Do you love your day-to-day life, or are you just getting by? The correlation between happiness and success is more closely related than you might think.
We’ve been taught that if we work hard, we’ll be successful, and when we’re successful we’ll be happy. The prevailing belief is that if you could just land that dream job with a great salary, you’d be happy.
Recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually flawed: happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
Your Brain Holds the Key!
When we are positive and happy, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive. This discovery has been supported by research in psychology and neuroscience.
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard University — to share strategies for how to fix this flawed formula. Using case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains with a more positive mindset, which ultimately helps us to be more successful at work.
Achor has isolated seven practical principles that have been tried and tested throughout the world — in classrooms and boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe. In a world that pushes us to take on increased workloads, stress, and negativity, the principles outlined in The Happiness Advantage foster a happier and more positive mindset, while improving performance and maximizing potential. This leads to achieving extraordinary things in our work and everyday lives.
In addition to happiness, there’s another factor that is highly predictive of success. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, believes that grit is an even better predictor of success than talent, SAT scores, or IQ tests. What is grit? It includes character traits such as resilience, perseverance, passion, a sense of purpose, and a willingness to engage in deliberate practice — all important character traits that enable our brains to foster greater happiness and success in life.
Duckworth’s six-minute TED talk on the subject of grit has been watched by more than 14 million people and translated into 49 languages. She is the CEO of the Character Lab, where she is advancing the science and practice of character development. She and her team have been working to translate scientific research into daily classroom practices and activities, which are designed to teach students character-building strategies that will play a key role in their future success.
If you are not yet convinced about the correlation between heart happiness and how that affects the brain and your ultimate success, Learning Strategies offers some interesting findings in their new program, Heart/Brain Sync for Success.
When the heart and brain are in sync, your intelligence expands and you gain access to more intuitive downloads and meaningful insights. Adding “heart” instantly shifts your brain into a state of balance that functions at peak efficiency, making it possible to profoundly change the nature of an exchange, a creative venture, a decision, your mental clarity, your physical power, your willpower, and your drive to achieve. Many studied on meditation have confirmed the correlation between heart and brain function and improved health and performance.
Do What You Love
This is the time of year when students go back to school and recent graduates begin new jobs. Many students graduating from colleges, universities and trade schools today are so hyper-focused on successfully landing a good-paying job that they often neglect to focus attention on what they’re most passionate about. In their struggle to find something that pays the bills, they completely lose sight of their dreams and goals, and they end up getting stuck doing something they don’t enjoy. Eventually, they dread the daily grind of getting up and going to work.
“The best advice I could give any graduate is to spend your time working on whatever you are passionate about in life. If your degree was focused upon one particular area, don’t let that stop you moving in another direction. If college hasn’t worked out for you, don’t let that put you off.”
–Richard Branson, Founder and chairman of Virgin Group
I’m mystified by how many people live for the weekends because they dislike their work so much. If you can relate to this, imagine how it would feel to have the kind of life work that feeds your soul…work you are so passionate about doing that you wake up before your alarm goes off each morning and you look forward to the day ahead.
If you’re working a job you dislike, engage your brain to think about what you’d rather be doing and begin taking steps that will move you toward other work options that excite you. Life is too precious to spend doing something you have no passion for. Enjoying your work makes a huge difference in your outlook on life.
Freedom to Choose
We forfeit our freedom of choice by allowing our brains to get into a “victim” kind of thought process. I frequently hear my clients say, “I have to…” or “I should…” And when I hear those phrases I ask, “Do you have to or do you choose to?” There are very few things in life that we have to do. Yet some of us forfeit our choice to the point of seeing our options in life as limited. In other words, this self-defeating language creates a victim mentality.
I know about this from personal experience. Straight out of college, I landed a job in a field I’d never thought about before, and I started working full-time so I could support myself and my husband (he was in medical school) and begin paying off my college loans. I ended up remaining in that profession for 13 years, even though I did not find it fulfilling. Not only was I unhappy, but self-care and family time suffered, too. The more time I invested in that career path, the less at-choice I felt.
I was so out of touch with what could bring me happiness, that I had difficulty thinking of any other career possibilities outside of what I’d been doing. Fear held me back, until one day the pain of not making a change outweighed the fear of the unknown.
In the midst of experiencing all of this pain, I received the gift of unemployment. Getting laid off from my job forced me to think about my choices. I felt like a baby bird being pushed out of the nest …and I learned to fly! Within a couple of years, I followed my passions and started my own business. That was in 1995, and I’ve never looked back with a single regret.
Even when someone dislikes their job, there’s comfort in sticking with what’s known. It feels like a “safe” choice. Unfortunately, the desire to feel “safe” sometimes paralyzes one’s ability to exercise free will. From childhood on, most of us have been programmed to play it safe, and this often affects the career choices we make as adults.
Margie Warrell, author of Stop Playing Safe: Rethink Risk, Unlock the Power of Courage, Achieve Outstanding Success, asks the question: “What could you achieve if you were more courageous?”
In an increasingly uncertain, competitive and accelerated world, we are hard-wired to avoid risk. At the same time, we’re learning that the true key to success is courage — the courage to speak up and challenge the status quo, the courage to take risks, and the courage to trust in yourself more deeply and seize the opportunities all around you.
If you’d like a fresh perspective– someone to help you rethink the risks you’re willing to take and courageously step outside of your comfort zone to explore new possibilities — let’s schedule a no-cost, no-pressure Discovery Call today.
In next week’s blog, we’ll continue to explore the correlation between happiness and success, and I’ll share a few tips to help you manage your emotions and keep your focus on the things that will bring you greater happiness and joy.
Additional Resources:
- Blog: The Power of Passion in Your Work
- Blog: Finding Your Purpose
- Blog: Power in Your Purpose
- Blog: The Special “Secret Sauce” to Success
- Guide: Cultivating Happiness: Living Life on Your Terms
- Guide: Living with Purpose
