The Happiness Advantage
A few months ago I was flipping through Netflix and trying to figure out what to watch when I stumbled upon a TED series called “Life Hacks”. Within this series there was one video I recognized called The Happiness Advantage:Linking Positive Brains to Performance, which I had seen twice before. Feeling a bit uninspired, I clicked play in hopes of getting a boost of motivation. In this video, Shawn Achor, discusses positive psychology and what a positive shift in mindset can do. If you haven’t already seen it, I suggest you stop reading and watch it before continuing this post. The first two times I watched the video, the ideas presented really didn’t hit home for me. To be honest, I struggled with the ideas because my mind kept on saying “it would be great if this were true, but it isn’t”. Even though everything presented in the video were backed by research, I never really gave it a chance. For some reason, watching the video this time, something clicked.
One of the key points that Shawn Achor discusses in the talk is that the formula for happiness and success needs to be reversed. The way society thinks about happiness in current form is that, once someone becomes successful, they will be happy. However, he argues that this is generally broken because, for most people, there will almost always be a next goal once success is reached. This means that true happiness can never be found while in this particular mindset. Shawn Achor uses the term the “Happiness Advantage” to discuss the idea that if someone’s brain positivity is raised in the present, it will actually lead to higher performance. His research backs up the legitimacy of the “Happiness Advantage”. So by changing the process to happiness leads to success instead of the other way around, higher productivity can be reached. As I was watching, my mind started to move from “this isn’t true” to “maybe this could be real”.
My Experience
Intrigued about the concept of the “Happiness Advantage”, I took it on as a challenge in my own life. I started by switching my mindset from the future to the present. I had always had the tendency of thinking of what could be instead of keeping myself occupied with what is directly in front of me. So I took this as an opportunity to keep myself from reaching too far ahead and focusing on happiness in the present. Next, I started to become more mindful of my emotional state and energy levels. This allowed me to take steps to take care of myself before I became overwhelmed by everything going on in my life. Lastly, I forced myself to look for positives in the situations that I found myself in, even when it seemed very negative. This was important to me as it really forced me from taking on an extremely biased view on a situation.
The results were almost instantaneous. An early example of how positive thinking helped me was one day when I really didn’t want to go to the gym. I remember sitting at home and trying to convince myself not to go because I was too tired. In that moment, I forced myself to think of the positives in the situation. I started to appreciate how I actually had time to go to the gym and how I was going because I wanted to be more healthy. In the past I would’ve either not gone at all or guilted myself into going there, and then be in a bad mood all the way through. This time however, I changed my mindset into actually wanting to go to the gym. Not only did I go to the gym but I had way more energy there as well.
In the months since I started to shift into a more positive mindset, I have seen drastic differences in my life and my productivity levels. As someone who has struggled with weight my whole life, I have lost weight quicker in this time frame than ever before. Going to the gym and eating healthy became a lot easier as a result. I have also been able to keep myself a bit more level headed when heading into various situations and trust in my own decision making has grown significantly. Finally, I am a way happier person now than I have ever been, which feels absolutely amazing. What I found was that putting my happiness before my goals actually helped to make achieving my goals easier. While I still go through many ups and downs in my life, knowing that I can make a difference in how I perceive things has done wonders for me. The “Happiness Advantage” has shown up in my life in many different ways but I definitely see myself as a better person now because of it.
