Will Success Make Me Happier?

Why everything we know about success is wrong

Most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this:

If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier.

It's the basis of most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards

Every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like.

You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change your sales target.

And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there.

And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.

But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order.

If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed.

Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise.

In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves.

Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19% faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed.

Which means we can reverse the formula.

If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of.

Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We’ve found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive.

In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We’ve done these things in research now in every single company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it.

Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters.

We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand.

And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success.

Source: Shawn Achor TED Talk and book, The Happiness Advantage