Achievement and Wellbeing

Happy People have Goals.

There is a positive correlation between achievement and wellbeing. When you achieve something however minimal, you feel good about yourself and generally feel good.

If you got people to think and talk about their achievements that they are most proud of, you will observe that they find happiness talking about these things.

This happens regardless of how low they might have felt earlier. This is because it reminds them of two things:

? That they are capable of producing the outcomes they desire. This is a sense of agency which is important for our well-being.

? That they were in control of their life, or at least one aspect of it, when they achieved whatever it was.

This raises an important question: If you can raise people’s level of happiness by having them think about their previous achievements, can you get people happy by giving them goals and projects?

The answer to this question is a resounding yes! By giving people goals and projects, you raise their levels of happiness.

The American professor of psychology, and author of The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky, says that happy people have projects.

There is a caveat to this:

? The goals and projects should not be excessive. They should be achievable to not raise anxiety in those pursuing them.

? Feedback on success or failure in achieving these goals and projects needs to be immediate.

? The goals and projects should provide small wins for those pursuing them.

Wellbeing via Goals.

Ellen Langer, another professor of psychology and author of several books including Mindfulness, ran an experiment that demonstrated the effects of this.

The experiment involved giving goals and projects to elderly people in a nursing home.

Ellen Langer might have chosen the nursing home because elderly people, being incapable of taking care of themselves fully, are taken care of by nurses.

This is done by assisting them to do even the most mundane tasks.

While this assistance is good and useful to the elderly, it may have the overall effect of making elderly people feel more helpless.

The study participants were divided into two groups. To the first group, instructions were given to take care of a potted plant in their room.

To the second group, the potted plant was placed in their room and they were not given instructions to take care of it.

All the measures of wellbeing improved for the group that was tasked with taking care of the potted plant.

The same was not observed in the second group that was not given the instructions to take care of the potted plant.

The goal of taking care of a plant meets the three conditions we had cited previously in the following ways:

? The goal is not excessive to cause anxiety in the person pursuing it.

? The feedback on how well you are taking care of the plant is immediate. The plant starts withering immediately you start failing.

? The goal also provides small wins to the person pursuing it. Every day the plant is healthy is a win for the person taking care of the plant.

Taking care of the plant by the first group gave them a sense of wellbeing because it reminded them of the things we had mentioned earlier:

It showed them that they are capable of producing the outcomes that they desire. They got to have a sense of agency.

It also showed them that they had control over some aspects of their lives.

Aristotle said that we are teleological beings. This means that we are goal-seeking in nature.

Every human's wellbeing improves when they are working towards some goal. Take away the goal-seeking drive and life loses its flavor.

Call to Action:

Organizations and individuals to approach their wellbeing through goals. These goals should be well calibrated to match people’s abilities so that they do not cause anxiety.

The goals to also be tailored in a way that performance can be measured frequently so that people can get immediate feedback on how they are doing.

The goals people pursue should give them small wins so that they get the momentum to keep going after the goals and for their wellbeing.