One Last Present - Happiness!

“Being successful doesn’t automatically make you happier. But being happier, being more positive makes you more successful.”

Shawn Achor – Researcher, Speaker, Author

Since we’ve just gone through the holiday season I’d like to share one last present with you. Today’s beginning quote may seem like a paradox. However, mountains of research support the fact that just being successful won’t guarantee your being happy. Focusing on being happier and more positive though turns out to be a huge predictor of whether you will be a success at whatever you put your mind to. Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we’re positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient and productive. Curious?

Research has repeatedly shown that positive brains have a biological advantage over neutral or negative brains. This isn’t “touchy-feely” thinking. We’re physically wired this way. Students who were told to think about the happiest day of their lives right before taking a standardized math test outperformed their peers. People who expressed more positive emotions while negotiating business deals did so more efficiently and successfully than those who were more neutral or negative. Research shows even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive advantage.

So you’re thinking, it’s easy for me to say; “Just be happy! Happy! Happy! Happy!” If I only knew all the tough, difficult, negative things you’re going through I’d understand all this Kum-Ba-Yah stuff is nonsense. Well then think about this. Our brain has only a finite amount of resources to work with. We can use those limited resources to worry about things going on in our life, raising our stress levels and seeing the negative in the things around us if we choose to. But ask yourself this, when’s the last time you had a creative thought, felt energized, fired up and excited when you were in the above state of mind? Can you begin to see why even a little positivity can make a big difference? If instead, we look at things through a lens of gratitude, hope and optimism we begin to change how we react to every situation we’re facing thus changing our world. The mental construction we create of our daily activities, more than the activity itself, defines our reality.

It’s so easy to get stuck in negative behavior. For example, we’re bombarded daily with Breaking News stories that are typically anything but positive. When we begin to filter everything through a negative lens we set ourselves up for outcomes we’re usually less than satisfied with. By focusing on the positive aspects of situations, multiple favorable things begin to happen. First our overall happiness increases. The happier we are the better we feel right? Next, when we’re more positive in our outlook we also become more grateful. Psychologist Robert Emmons’ research has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being as being grateful. Researchers have picked random people and trained them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks. What did they find? They became happier, more optimistic, feel more socially connected, sleep better and have fewer headaches than the control groups. The last positive outcome is our optimism rises. Optimism feeds on itself. The more optimistic we become, the more we see things in a positive light, the more optimistic we become and so forth. Further, research has shown that optimism is a tremendously powerful predictor of performance at work.

We have the ability, in any situation, to react in three ways. One, we can stay in the state of mind we’re in whether good or bad. Two, we can head in a more negative direction and make a tough situation even worse than it actually is. The third choice is one is usually the most challenging. It’s the reaction that we can look at a setback or failure from the perspective that it’s going to make us stronger and more capable than we were before. It’s often difficult to see the positive side in a crisis. A tough economy, an aggressive competitor, onerous regulations etc. In these situations we often have trouble seeing the most positive, productive path. We fall back on our incomplete mental maps with a feeling of helplessness. Our hopelessness can get so bad that we stop believing that a positive path exists, so we don’t even bother to look for it. But this is the path we need to set off on. It’s the path that is the difference between those who are crippled by failure and those who rise above it. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, tells us; “We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our setbacks, our history, our mistakes, or even staggering defeats along the way. We are freed by our choices.” Shawn Achor puts it this way in his great book, The Happiness Advantage; “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.”

Here’s one last thing to consider. If you want to be a positive, happy person, surround yourself with positive, happy people. Sounds too easy right? Emotions are contagious. Researchers put individuals into a room with four other people who were told ahead of time to project either a positive or negative mood. Within two minutes the mood of the research subject began to mirror the mood of the group. We love to think about ourselves as individuals but we’re social creatures. It’s amazing how much clout the people we’re around have on us and our moods. Researcher Daniel Goldman compared it to second hand smoke saying that the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state. The people you surround yourself with couldn’t be more important. One of the longest-running psychological studies of all time – the Harvard Men study – followed 268 men from their entrance into college in the late 1930s to the present day. The findings point to one thing that distinguished the happiest, fullest lives from the least successful ones. Love. Researcher George Vaillant, the director of the project for the past 40 years wrote; “70 years of evidence that our relationships with other people matter, and matter more than anything else in the world.”

Take some time and give yourself one last Christmas present. Check out Shawn Achor’s book and popular TED talk for more ideas to see what you can do to become a more positive, happy and successful person.