The Happiness Advantage - Principle #1 - How Happiness Gives your Brain and your Organisation the Competitive Edge
G'day all,
As we discussed last week, we are going to step through Achor's 7 Principles of Happiness from "The Happiness Advantage".
I thought, for ease of digestion, we'd look at each principle through a couple of headers. Outline, Evidence and Tools for your Toolkit.
Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage: How Happiness Gives your Brain and your Organisation the Competitive Edge
Outline
The general idea behind this principle is as simple as it sounds. Happiness gives you an edge when it comes to success.
Some of you, myself included, will jump to the most obvious question. Sure, happiness and success are correlated but that doesn't mean that happiness causes success. Wouldn't success be more likely to cause happiness?!
For those of you who have studied psychology or any other research methods topic, we know that correlation does not mean causation. I once had a lecturer who put it brilliantly. To paraphrase: Fire trucks attend to 99% of house fires. So fire trucks cause house fires!
Nonetheless, Achor stipulates that happiness does indeed cause success. Let's look at the evidence!
Evidence
Barbara Fredrickson found that positive emotions broaden the amount of possibilities we process and make us more creative, thoughtful and open to new ideas.
Research at the University of Toronto found that participants primed for positivity saw everything whilst those primed for negativity missed substantial parts of the background.
Eye tracking experiments have found that positive emotions expand our peripheral vision.
This one is my favourite.
By promoting medical students a lollipop, researchers found that they were able to perform diagnosis quicker and exhibited much more creativity.
Tools for your Toolkit
So that's easy. Just be happy and you'll be successful! Job done! haha.
For some, being positive comes more naturally. We all know that person. I had a friendwho we called "pup" partly because he was always so excited about everything. So what about the rest of us?
Meditate
We have spoken about meditation before and the benefits of it. I love to meditate each day. I feel it gives me time to myself. Time to rest my mind. Time away from the constant inputs of the world. Neuroscientists have found that monks who spend years meditation grow their left prefrontal cortex (responsible for feeling happy). If you want to know more about the benefits of meditation 10% Happier is a great read.
Find Something to Look Forward to
This one is pretty self evident. It has been found that when we visualise about something the parts of the brain that light up when we actually do it light up. i.e. The brain doesn't really know the difference between visualising and doing. I assume this is the same mechanism behind this part of Achor's recommendations.
Commit Conscious Acts of Kindness
Altruism has been studied by many psychologists and is a particular point of interest for Evolutionary Psychologists. Achor cites that research has shown that acts of altruism decrease strength and contribute to mental health.
Infuse Positivity Into You Surroundings
Photo by marekuliasz/iStock / Getty Images
We all know that there are places that just make us happy. For some it is the beach, for others the hills. While we can't spend all our days at the beach (unless you are a life guard or a millionaire, perhaps), there are other ways to infuse our surroundings with positivity. Achor recommends techniques such as placing photos of loved ones on either side of your computer monitor. Other recommendations are spending 20 minutes a day outdoors. We all know how much more positive we feel after only a few minutes appreciating the outdoors.
While infusing your environment with positivity, we can also remove negativity. I recently trailed minimising my exposure to advertising. This was actually an unintentional consequence rather than a planned experiment. I started listening to podcasts on the way to work. I stopped using social media. I started watching catch-up or video on demand services instead of free- to-air TV. The unintended consequence of this was that I wasn't exposed to much advertising at all. Aside from the billboards on the way home and conveniently placed products within TV shows and movies, I was virtually ad free. And I actually felt happier. There is a theory that we compare our own status with the status of those around us. Evolutionary psychologists propose that in hunter-gatherer societies, comparing ourselves with others served to ensure that we fit in to the group and increased our likelihood of survival. Today, it leads to fear of missing out, envy, jealousy and ultimately unhappiness.
Exercise
A recent study found that exercise had benefits across a broad cross section of health. We'll go into this more in a subsequent blog but here are the highlights. With patients with knee arthritis it reduced their pain by 47%. In those with dementia and Alzheimer's it reduced the effects by 50%. Those with diabetes, it reduced the progression by 58%. It reduced anxiety by 48% and depression 30%-47%. It lowered the risk of death by 23%. It is also the best treatment for fatigue (Dr Mike Evans).
No wonder Achor recommends this as a way to increase your happiness advantage.
Achor outlines that research has shown that spending money of others boosts happiness. Additionally spending money on experiences rather than material objects produces more positive and longer lasting emotions.
The question I have though is, what about material objects that provide experiences. Such as a convertible or a hot tub?
Exercise a Signature Strength
This involves doing something you are good at.
Conclusion
There is a lot covered here. Essentially, happiness is good for you. I'll endeavour to look into some of these tools in greater depth in further articles. For now, why not try a couple. Small but consistent changes can make a big difference.
So how about hanging the positive photo by your computer, or reducing TV. Maybe exercise 10-20 minutes a day before work. Or 5 mins or meditation before bed or when you wake up. Small things can make a big difference and maybe even lead to more small changes.
Photo by gustavofrazao/iStock / Getty Images
