The Happiness Advantage - Principle #3 - The Tetris Effect
G’day All,
We’ve done on the tetris effect before but lets look at it more closely.
It is the 3rd Principle of Achor’s Happiness Advantage
Background
Essentially, researchers found that participants who played tetris for hours a day found that they couldn’t stop seeing tetris shapes everywhere they went. Anyone who has played a marathon session of Call of Duty or Racing Games would understand the feeling of seeing the game everywhere they look for the next day.
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Evidence
Achor proposes that the same thing happens in our daily lives.
He cites accountants who spend their days doing audits and looking for negatives, develop a habit for scanning for negatives in the other aspects of their lives.
Another example are lawyers, people who are employed to find faults in arguments, are 3.6 times as likely to suffer major depression disorder.
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Toolkit
Achor proposes that if it works in the negative, it can work in the positive.
If we scan and focus on the positive, we can benefit from happiness, gratitude and optimism.
The way to do this is consciously focusing on the positives.
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Do gratitudes everyday. Every morning write down three good things. Small things, big things, any good things. The house over your head. The job you have. Your family. The sunshine on your face. It is amazing how this creates a short term and long term benefit. Immediately, you’ll feel your mood improve. You’ll smile at people when you get to work, they’ll smile back. It will snowball it a great way. It will also train your mind to look for the positive things and create a positive tetris effect resulting in happiness, gratitude and optimism.
It sounds small, but it can makes a huge difference to the way you look at life.
