There were at least 50 other people in the bank, including children. It’s unbelievably lucky that everybody lived to tell the tale.”
The responses are very different. However, it’s important to point out that in each response the brain did the exact same thing. It invented a “counterfact.” “A counterfact is an alternate scenario our brains create to help us evaluate and make sense of what really happened.” The unlucky response group viewed the alternate scenario from not being shot at all. Whereas, the lucky response group viewed the alternate scenario from possibly being shot somewhere worse than the arm, or children getting harmed instead. “Here’s the crucial part: Both of the counterfacts are completely hypothetical. Because it’s invented, we actually have the power in any given situation to consciously select a counterfact that makes us feel fortunate rather than helpless. And choosing a positive counterfact, besides simply making us feel better, sets ourselves up for the whole host of benefits to motivation and performance we now know accompanies a positive mindset.”
How did you respond to this hypothetical situation? What is something that you could change today that would change your response, if you chose the unlucky response?
Please remember, “Success is about more than simple resilience. It’s about using that downward momentum to propel ourselves in the opposite direction. It’s about capitalizing on setbacks and adversity to become even happier, even more motivated, and even more successful. It’s not about falling down, it’s falling up.”
5. THE ZORRO CIRCLE
Are any of you Zorro fans? If so, then this section is for you!
Before Zorro became well, Zorro, swinging from chandeliers and being great with the sword, he was just an ordinary boy named Alejandro. He had the desire to be great but wanted to be great right now, without putting in the work that is necessary to become great. Then he met the sword master, Don Diego. He begins Alejandro’s training by drawing a circle in the dirt. Alejandro is forced to fight only within the boundaries of the circle. Don Diego says, “This circle will be your world. Your whole life. Until I tell you otherwise, there is nothing outside of it.” Alejandro soon masters his small circle and Don Diego allows him to slowly attempt greater and greater feats. He achieves each of them. Eventually, he becomes the Zorro we all know. “But none of [his] achievements would even have been possible had he not first learned to master that small circle. Before that moment, Alejandro had no command over his emotions, no sense of his own skill, no real faith in his ability to accomplish a goal, and—worst of all—no feeling of control over his own fate. Only after he masters that first circle does he start to become Zorro, the legend.”
How can we apply the principles that turned Alejandro into Zorro into our own lives?
“One of the biggest drivers of success is the belief that our behavior matters; that we have control over our future. Yet when our stresses and workloads seem to mount faster than our ability to keep up, feelings of control are often the first things to go, especially when we try to tackle too much at ones. If, however, we first concentrate our efforts on small manageable goals, we regain the feeling of control so crucial to performance. By first limiting the scope of our efforts, then watching those efforts have the intended effect, we accumulate the resources, knowledge, and confidence to expand the circle, gradually conquering a larger and larger area.”
It has been proven that employees who feel like they have high levels of control at the office are better at their jobs, experience higher job satisfaction, experience lower levels of stress, work-family conflict, and job turnover!
This got me to thinking about levels of control with my children. I’ve started giving them “jobs” that they have control over. For example, my middle child’s “job” is to feed our dog, Rex, and get the mail. I have noticed that as they complete their “jobs” and get paid in tickets (which they cash in for prizes), their confidence has increased and they are more willing to help me with whatever they can.
One interesting fact is “Psychologists have found that these kinds of gains in productivity, happiness, and health have less to do with how much control we actually have and more with how much control we “think” we have. Remember that how we experience the world is shaped largely by our mindset.”
Mr. Achor included another exercise in this section that I call “The Stresses To Let Go Of Exercise.” You start by listing your Stresses, Daily Challenges, and Goals. Then you take the items you listed and separate them into two columns: What You Can Control and What You Need To Let Go Of (What You Cannot Control).
I was astonished at how many stressors in my life were out of my control and how much time I have wasted worrying about them! WOW!
One time when Mr. Achor was living on campus, the fire department reported one of his students for having such a messy room that it didn’t pass a fire code inspection. To help this student, Mr. Achor became this student’s Don Diego and literally drew a circle on the mess. They traced a one foot in diameter circle on the student’s desk. They cleared off the mess. Mr. Achor told the student to spend the next day defending they newly clean patch against any threats to disorder. The next time they met together, they chose another spot in the room and applied the same concept. “With each subsequent day came one more clutter-free circle—not to mention a greater sense of control and a strengthened commitment to the project. A mere two weeks later, the room was a spotless shadow of its former self. By establishing small circles of success and gradually expanding outward, the student mastered the larger circle of his life. He was happy and so was the fire department.”
Please remember, “Small successes can add up to major achievements. All it takes is drawing that first circle in the sand.”
6. THE 20-SECOND RULE
Did you know that you can change your bad habits into good ones simply by changing the path of least resistance by 20 seconds?
Mr. Achor had a daily habit of coming home after work, plopping himself down on the couch and watching TV. He wanted to change his habit of watching too much TV and decided to do an experiment on himself. He removed the batteries from the remote, took out his stopwatch, walked exactly 20 seconds away, and placed the batteries in a drawer. Then he placed a book and his guitar right by the couch. The next day he came home from work, plopped himself on the couch, reached for the remote and pushed the “on” button. Nothing happened. He muttered to himself something like “I hate when I do these experiments.” “But sure enough, the energy and effort required to retrieve the batteries—or even to walk across the room and turn the TV on manually—was enough to do the trick.” Instead, he reached for the book or his guitar.
“Lower the activation energy for habits you want to adopt, and raise it for habits you want to avoid. The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.”
A few months ago, I wanted to start being on social media less. I wanted to break my bad habit of scrolling when I was bored or frustrated. Instead, I wanted to read more. I took my social media apps and put them in a folder where they aren’t easily seen, I turned off all notifications, and I set a time limit for how long I can be on them. I also carry my book with me everywhere I go. Now when I am waiting to pick up my kids from school, or waiting to see the doctor, I read my book instead of mindlessly scrolling garbage on social media. My mental health is thanking me for developing this new habit!
7. SOCIAL INVESTMENT
When you face a hardship or a challenge, do you embrace and turn to those around you for support or do you put your head down and head into the battle alone?
When Mr. Achor was 18 years old, he was finishing up his training to become a volunteer firefighter. One of the last trainings, was a full-scale fire. This training was something that veteran firefighters would put the newbies through. He and a fellow newbie were dressed in all of their necessary gear and headed into the fire. They were to find a dummy in the middle of the fire and rescue him. However, in order to keep themselves safe, they had to keep in constant contact with the wall. This meant that one of them would have their hand on the wall and other would search for the dummy while hanging on to their partner. They were told that this should take 7-10 minutes but they had enough oxygen to last for an hour. An alarm would sound when they were running low on oxygen. Inside, the fire was blaring and it was nearly impossible to see anything. They did as they were told and searched for the dummy. Then an alarm sounded. They knew they hadn’t been in there an hour, haven’t found the dummy, and now their oxygen was running out. They panicked. They let go of each other and the wall. They were lost in the blaze. They couldn’t hear each other or see each other. They became helpless and scared. Then a pair of strong arms pulled them to safety. Everything they experienced was a part of the training; the impossibility of the flames, the alarms going off early, and there was really no dummy to be found. Mr. Achor learned from this experience, “When we encounter an unexpected challenge or threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.”
Imagine you are the star quarterback of your favorite football team. You have just won the big game. You have to deliver a message after the game to all of your fans about how well you played. Only you don’t give the credit to yourself, you give it to your offensive line. The people who blocked the threats to you the entire game. “Even though most of us live far removed from the football field, we each have our own version of an offensive line: our spouses, our families, and our friends. Surrounded by these people, big challenges feel more manageable and small challenges don’t even register on the radar. Just as the offensive line protects the quarterback from a particularly brutal sack, our social support prevents stress from knocking us down and getting in the way of our achieving our goals.”
How are your listening skills? Do we really listen to someone or do we listen just enough to be able to insert our opinion? “Forging a connection requires active listening—giving someone your full attention and also allowing them to have their say. Many people listen as if waiting for an opportunity to make their own point. Instead, focus on the speaker and their opinion, and then ask interested questions to learn more.”
Mr. Achor often asks managers to write a letter of praise to employees, family members, or friends each morning before they start work—“not just because it contributes to their own happiness, but because it very literally cements a relationship.”
This book was written in 2010, just after the 2008 economic crash. Mr. Achor refers a lot to the downturn in the economy affecting people’s happiness. We are no longer feeling the affects from the crash in 2008, but we are feeling affects from COVID-19. We have been forced to be secluded from our family, friends, and colleagues for so long, that I believe it has taken quite the toll on our mental health. Even with me being a stay-at-home momma, I have felt the impact. My social arena was reduced to zero. I find myself jumping at every opportunity I get to partake of a little social interaction and some adult conversation!
Even amongst all of the trouble COVID-19 has caused, I believe what Mr. Achor stated “Being forced to reexamine our way of life (and work) has ended up being the best thing that could have happened to us!”
I have learned what I value the most—family, friends, going to church, our freedoms, etc. I have also learned quite a few things that I once valued that are no longer important to me.
One thing I know for sure is “in everyday life, both at work and at home, our social support can prove the difference between succumbing to the cult of the average and achieving our fullest potential.”
THE RIPPLE EFFECT
We have been so focused on a contagion of sickness, that we have forgotten the negative emotional contagion it’s been causing.
“The power of emotional contagion means that overt negativity can infect a group of people almost instantly. Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state.”
It’s time to make a change! It’s time to stop focusing on the negative and start focusing on the positive!
“Positive emotional contagion starts when people subconsciously mimic the body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions of those around them. Amazing as it might sound, once people mimic the physical behaviors tied to these emotions, it causes them to feel the emotion themselves.”
Let’s take the advice we have learned from Mr. Achor and start making the world a happier place to live in! Let’s be the kindness we want to receive! Let’s start a happiness contagion that cannot be stopped!
All quotes were taken directly from
“The Happiness Advantage”
By Shawn Achor
For more information regarding The Happiness Advantage or Shawn Achor please visit the following:
Comments