Big Potential Excerpt

When George Lucas originally wrote the script to the billion-dollar Star Wars franchise, the most iconic line in movie history -- “May the Force be with you” -- was not in it. Instead, the earliest versions read, “May the Force of Others be with you.” Why start a book on the science of potential with an arcane piece of movie history? Because as the children’s book author Roald Dahl writes: “the greatest secrets are hidden in the most unlikely places.” And because I believe that hidden in this tiny line edit lies both the problem undergirding our broken pursuit of potential as a society, and the secret to exponentially raising our success, well-being and happiness.

 Our society has become overly focused on the “power of one alone” versus “the power of one made stronger by others.” Of course, Hollywood glorifies individual superstars; where else are the streets literally paved with them? But when we adopt this script in our companies and schools, focusing only on individual achievement and eliminating “others” from the equation, our true power remains hidden. But what remains hidden can be revealed.

 Three years ago, as I was researching the hidden connections that underlie success and human potential , I had a breakthrough. I became a father. 

 When my son Leo came into the world, he was quite literally helpless. He couldn’t even roll over by himself. But, as he got older, he became more capable. And with each new skill he picked up, like any good positive psychology researcher would, I found myself praising him, saying, "Leo, you did that all by yourself! I’m proud of you." And after a while, Leo began parroting it back to me in a soft, but proud voice, "All by myself."

That’s when I realized: first as children, then as adults in the workplace, we are conditioned to disproportionately value things we accomplish on our own. As a father, if I stopped my praise and guidance there, my son might come to view independent achievement as the ultimate test of our mettle. But in reality, it is not. There is a whole other level.

 The cycle begins at a young age. At school, our kids are trained to study diligently and individually so they can best others on exams. If they seek help on projects from other students, they are chastised for cheating. They are given multiple hours of homework a night, forcing them to trade time with others for more time working in isolation. Over and over they are reminded that their future success in the workplace hinges on individual metrics, like their grades and standardized test scores. Statistically it doesn’t, but this approach to learning does do one thing: dramatically raise their stress levels while robbing them of social connection, sleep, attention, happiness and health. Yet, instead of questioning the system, we question those who can’t keep up with this feeding frenzy for individual achievement. By the time students finish school they are frazzled, fragile and lonely only to find that the success and happiness they had been promised did not lie at the end of that rainbow.

 Suddenly, those same people who tested so well individually suddenly struggle when they need to work with others to bring a product to market or get their team to hit a target. Meanwhile, the people to rise to the top are not those who try to do everything “all by themselves,” but rather, those who can ask others for help and rally others to grow. And parents who support a balanced, connected approach to pursuing success for their children are rewarded for their persistence, while parents who urge individual achievement at the cost of connection find themselves unprepared for their child’s burnout or loneliness.

 We spend the first 22 years of our life being judged and praised for our individual attributes and what we can achieve alone, when for the rest of our life, our success is almost entirely interconnected to that of others.  

 Over the past decade I have worked with nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies and traveled to over 50 countries to learn how people everywhere approach the concepts of success, happiness, and human potential. One thing I’ve found to be true almost everywhere is that the vast majority of companies, schools, and organizations measure and reward “high performance” in terms of individual metrics like sales numbers, resume accolades, and test scores. The problem with this approach is that it is predicated on a belief we thought science had fully confirmed: that we live in a world of “survival of the fittest.” It teaches us that success is a zero-sum game; that those with the best grades, or the most impressive resume, or the highest point score, will be the ONLY ones to prosper. The formula is simple: Be better and smarter and more creative than everyone else, then you will be successful. But this formula is inaccurate.

 Thanks to groundbreaking new research you will read about in this book, we now know that achieving our highest potential is not about survival of the fittest, it is survival of the best fit. In other words, success is not just about how creative or smart or driven you are, but how well you are able to connect with, contribute to, and benefit from the ecosystem of people around you. It isn’t just how highly rated your college or workplace is, but how well you fit in there. It isn’t just how many points you score, but how well you complement the skills of the team.  

 “We often think if we can just work harder, faster, and smarter, then we’d achieve our highest potential. But scientifically in the modern world, the biggest impediment to your success and potential is not lack of productivity, hard work, or intelligence; it is the way in which we pursue it. The pursuit of potential must not be a lonely road. The conclusion of a decade of research is clear: it’s not faster alone, it’s better together.

 By clinging to the old formula for success we are leaving enormous amounts of potential untapped. I saw this firsthand during my 12 years at Harvard as I watched students crash upon the breakers of hyper-competition, then are stranded on the shoals of self-doubt and stress. Realizing that they were no longer the only superstar, many panicked. They pushed themselves harder, sequestering themselves to go faster and harder, trying to be the brightest light shining. The result was darkness. A staggering 80% of Harvard students report going through depression at some point in their college life.

 Now that I have done this work all over the globe, I know this is not a problem reserved for Ivy League students. The average age of being diagnosed with depression in 1978 was 29. Today, the average age is 14.5. Depression rates for adults have doubled, so have hospitalizations for attempted suicide for children as young as 8 year old What could possibly have changed so much over the past decade to account for this? And more importantly, what can we do to fix it? 

 Our emphasis on individual achievement has gone into serious overdrive, driven primarily by two significant shifts. First, the rise of technology and social media allow us to broadcast individual accomplishments 24/7, constantly feeding competition while simultaneously stoking insecurity. Second, the astronomical pressure and competition in our schools and companies in pursuit of higher individual success metrics are driving longer days, less sleep, and more stress. Luckily, a better way has begun to emerge.

 This exciting new path was inspired by my initial work studying happiness. In The Happiness Advantage, I wrote how you can significantly raise your own happiness by doing things like gratitude exercises, practicing optimism, and meditating. But at some point, if you make these things only about your happiness, you reach an invisible limit where happiness can be neither sustained nor grow. The only way to lift that ceiling is to use your own happiness as a fuel to make others happier. Ultimately, I realized that while happiness is a choice, it is not just an individual choice, it is an interconnected one. This is because when you choose to act with gratitude or joy, you make joy and gratitude easier for others, who in turn give you more reasons to be grateful and joyous. 

 Armed with this discovery, I dug into the new research, and it became clear: Happiness was only the tip of the iceberg. Now, thanks to the advent of Big I could finally see the connections that had previously remained hidden. Beforehand, we could only ask questions like “how smart are you” or “how creative are you” or “how hard do you work.” But now, we can ask the bigger questions: how smart do you make others around you, how much creativity do you inspire, how much does your drive become contagious to a team or family, how resilient do you make others? And when we do, we see that our greatest successes don’t exist in isolation. As the research begins to emerge, we seem to be learning that almost every attribute of your potential - from intelligence to creativity to leadership to personality and engagement – is interconnected with others. Thus, to truly thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we need to change our pursuit of potential in the same way we need to change our pursuit of happiness—we need to stop trying to be faster alone, and start working to become stronger together.

 By creating hypercompetitive environments in which only individual achievements are celebrated, companies and schools are leaving enormous amounts of talent, productivity, and creativity on the table. Overemphasizing the individual and removing “others” from the equation places a “soft cap” on our potential, an artificial limit on what you can achieve. But the good news is that I call this a soft cap for a reason: because it can be lifted. Because when we work to help others to achieve success, we not only raise the performance of the group, we exponentially increase our own potential. This is what I describe in later in this book as a Virtuous Cycle—a positive feedback loop whereby making others better leads to more resources, energy and experiences that make you better, fueling the cycle again. Thus, making others better takes your success to the next level. Thus:

Small potential is the limited success you can achieve alone.

Big Potential is the success you can only achieve in a virtuous cycle with others.

In this book, I describe eight original research projects I have conducted with others as well as cutting-edge research from academics that unites neuroscience, psychology and network analysis to shape the new field of positive systems research. But I know you did not come to this book looking simply for a review of research, there are better books for that. Instead, you want things you can start to implement today. So I have spent the last three years crafting a practical approach to Big Potential based on this science and my work at places like NASA, the NFL and the White House, as well my conversations with highly successful people including Will Smith, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Strahan who are living the principles of Big Potential. 

 This path consists of 5 stages, what I call the 5 SEEDS of Big Potential. SURROUND yourself with a star system of positive influencers. EXPAND your power by helping others lead from every seat. ENHANCE your resources by becoming a prism of praise. DEFEND the system against negative attacks. And SUSTAIN the gains by fueling the virtuous cycle. Seeds are the perfect metaphor for this research. Because a seed cannot grow alone, without the help of the sun, soil and water. In the same way, you can grow your potential, but you can’t grow it alone. The biggest growth is achieved when you tap into the potential of those around you.

 We can no longer be content competing for the scraps of small potential, we must seek new frontiers of human potential and invite others to follow. A challenging world demands that we put “the force of others” back into our formula. And it all starts by finding the hidden connections between flashing bugs, nudity at Harvard, featherless chickens, and an awkward dance with Oprah.

Shawn Achor is a happiness speaker, author, and researcher. Find him at ShawnAchor.com.

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