The Happiness Advantage - Summary
Over the past weeks we have looked at the 7 Principles of the “The Happiness Advantage” based on research conducted by Harvard Professor, Shawn Achor.[i]
To recap:
Achor proposes that happiness is not a symptom of success but actually causes it. He suggests that by working on happiness we can increase our chances of success and outlines 7 principles to help us do that.
Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage: How Happiness Gives your Brain and your Organisation the Competitive Edge
The first principle explains our happiness can give us in the edge when it comes to success with research finding that positive emotions actually improves
our work performance,
our creativity, and
our senses.
Photo by Urupong/iStock / Getty Images
We can help ourselves with this by:
Meditating
Doing things we are good at,
Finding things to look forward to,
Infusing positivity into our surroundings, and
Exercising our bodies.
Principle #2: The Fulcrum and the Lever.
The second principle shows us the power of our mindset. Research found that older men who were forced to put themselves ‘back in time’ had improved
physical strength,
posture, perception,
eyesight,
appearance,
cognition and
memory.
By challenging the meaning we make in our everyday lives, we can realise that reality is not fixed and improve our mindset.
Principle #3: The Tetris Effect
Essentially, researchers found that participants who played Tetris for hours a day found that they couldn’t stop seeing Tetris shapes everywhere they went.
Similarly, accountants who spend their days doing audits and looking for negatives, develop a habit for scanning for negatives in the other aspects of their lives.
Achor proposes that if it works in the negative, it can work in the positive.
If we scan and focus on the positive, we can benefit from happiness, gratitude and optimism.
The way to do this is consciously focusing on the positives. We can do this by write down three good things every morning. This will train your mind to look for the positive things and create a positive Tetris effect resulting in happiness, gratitude and optimism.
Principle #4: Capitalising on the Downs to Build Upward Momentum
In the face of adversity, Achor stipulates that we have three paths.
Keep circling where we are.
Go toward further negative consequences.
Go to a place where we are stronger and more capable.
An important component of this is the finding that how we choose to explain past events to ourselves has a crucial impact on our happiness.
While some naturally have an optimistic explanatory style, others do not. Fortunately, Achor has techniques to help with this.
The ABCD Technique
Adversity: This is the event we can't change.
Belief: This is our reaction to the problem. Is it temporary and local or permanent and pervasive? Can we solve the problem?
Consequence: If we believe that a problem is solvable then we maximise the chance of a positive consequence.
Disputation: This involves telling ourselves that our belief is exactly that. Just a belief. We have seen this in the noting techniques and others.
Principle 5: The Zorro Circle
The basic idea behind The Zorro Circle is that we should limit the scope of our efforts to a small area and as we gain resources, knowledge and confidence, we expand our circle of control.
Research has found that those who feel high levels of control are more satisfied with their jobs and do perform better at them.[ii]
Interestingly, psychologists found that gains in happiness and productivity have less to do with how much control we actually have but by how much control we think we have. So how do we gain control or increase our perceived level of control?
First, start with the self-awareness circle which involves identifying how you feel.
The next circle is about identifying the aspects of the situation you have control of and the ones you don't.
Once you've determined the things you can control, concentrate your efforts on the first small goal. This increases your likelihood of success. This works like a domino effect and leads to you gradually increasing your sphere of control.
Principle # 6: The 20-Second Rule
This is is about habits and how to use these to our advantage.
We often believe that willpower is the way to positive change and then tell ourselves, the reason we insert ‘bad’ thing here is because we have no willpower.
Achor explains that, often what we do is due to habits. He proposes we can use these habits to our advantage, to make real changes. Additionally, we often follow the path of least resistance and this is something we can use.
We can increase resistance for things we trying to avoid by adding 20 seconds to these tasks, we can decrease resistance for things we want to promote and decrease resistance for making good decisions by making rules in advance.
Principle #7: Social Investment
We humans are social creatures. However, when our calendars fill-up we seem to think we can get away without our social supports.
Research has found have social and emotional support helps us heal better and increases our life expectance. It also helps to reduce anxiety, increase focus and improve concentration.
Achor suggests we see if we can work in social interaction into your everyday life by:
Saying hello in the hallway,
Having face to face meetings and
Connecting with others.
Conclusion
There you go. It is a somewhat counter-intuitive way of thinking. Often, society instils in us that we need to strive to become successful and then we will be happy. We will be happy when we get that new job or that new car or that new house.
However, there is some interesting research here that suggests otherwise and some real world things we can do in our everyday lives to put this into practice.
We hope you have learned something and that you are able to take something way that helps you Design the Life you want, today.
[i] Achor, S. (2011). The happiness advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. Random House.
[ii] Sparr & Sonnetag (2008) cited in cited in Achor, S. (2011).
