Success Brings Happiness. No. It's the Opposite.

If you have ever thought to yourself…

When I get that promotion, I am going to be so happy.

When I lose the last 5 kilos, it’s going to be so good.

When I get x amount of bank balance, it’s going to be amazing.

You are falling into the trap of success preceding happiness.

It’s an age-old trap.The one carefully constructed by our society and nurtured by media and our economy to achieve more in order to get happier.

Unless…

You have watched this incredible research-based TED talk by Shawn Achor. If not, no worries! Because am sharing some highlights and my thoughts on this which will hopefully flip what you(and me) have been subconsciously been taught about success & happiness.

In this issue: Highlights of Shawn’s Research | Happiness Set-Point | Activation Energy Hack for Building Habits

We want to be Successful AND Happy. Right?

Whether it’s work or personal goals, we know the value of hard work, discipline, grit. focus and never quitting unless we achieve our goals. This process though - can it be more fun? Should it be more fun?

Shawn wrote The Happiness Advantage and for years studied ‘happiness’ & ‘success’ at Harvard. His research was so enlightening that Oprah Winfrey, who filmed an interview with him. And the crux of this milestone research was:

We succeed because we are happy.

His research shows that success doesn’t bring happiness — happiness brings success.

Your Happiness Set-Point

If goal achievement would bring happiness, ideally our happiness should be ever-increasing. Right?

But is it really so?

Yes, achieving goals or traditional success can indeed make us happier, but fleetingly. Once I achieve a goal I am happy for a day or two, maybe a week or two… and then it’s back to initial levels - our default level/ range of happiness or our ‘happiness set-point’. Have you had that experience?

It’s the same reason that so many lottery winners go broke. They don’t have the internal structures existing to support that level of cash. Both psychologically and w.r.t actual systems to manage it.

That’s why some people (even kids) are referred to others by ‘Oh, he looks always happy’ regardless of what’s going on with them. They just have a higher happiness set-point.

According to Shawn’s research then, the goal should be to increase our Happiness Set-Point. And leverage that to blast through our goals.

“If we can get somebody to raise their levels of optimism or deepen their social connection or raise happiness, turns out every single business and educational outcome we know how to test for improves dramatically. ”

MET Life started hiring people based on optimism, not how they performed in aptitude tests. The optimistic group sold 19% more in year 1 and 57% in year 2!

Shawn explains that intelligence and technical skills only predict 25% of success:

“75% of long term job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, which is normally how we hire, educate and train, but it’s predicted by optimism (which is the belief that your behaviour matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive stress.”

So, how do we increase happiness? Specifically, the Happiness Set Point?

Increasing Your Happiness Set-Point

With happiness, it's the little things.

1. See Problems as Challenges (Growth Mindset)

Shawn did a study of bankers right after the huge banking crisis, and understandably, most were very stressed out. But, a few were happy and resilient. What did those guys have in common? They didn’t see problems as threats; they saw them as challenges to overcome.

Were they ‘wired’ differently?

No, they had a different more positive way to look at that challenges. The other bankers were trained about re-framing the crisis, and guess what happened…

And we watched those groups of people over the next three to six weeks, and what we found was if we could move people to view stress as enhancing, a challenge instead of as a threat, we saw a 23% drop in their stress-related symptoms. It produced a significant increase not only in levels of happiness, but a dramatic improvement in their levels of engagement at work as well.

2. Play! (Social Wellbeing)

All work and no play…makes Jack a dull boy. You must have heard this popular saying for kids. Turns out that it applies to adults too.

“The people who survive stress the best are the ones who actually increase their social investments in the middle of stress, which is the opposite of what most of us do. Turns out that social connection is the greatest predictor of happiness we have when I run them in my studies. When we run social support metrics, they trump everything else we do, every time.”

How do you do that? Give more than receive. If there was a trump card for improving your social wellbeing, it’s this. Guaranteed, you will see your social capital increase :)

3. Be Grateful (Emotional Wellbeing)

Expressing gratitude is a gamechanger for happiness.

In our masterclass with Assem Puri earlier, he made all the participants actually send a thank you text to one of their colleagues. Most people who received that email/ text were surprised & elated, of course. But those of you who attended that session would recall that people who ‘sent’ that message, were even more energized! The magic of gratitude in action.

Send 1 thank you note/ do a kind gesture every day for your colleagues, for 21 days, and see your happiness quotient increase.

Bringing It All Together

You probably knew that the above is good for you. But yet, don’t do it as often as you would like.

Shawn talks about activation energy to build habits, which I really liked. He basically says that the happiness set-point can change by building better habits. Habits can trump genes.

And building better habits can be done by the 20-second rule to get the ACTIVATION ENERGY for that action.

“If you can make the positive habit three to 20 seconds easier to start, your likelihood of doing it rises dramatically. And you can do the same thing by flipping it for negative habits.

For e.g. Watching too much television? Merely take out the batteries of the remote control creating a 20-second delay and it dramatically decreases the number of television people will watch.”

Reflection & Tools You Can Use

What’s your happiness set-point? How does it compare to others in your family/ team?

Some tools which can help:

1. Gratitude & Happiness Journal: Having a place to write and feel thankful makes it 20 seconds easier. Am a big fan of writing over typing. Scientifically it also activates more neurons. Many other options are available. If you want to inculcate in your kids, try this beautiful kid-friendly option.

2. Live Happy App: Based on positive psychology, it prompts you to engage in a range of activities, which research has shown can boost your mood.

3. 3-2-1 newsletter by James Clear: James is the author of the popular book Atomic Habits and he sends out a short newsletter with thoughts, tips on building better habits. Check it out!

Hope you found this issue a useful reminder for improving your happiness set-point.

Happiness. Success. Strong relationships. What else do we need?!

Until next time,

Keep Thriving :)

Rashmi