Shawn Achor, a positive psychologist and speaker, in his book The Happiness Advantage talks about how we have gotten the idea of happiness, as an end result, all wrong. He explains, through studies and examples, how happiness is actually not the result but what fuels success. Our general wellbeing and positive outlook is what powers our behaviour leading us to positive outcomes like a promotion or sale or relationships.
Unlike a self help book that expands on the new thought and talks about how “thoughts become things”, Achor talks about the science of well being and describes 7 easy to follow principles. These principles help in adopting a positive outlook and dealing with challenges that come our way. The simple meaning of happiness that is used in the book is borrowed from Martin Seligman, who is considered the father of positive psychology. According to him happiness is pleasure, engagement and meaning. People who pursue all three are the happiest, followed by two and one. This is the basic definition that we will stick to when we refer to happiness in this post.
Scientifically speaking, old dogs can learn new tricks.
First thing to remember is that change is indeed possible. This was also discussed by John Medina in his book, Brain Rules. We physically change the wiring in our brain with practice. London cabbies have unusually large hippocampi because their brains overuse their spatial intelligence. They aren’t born with it, their brains physically change as they think and learn more routes and lanes around the maze that is London. With this mind, let us dive into the principles that can fuel success.
1. Happiness is an advantage
Just like fear and stress, there is an evolutionary advantage that comes with happiness. It gives us a chemical edge in problem solving, creativity and becoming more productive over the long term. To use this edge, we need to find our happiness boosters, things that improve our general wellbeing. It could be things like meditation, anticipation of something we enjoy, small acts of kindness, better and more inspiring surroundings, exercise, experiences of awe, etc. We need to be consciously trying to improve our mood and that in turn will affect our work.
2. Lever and fulcrum
Our brain is a machine and it can become more or less efficient based on certain conditions. This is what Achor calls the lever and fulcrum effect. The lever here refers to our belief in our potential power and the fulcrum is the mindset with which we generate the power to change. Simply, put if we believe we can improve ourselves, we generally end up doing so. This is the growth mindset that Carol Dweck talks about in her book. The more our mindset dictates we can succeed, the easier it gets. To practice this in life, we must focus on all the reasons we will succeed and not fail. This will prime us to succeed and propels us forward.
3. Tetris effect
Tetris effect is our brain getting used to seeing things in a certain way. This is named after a real effect gamers feel after playing for hours as the games images get imprinted in the brain (cognitive afterimage). People are affected by similar afterimages in life and continue to see the world in a certain way. Getting out of this requires us to think differently and not be set in our old ways. Seek positives whenever possible. The good thing is, we can train ourselves to gain a positive Tetris effect. We can use three simple tools happiness, gratitude and optimism. Consciously seeking happiness, gratitude and optimism rewires our brain to be constantly on the lookout for them.
4. Falling up
It is extremely easy to be disheartened by failures and with failures come the feeling of helplessness. This is learned helplessness and can become very hardwired unless we can find techniques to bounce back quickly. One way to do this is to constantly look for some positive new paths in any scenario that can get us moving in the right direction. Even a small movement in the right direction changes our mood and happiness levels and propels us further ahead.
5. Locus of control
There are generally only a few things that in our total control in any given scenario. Working on those tiny things can however, have tremendous effects on our morale and well being. We generally stop working on small things when we find them having little or no effect on the larger goal, but even in such situations, it is imperative we continue working on our small loci of control and then move outwards slowly as our control increases. Even simple changes like cleaning up our desk, reorganising the filing cabinet, making inbox rules, etc can have multiplicative effect on our mindset.
6. 20 second rule
A lot of things are common sense but they rarely lead to common action. This is because good habits are hard to form and bad ones are hard to break. As I wrote in the introduction, change is possible, but just willpower is rarely enough to do so. This point is about breaking our bad habits and adopting a positive mindset. A lot has been written about this in books like Atomic Habits and How to Change but a simple rule like making good actions 20 second easier to do and bad ones 20 seconds harder to do can also start having positive effects. For example, make it harder to binge watch TV by removing the batteries from the remote and make it easy to practice the guitar, by keeping it near the television in your living room.
7. High quality connections
Simply put, hold onto people around you to face your challenges. The connections we make with people around us don’t need to be deep but authentic to last long. Positive social interactions form the backbone on which high quality connections are made. Like our stocks, we need to reinforce our positive social capital to improve empathy and rapport. The best way to do this is to let it happen organically and support it, like dedicating public spaces for such interactions. Leaders often practice MBWA (management by walking around) to make more chance interactions and strengthen personal and professional bond.
The great thing about adopting all these principles is that almost everything we do has a ripple effect. We all have mirror neurons, that fire unknowingly leading to us copying things we see others do. This ranges from returning a stranger’s smile to flinching like we ourselves got hit in the face while watching a boxing match on TV. In that sense, what we do and say affects people around us and we have a much larger circle of influence than we care to think. The more we adopt a positive mindset and outlook, the more people around us will do so as well.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.