Hours ago, a friend of mine posted a thought-provoking blog post about happiness and success. In his blog post, he commented on Shawn Achor's TED video "The happy secret to better work". (As I learned today, TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, and Design.") He also notes that further explanation of Achor's video can be found in Jessica Stillman's article on Inc.com.
In his video, Achor addresses the philosophy that success leads to happiness. This philosophy is embedded in our education system and our workplace. (It is even embedded in the culturally inspiring concept of the 'American dream'.) Day in and day out, we reiterate that happiness comes from success.
As Achor notes, the flaw in this logic is that we lock our ourselves (and, in turn, our peers and others) in what becomes an endless cycle of chasing after moving targets, or worse yet, unobtainable goals. Happiness becomes perpetually out of reach. Although we are trying to continuously improve and achieve good things, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. This becomes further detrimental when we experience failure, which can discourage us from persevering in achieving goals.
Instead of focusing solely on work ethic, Achor emphasizes the need to have a positive mindset. While optimistic thinking has been around for a long time, it gets lost too easily in business and in daily life. Achor notes: "Only 25 percent of job success is based upon IQ. Seventy-five percent is about how your brain believes your behavior matters, connects to other people, and manages stress." Achor provides other statistics showing how much more productive people are when they are in positive spirits/positive mindsets/positive moods in general. He also notes about the perils of discarding outliers in data, which risks leading us to lowering our standards and pursuing mediocrity. (Writer Malcolm Gladwell further discusses success and outliers in his book, Outliers.)
Again, while Achor's video is inspiring and well-thought out, his advice is not new. Dr. David J. Schwartz discussed having a positive mindset in his classic book, The Magic of Thinking Big. Like Achor, Schwartz shows how pursuing business and life goals with an optimistic, non-limiting approach allows us to achieve big things. By thinking positively and believing in good outcomes, we better prepare ourselves to reach these outcomes and succeed.
We must fight the resistance of the "lizard brain", as Seth Godin calls it. Mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, we need to prepare ourselves each day to live, think, feel, act, do, and achieve--regardless of success or failure. Rather than surrendering to the destructive negative thinking that comes with negative circumstances and negative news, we need to prepare ourselves for productivity and success by finding ways to make us happy and continuously be happy. Achor states that simple activities such as journaling and performing random acts of kindness go a long way towards our developing happiness, good health, and eventual success.
The cliche may say that "ignorance is bliss", but that is not the case. Nor is optimism delusional. Rather, optimism is bliss. Optimism is fuel. Optimism is confidence. And, in the business world and daily life, confidence is attractive. With that said, why is optimism not always considered attractive in today's society?
In his video, Achor addresses the philosophy that success leads to happiness. This philosophy is embedded in our education system and our workplace. (It is even embedded in the culturally inspiring concept of the 'American dream'.) Day in and day out, we reiterate that happiness comes from success.
As Achor notes, the flaw in this logic is that we lock our ourselves (and, in turn, our peers and others) in what becomes an endless cycle of chasing after moving targets, or worse yet, unobtainable goals. Happiness becomes perpetually out of reach. Although we are trying to continuously improve and achieve good things, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. This becomes further detrimental when we experience failure, which can discourage us from persevering in achieving goals.
Instead of focusing solely on work ethic, Achor emphasizes the need to have a positive mindset. While optimistic thinking has been around for a long time, it gets lost too easily in business and in daily life. Achor notes: "Only 25 percent of job success is based upon IQ. Seventy-five percent is about how your brain believes your behavior matters, connects to other people, and manages stress." Achor provides other statistics showing how much more productive people are when they are in positive spirits/positive mindsets/positive moods in general. He also notes about the perils of discarding outliers in data, which risks leading us to lowering our standards and pursuing mediocrity. (Writer Malcolm Gladwell further discusses success and outliers in his book, Outliers.)
Again, while Achor's video is inspiring and well-thought out, his advice is not new. Dr. David J. Schwartz discussed having a positive mindset in his classic book, The Magic of Thinking Big. Like Achor, Schwartz shows how pursuing business and life goals with an optimistic, non-limiting approach allows us to achieve big things. By thinking positively and believing in good outcomes, we better prepare ourselves to reach these outcomes and succeed.
We must fight the resistance of the "lizard brain", as Seth Godin calls it. Mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, we need to prepare ourselves each day to live, think, feel, act, do, and achieve--regardless of success or failure. Rather than surrendering to the destructive negative thinking that comes with negative circumstances and negative news, we need to prepare ourselves for productivity and success by finding ways to make us happy and continuously be happy. Achor states that simple activities such as journaling and performing random acts of kindness go a long way towards our developing happiness, good health, and eventual success.
The cliche may say that "ignorance is bliss", but that is not the case. Nor is optimism delusional. Rather, optimism is bliss. Optimism is fuel. Optimism is confidence. And, in the business world and daily life, confidence is attractive. With that said, why is optimism not always considered attractive in today's society?