Still not ready to jump? Try this interim approach from one of my favourite authors
Happiness Advantage or “Love The One You’re With”
Another myth that we often believe to be true: if you work hard, you will become successful and once you are successful, you’ll be happy. The only problem is that this formula is broken.
“The Happiness Advantage asks us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. It is about learning how to cultivate the mindset and behaviors that have been empirically proven to fuel greater success and fulfilment. It is a work ethic”.
The excellent reference by Shawn Achor builds an argument backed by ground-breaking research, that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement.
From the perspective of career transition is it applicable in a number of ways:
When you find yourself in a job or role that is not fulfilling, you need more than an escape plan. The ‘happiness advantage’ assists you to get valuable experience while still in these roles. Rather than grin and bear it, it’s about using these roles as a stepping stone to your next one. It builds on the work of Martin Seligman and helps us to consider our current roles in a new light.
It’s also a safety net. The financial risks of transitioning can be overwhelming and, for some, can result in inaction. It can also be a ready made network, a place to discuss and test ideas in an informal way.
The following seven principles help focus on values that can overcome obstacles, reverse bad habits and make the most of opportunities to reach our fullest potential, and are directly applicable to how we can transition across careers.
The Seven Principles
Shawn Achor has developed seven principles that are specific, actionable and proven patterns that predict success and achievement:
1. The Happiness Advantage
Because positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative, this principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and performance.
2. The Fulcrum and the Lever
How we experience the world, and our ability to succeed within it, constantly changes based on our mindset. This principle teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (our fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (the lever) to be more fulfilled and successful.
3. The Tetris Effect
When our brains get stuck in a pattern that focuses on stress, negativity and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. The principle teaches us to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see and seize opportunity wherever we look.
4. Falling Up
In the midst of defeat, stress and crisis, our brains map different paths to help us cope. This principle is about finding the mental path that not only leads us up out of failure or suffering, but teaches us to be happier and more successful because of it.
5. The Zorro Circle
When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational brains can get hijacked by motions. This principle teaches us how to regain control by focusing first on small, manageable goals, and then gradually expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones.
6. The 20 Second Rule
Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because our willpower is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making small energy adjustments, we can re-route the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones.
7. Social Investment
In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to bunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in their friends, peers and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence – our social support network.
The Science of Happiness
So what is happiness? Shawn Achor says talk to a scientist and they’ll refer to it as ‘subjective well-being’, essentially the experience of positive emotions combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose.
So it makes sense if we apply this to happiness at work. As the data shows, happy workers have higher levels of productivity and overall perform better in leadership roles, taking less sick days and basically enjoying higher job security.
For those skeptics out there who are thinking ‘correlation is not causation’, just hold on for a few paragraphs.
Thanks to strides in positive psychology research, authors say conclusively that “study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving … In short, based on the wealth of data they compiled, they found that happiness causes success and achievement, not the opposite”.
Further, Shawn Achor believes happiness can improve our physical health, which in turn assists us to work faster and longer and hopefully this translates to being more productive. Research shows that unhappy employees take more sick days, staying home on average 1.25 days more per month or an extra 15 sick days per year.
Recent research has also indicated that happiness gives us a chemical edge. Positive emotions flood our brains with the feel good chemicals dopamine and serotonins. It also assists with our learning by organising new information and keeping the information accessible longer, enabling us to retrieve it later on.
This clearly translates into the workplace. Is this why Yahoo has an in-house masseur and Google engineers are encouraged to bring their dogs to work? Are these PR gimmicks or have these smart companies determined that cultivating this type of working environment helps give small bursts of worker happiness, resulting in creativity and innovation and, of course, a better bottom line?
Tips to capitalize on the happiness advantage
Shawn Achor has outlined a number of ways we can improve our mood and raise our happiness levels at work each day.
Lift your spirits by
Check out Shaun Achor on Ted talks at www.ted.com
Reference
Shawn Achor The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles that Fuel Success and Performance at Work, Virgin books 2010
Happiness Advantage or “Love The One You’re With”
Another myth that we often believe to be true: if you work hard, you will become successful and once you are successful, you’ll be happy. The only problem is that this formula is broken.
“The Happiness Advantage asks us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. It is about learning how to cultivate the mindset and behaviors that have been empirically proven to fuel greater success and fulfilment. It is a work ethic”.
The excellent reference by Shawn Achor builds an argument backed by ground-breaking research, that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement.
From the perspective of career transition is it applicable in a number of ways:
When you find yourself in a job or role that is not fulfilling, you need more than an escape plan. The ‘happiness advantage’ assists you to get valuable experience while still in these roles. Rather than grin and bear it, it’s about using these roles as a stepping stone to your next one. It builds on the work of Martin Seligman and helps us to consider our current roles in a new light.
It’s also a safety net. The financial risks of transitioning can be overwhelming and, for some, can result in inaction. It can also be a ready made network, a place to discuss and test ideas in an informal way.
The following seven principles help focus on values that can overcome obstacles, reverse bad habits and make the most of opportunities to reach our fullest potential, and are directly applicable to how we can transition across careers.
The Seven Principles
Shawn Achor has developed seven principles that are specific, actionable and proven patterns that predict success and achievement:
1. The Happiness Advantage
Because positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative, this principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and performance.
2. The Fulcrum and the Lever
How we experience the world, and our ability to succeed within it, constantly changes based on our mindset. This principle teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (our fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (the lever) to be more fulfilled and successful.
3. The Tetris Effect
When our brains get stuck in a pattern that focuses on stress, negativity and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. The principle teaches us to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see and seize opportunity wherever we look.
4. Falling Up
In the midst of defeat, stress and crisis, our brains map different paths to help us cope. This principle is about finding the mental path that not only leads us up out of failure or suffering, but teaches us to be happier and more successful because of it.
5. The Zorro Circle
When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational brains can get hijacked by motions. This principle teaches us how to regain control by focusing first on small, manageable goals, and then gradually expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones.
6. The 20 Second Rule
Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because our willpower is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making small energy adjustments, we can re-route the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones.
7. Social Investment
In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to bunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in their friends, peers and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence – our social support network.
The Science of Happiness
So what is happiness? Shawn Achor says talk to a scientist and they’ll refer to it as ‘subjective well-being’, essentially the experience of positive emotions combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose.
So it makes sense if we apply this to happiness at work. As the data shows, happy workers have higher levels of productivity and overall perform better in leadership roles, taking less sick days and basically enjoying higher job security.
For those skeptics out there who are thinking ‘correlation is not causation’, just hold on for a few paragraphs.
Thanks to strides in positive psychology research, authors say conclusively that “study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving … In short, based on the wealth of data they compiled, they found that happiness causes success and achievement, not the opposite”.
Further, Shawn Achor believes happiness can improve our physical health, which in turn assists us to work faster and longer and hopefully this translates to being more productive. Research shows that unhappy employees take more sick days, staying home on average 1.25 days more per month or an extra 15 sick days per year.
Recent research has also indicated that happiness gives us a chemical edge. Positive emotions flood our brains with the feel good chemicals dopamine and serotonins. It also assists with our learning by organising new information and keeping the information accessible longer, enabling us to retrieve it later on.
This clearly translates into the workplace. Is this why Yahoo has an in-house masseur and Google engineers are encouraged to bring their dogs to work? Are these PR gimmicks or have these smart companies determined that cultivating this type of working environment helps give small bursts of worker happiness, resulting in creativity and innovation and, of course, a better bottom line?
Tips to capitalize on the happiness advantage
Shawn Achor has outlined a number of ways we can improve our mood and raise our happiness levels at work each day.
Lift your spirits by
- Meditating – Monks who spend years meditating actually grow their left prefrontal cortex, the part most responsible for feeling happy.
- Finding something to look forward to – just thinking about your favorite stuff and anticipating future rewards can increase your endorphin levels.
- Finding something to look forward to – just thinking about your favorite stuff and anticipating future rewards can increase your endorphin levels.
- Infusing positivity into your surroundings - think about surrounding your office with things that you know if you glance at them will give you a positive emotional hit. Or get 20 minutes outside in good weather to boost a mood. Similarly decrease the negative cues, watch less TV and avoid the news if this causes you distress.
- Exercising - you did not hear it here first! Endorphins are released with any form of exercise, so just do it!
- Spending money – on other people not on stuff. Really think about your spending habits, do you spend money on experiences with other people or just more stuff
- Using your strengths – this book has explored at length the value of reconnecting with your natural or acquired strengths. Now it’s time to share them, giving you a burst of positivity.
Check out Shaun Achor on Ted talks at www.ted.com
Reference
Shawn Achor The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles that Fuel Success and Performance at Work, Virgin books 2010
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