The Happy Secret to Better Work
Too often, we chase after goals believing that achievement and success will lead to happiness. When I get the promotion, then I’ll be happy. When I lose 10 pounds, then I’ll be happy. When I graduate from my degree program, then I’ll be happy.
Then, we reach our goal and find disappointment and disillusionment, instead of the happiness and pride we thought would sustain us. Even Olympic athletes who’ve conquered some of the hardest feats reach their career peak and step off the podium confused and saddened by their lack of happiness and joy.
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, shares a radical lesson from positive psychology that shows that it’s not the achievement of our goals or success that makes us happy, but rather, it’s happiness that fuels our achievement of the goals and greater performance and success. This axiom is true in all of our pursuits, in our lives and in our work.
Hear Shawn’s viral TedTalk on this phenomenon below –
How Employers Benefit from The Happiness Advantage
Shawn’s research shares that increased happiness actually improves engagement at work and builds the bottom line.
- Increased profits: Coors reported a $6.15 return in profitability for every $1 spent on its corporate fitness program
- Lower Turnover: A Kansas State study found that turnover was 0.57 times less for any one-unit increase in well-being
- Productive Workers: A report revealed that 89% of employees with high levels of well-being reported high job satisfaction and nearly 2/3 of those employees reported consistently putting in extra effort at work
How to Increase Your Happiness
Shawn’s book, The Happiness Advantage outlines habits you can practice to improve your happiness and fuel your performance and success:
- Meditate: Neuroscientists have found that monks who spend years meditating actually grow their left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most responsible for feeling happy
- Commit Conscious Acts of Kindness: Research has found that individuals who complete five acts of kindness over the course of a day report feeling much happier than control groups.
- Exercise: A study group of depressed patients who were assigned to exercise for 45 minutes 3 times a week experienced similar improvements in happiness to those who took antidepressants. However, 6 months later, they only experienced a relapse rate of 9% compared to the 38% relapse rate of those who had only taken the medication
- Find Something to Look Forward To: One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27%
- Spend Money (But Not On Yourself): 46 students were given $20 to spend. The ones who were told to spend the money on others were happier at the end of the day compared to the ones who spent money on themselves
A few additional tips to increase your happiness:
- Three Gratitudes: Write down three new things you are grateful for each day
- Journaling (aka The Doubler): spend two minutes a day in your journal describing a meaningful experience from over the past 24 hours to double the impact of the event in your life.
Quotes from The Happiness Advantage
Happiness is such an incredible advantage in our life. When the human brain is positive, our intelligence rises. We stop diverting resources to think about anxiety.
Spend two minutes a day scanning the world for three new things you’re grateful for and do that for 21 days. The reason why that’s powerful is you’re training your brain to scan the world in a new pattern, you’re scanning for positives, instead of scanning for threats. It’s the fastest way of teaching optimism.
Happiness is not on the other side of success. Success does not create happiness, happiness creates success.
Statistics and research via “The Happy Secret to Better Work” Infographic found here. (External Link)