Happy Happy Happy
WHY AM I BOTHERING TO WRITE ABOUT HAPPINESS?
It's said that the English are only happy when the sun's out, England's winning, they have a pint in their hand or they're enjoying a good joke. The rest of the time they find something to moan about. Given my roots, I thought it would be a good idea to understand why there's been so much buzz about happiness recently, including being one of the most talked about courses at Harvard in recent history.
WHAT'S HAPPINESS?
There are many interpretations of happiness but I like the one by Martin Seligman, the pioneer in positive psychology, who has broken it down into three components: Pleasure, Engagement and Meaning. According to Seligman, pleasure alone limits your experience of happiness. "Those who pursue all three routes lead the fullest lives."
Aristotle uses the term eudaimonia to capture the essence of happiness and this translates to a far more interesting encapsulation of happiness. Eudaimonia means 'human flourishing'. This links well with the theory that happiness is as Shawn Achor - a leading expert on the subject - states "the joy we feel striving after our potential".
What's interesting to me about this view and probably the driving philosophy behind positive psychology is that happiness is not seen by the recent subject matter experts as a momentary feeling but more an overall approach to life. As Jane McGonigal concludes in her chapter on Happiness Hacking in her book Reality is Broken "It turns out that knowing what makes us happy isn't enough. We have to act on that knowledge, and not just once, but often." Or as the self proclaimed happiness explorer Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love, "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort... You have to participate relentlessly."
All this makes sense when you consider the concept of human flourishing in relation to those elements I mentioned above about the English relationship to happiness. Those momentary moments of happiness clearly don't add up to a happy populace.
There's plenty of research out there to argue that happiness increases life expectancy and that happiness has the ability to open our minds, which results in greater achievement. In fact, it can be argued that happiness is probably the best coping mechanism for the crazy crazy world we live in today and the best antidote to the high levels of anxiety that people are experiencing. Check out these two major studies to understand the scientific claims I make above:
The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin - Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005)
Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Danner, D., Snowdon, D., & Friesen, W. (2001)
IT'S A STRATEGIC EFFORT
So let's go with this idea of an approach to life and see where it takes us.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was a key instigator in the connection between happiness and activity. In 1975 he published a groundbreaking scientific study called Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. The focus of the study was a specific kind of happiness that he called Flow: "the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning." He found in his research a lack of flow in everyday life but saw examples on where it existed in abundance in games like chess, basketball, rock climbing and partner dancing. All of these have a clear goal, well established rules for action, and the potential for increased difficulty and improvement over time. One of his key observations on where flow worked was when the pursuit was done for pure enjoyment rather than for status, money, or obligation.
Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said in 2000 "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities." This could be argued as the leading statement that solidified the Positive Psychology movement. While Maslow was really the father of the idea behind positive psychology, these two guys really took it on and have driven the dialogue around the relationship between happiness and human potential since. But many voices have joined the discussion and I'll come on to the ramifications of that shortly.
THE FORCES OF UN-HAPPY
Even with convincing research and a multitude of bona vide methods of achieving happiness, the world is less and less happy. The World Health Organization recently named depression the single most serious chronic threat to global health, beating out heart disease, asthma, and diabetes.
One problem we have is that our brain on many levels is not working in our favor. Daniel Gilbert wrote an excellent book Stumbling on Happiness that brought to our attention how our brain is developed in a unique way that enables us to imagine the future. This imagination in relation to happiness gets us in to trouble according to Gilbert "We fear that a tragedy will ruin our lives. We imagine that money, marriage, or travel will bring lasting satisfaction. For better or worse, we're making mountains out of molehills. Humans alone among animals can imagine the future and unfortunately, our imagination isn't especially accurate". What I took away from Gilbert's book is that we think too much about the future - we make predictions - without any context to how others have experienced what we're going to experience. The end result is that our predictions are woefully inaccurate: We predict that something's going to be amazing and it turns out to only be good; We predict a bad outcome that turns out not to be so bad but the damage is done by feeding our brain with epic negative events. Bottom line is if you are going to imagine what's going to happen, use other people's experience as a foundation to your prediction. Alternatively, as a multitude of self-help books will argue - be in the present.
But I also see some immediate challenges to our happiness that exist in our everyday lives.
Well in truth there are a million challenges to our happiness but taking a very unscientific approach to research, I chose to walk through Barnes & Noble yesterday.
The first reference I took was the new non-fiction section, which provided a good indication of the environment we live in. While book titles may not be a strong cultural barometer, they do tend to indicate themes. In the new non-fiction aisle there was an uncanny number of titles with the word fail or failure in the title. My initial feeling on this is that when you are surrounded by failure, it's damn hard to be happy. There's significant research out there that shows one negative person entering a team or even a large room of people can have an effect on everyone, so seeing and hearing failure as a cultural dimension right now is probably not helping us in our pursuit of happiness.
Another aspect directly related to my bookstore experience was the shocking number of books on the subject of Happiness. A search on Amazon shows close to 9,000 titles related to happiness in the Health, Mind & Body section alone and over 5,000 titles in the Religion & Spirituality section. I posted at the end of last year about how new scientific findings have shown that choice is a positive thing for people as long as the choice is limited to three items. After that, anxiety sets in. So we clearly have a problem here.
To conclude before I offer up some constructive solutions, it's hard to be happy today and like all the recent books published on the subject of the end of books, happiness is getting a lot of attention with publishers but this presents a paradox with the end goal in mind.
SOME RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GETTING TO HAPPINESS
Out of all the books I have dug in to on this subject - specifically helping to achieve happiness - Shawn Achor's seems the most constructive. Unfortunately, as stated by Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness the subject of happiness struggles to come across as anything other than corny. She goes on to say "Why do many of the most powerful happiness activities sound so . . . . . . well, hokey?" So you are going to have to bare with me on this one. I could argue to you that this corniness is driven by your cynicism but that would be cruel to immediately reveal your own level of happiness.
Achor offers up seven principles of happiness. Each is covered in much depth with numerous references to scientific studies that prove out his observations and suggestions. Rather than bore you with this and make this post a mini book, I will leave you to understand that everything recommended is scientifically supported and should you desire a more in depth dive on each principle, you can buy Achor's book.
Principle #1 The Happiness Advantage
Positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative. This principle teaches us how we can retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and performance.
The critical take away from this principle is that happiness is not just a mood - it's a work ethic. You have to work at getting your brain to experience happiness even if it's not there right in front of you.
Action steps
1. Meditate: Meditating actually leads to the growth of the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most responsible for feeling happy. Just 5 minutes of focusing on in/out breaths each day - no mind deviations or distractions during those 5 minutes - will lead to a happy brain.
2. Find something to look forward to: Endorphin levels rise just by thinking about something you are looking forward to doing. Put something in the calendar or as Sally and I do now, book your vacation way ahead of time because you can use that reference any time you need a boost of happiness.
3. Commit conscious acts of kindness: Giving to friends and strangers decreases stress and contributes to enhanced mental health. Choose a day of the week and commit to five acts of kindness on that day. It doesn't count to reflect on what you did but only works if you commit ahead of time.
4. Infuse positivity into your surroundings: Spending 20 minutes outside in good weather not only boosts positive mood but broadens thinking and improves working memory. Watching less TV is proven to aid happiness but watching less negative TV really helps.
5. Exercise: Those endorphins again but here I have to share an interesting piece of research on depression called Exercise Treatment for Major Depression, Psychosomatic Medicine, Babyak, M., Blumenthal, J., Herman, S., Khatri, P., Doraiswamy, P., Moore, K., Craighead, W., Baldewicz, T., & Krishman, K. (2000). This study started with three groups of depressed patients. One group was given anti-depressants. The second group exercised for 45 minutes three times a week and a third group did a combination of both. After three months, all three groups experienced similar improvements in happiness showing that exercise was just as helpful as anti-depressants. However, where this story gets really interesting is that 6 months later all three groups were tested for their relapse rates. Both the anti-depressant and the combined group had relapse levels exceeding 30% while the exercise only group showed just a 9% relapse rate. Exercise matters and it doesn't have to be everyday.
6. Spend money (but not on stuff): This reminds me of a conversation I had with P&G 18 months ago that led to a significant shift in how they talk about colds. There was also a great article in the NYTimes about a year ago that focused on a family in Miami who had switched their weekends from shopping in the mall to going out on a kayak, which the father bought on Craig's list for just over $200. The father's experiment worked with all family members concurring that life together had greatly improved away from shopping at the mall and instead just hanging out together on the kayak. Money spent on activities such as concerts, group dinners out, even a kayak that led to family outings at the weekend have proven to bring more pleasure than purchases on things like shoes, televisions or expensive watches.
There's also another aspect to this which is "Prosocial Spending", where you spend money on other people. Spending on others makes you happier than spending on yourself. Just request my address, send me a gift and see how well it works.
7. Exercise a signature strength: There's a great and robust survey which has been developed by a team of psychologists, which you can do for free at www.viasurvey.org This will ultimately tell you after answering 240 questions, what your top 5 signature strengths are. Exercising your signature strengths will make you happier. My top one is Curiosity and Interest in the World, so I can admit here and now that the driving force behind my blog is to ask questions, find answers and then the sharing of those answers is the discipline (exercise) to make me fulfill one of my signature strengths. So in effect you are helping to make me happy. Find your signature strengths and start exercising them.
Principle #2 The Fulcrum and the Lever
How we experience the world, and our ability to succeed within it, constantly changes based on our mindset. This principle teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (lever) to be more fulfilled and successful.
Take the example of two janitors in a school. One sees his job as having to clean up mess every night; the other believes that he is contributing to a cleaner and healthier environment for the students. They both undertake the same tasks but the different mindsets dictate their work satisfaction, their sense of fulfillment and ultimately how well they do their job. This is what's meant by shifting the fulcrum. If you have to go into boring meetings every time, think of shifting how you approach the meeting. learning who presents well, who articulates an argument well, etc, and the meeting starts to take on a new role in your life. You have successfully shifted your mindset to a constructive place.
Action Steps
Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier, argues that "Job Description" should be changed to "Calling Description". Think about the tasks you perform and write down the meaning that's derived from each task.
Achor offers up a good exercise here. Turn a piece of paper horizontally, and on the left hand side write down a task you have to perform at work that feels devoid of meaning. Then ask yourself: What is the purpose of this task? What will it accomplish? Draw an arrow to the right and write the answer down. If what you wrote still seems unimportant, ask yourself again: What does this result lead to? keep going until you have a sense of purpose in the task you have to perform.
Chip Conley, the innovative hotelier, talks about how he gets his hotel employees to ask the following question "What would our customers call your job title if they described it by the impact you have on their lives?" This is a brilliant question and it would be interesting to ask clients in the marketing field to look at the disciplines of an advertising agency through this lens and vice versa.
The bottom line on this principle is that we know you can shift your prospects by believing in yourself and this often requires a shift in mindset to get there. You obviously have to be aware of the fact that your capabilities may not stretch as far as your beliefs - like putting on a superman cape doesn't mean you'll fly - but building your mindset around the belief that you can stretch beyond where your mind believes you should stop today is a good idea.
Achor captures it well when he challenges us to stop thinking of the world as fixed when reality is, in truth, relative.
Principle #3 The Tetris Effect
When our brains get stuck in a pattern that focuses on stress, negativity, and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. This principle trains the brain to spot patterns of possibility.
The Tetris reference is made because people who play Tetris for hours start to play it in what they see in the real world - seeing if buildings can be joined together. The point being that the brain can be trained to behave in new ways, so why not train it to be positive?
Often our tasks at work involve being rewarded for noticing the problems that need solving, the stresses that need managing, and the injustices that need righting, so our brains our currently trained towards negativity.
Action Steps
So now to retraining. Write down everyday, three good things that happened that day. That's it. That's all you have to do but consistency is the key so make it a ritual everyday. Put the pen and paper or simplenote app in your face everyday at a certain time and run with it. Research has proven this to be incredibly powerful and long lasting, even if after a month or so you drop off the habit.
To conclude on this principle, when our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. With the task of writing down three good things that happen to you everyday, you become a hunter of positivity. The more you pick up on positive things, the better you'll feel = happy. The more we see positivity, the more grateful we become and finally, on optimism, the more you pick up on positivity, the more you will expect this trend to continue, and so the more optimistic you'll be.
Principle #4 Falling Up
In the midst of defeat, stress and crisis, our brains map different paths to help us cope. This principle is about leading us up out of failure or suffering.
On every map after crisis or adversity, there are three mental paths. One that keeps circling around where you currently are (i.e. the negative event creates no change; you end where you start). Another mental path leads you toward further negative consequences (i.e., you are far worse off after the negative event; this path is why you are afraid of conflict and challenge). And one, which we can call the third path, that leads us from failure or setback to a place where we are even stronger and more capable than before the fall. This is covered in my recent post on failure.
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, captures the context of the third path well "We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our setbacks, our history, our mistakes, or even staggering defeats along the way. We are freed by our choices." Or Tal Ben-Shahar's quote, which is brilliantly simple "Things don't necessarily happen for the best, but some people are able to make the best out of things that happen."
Action Steps
1. Change your counterfact: A counterfact is an alternative scenario our brains create to help us evaluate and make sense of what happened. Here's a scenario that you are asked to react to. You're in a bank that's being robbed and the robber fires one shot and you get hit in the arm. What do you think after the event? Do you question 'why did I get shot rather than anyone else in the bank?' Or do you think yourself lucky that you were only hit in the arm? Or even more beautiful a response would be 'thank goodness I was the only one who got shot and it was only in the arm'? Okay, that last option maybe pushing it a little too far but what's important here is that your mind is being asked to invent a counterfact. Your mind can choose two paths - towards the negative or towards the positive.
There's more to this than simply an outlook. Research has shown that by choosing the positive counterfact, we are set up for a whole host of benefits to motivation and performance while choosing a counterfact that makes us more fearful of the adversity actually makes it loom larger than it really is.
Looking at future scenarios, imagine how they will play out with a focus on the positive and while in a situation or having just been in a situation, try to assess it from the positive perspective.
2. Change your explanatory style: Explaining a past event using a pessimistic style, i.e., it's really bad, and it's never going to change versus an optimistic style, i.e., It's not that bad, and it will get better, makes a huge difference in how the deliverer and the recipient of the message will behave. The former sinks us in to helplessness and basically stops us trying while the latter spurs us on to higher performance.
3. Learn your ABCDs: The ABCDs - Adversity, Belief, Consequences and Disputation - offer a method of optimistic explanatory style.
Adversity is the event we cannot change; it is what it is. Belief is our reaction to the event; why we thought it happened and what we think it means for the future. Consequence is a reading of our perspective of the outcome. If the reading is optimistic this means we are in a good place; while if the reading is pessimistic, it means we have one further filter to apply - Disputation. This is where we remind ourselves that our belief is simply that a belief, not fact. We then challenge - even pretending this challenge is coming from someone else in our head, so it's like we are arguing with someone else. This process helps us evaluate the reality of the situation and helps us move the result to a more optimistic place or if the adversity is truly bad, it helps us decatastrophize - give it time to get a sense of the true proportions of the situation.
Principle #5 The Zorro Circle
When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational brains can get hijacked by emotions. This principle teaches us how to regain control by focusing first on small, manageable goals, then gradually expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones.
Fighting within a small circle - Don Diego tells his protege "This circle will be your world. Your whole life. Until I tell you otherwise, there is nothing outside of it." Zorro was simply Alejandro until he mastered the first circle. After that the circle got wider and the achievements greater.
One of the biggest drivers of success is the belief that our behavior matters; that we have control over our future. But as workloads mount and we get overwhelmed, feelings of control are often the first things to go; especially when we tackle too many things at once. By concentrating our efforts on small manageable goals - a la Zorro - we regain the feeling of control, which is crucial to performance and ultimately happiness. As Achor brilliantly captures "By first limiting the scope of our efforts, then watching those efforts have the intended effect, we accumulate the resources, knowledge, and confidence to expand the circle, gradually conquering a larger and larger area."
Action Steps
Write down all the stresses, daily challenges and goals then separate them into two categories: things that you have control over and things you don't. You then focus on those things you can control and work to make those manageable assignments. Once you start to achieve these, you expand your reach and eventually solve much more, resulting in you feeling a greater sense of control and confidence.
In this principle Achor offers some interesting insights on how control can be believed rather than real and what psychologists call the 'Internal locus of control' Vs external - those who believe their actions have a direct effect on their outcomes versus those who believe everything that happens to them is controlled by external forces. He also talks about the reactions to situations and the emotional system versus the rational cognitive system. Put simply, the older part of your brain is driven to react rather than think - fight or flight - and the newer part of the brain is more of a thinker, so guides you to think and then react. Stress results in our brains falling back to the older part as if we are back in the cave and under attack by some vicious animal. All very interesting stuff but way too much to cover here.
Principle #6 The 20-Second Rule
Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because our willpower is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making small energy adjustments, we can reroute the path of least resistance.
I love this principle if for no other reason than it's just so simple but brilliant in its effect.
Here's the deal, if you make those things you want to achieve easy to engage with, you will persevere and if you make those things you want to stop doing, just a little bit more awkward, those bad habits will go away.
Action Steps
You know how difficult it is to get up early in the morning to go running but yet you give yourself so much extra thinking time between the bed and the door to reject the motivation before you even go out. Finding your running stuff. Going to another closet to get your shoes and then you've got to find your keys - not forgetting the distractive email that's come in over night. Simple solution. Wear your running clothes to bed. have your shoes by the bed in the morning with the socks and keys in the shoes and off you go - no looking at your email either. 20 seconds and you are out the door and running.
Now to how to get rid of bad habits. If watching TV is a bad habit, lose the remote. This means you have to get up to turn the TV on and then get up each time to change channels. You've suddenly made TV too much hassle to bother with. Likewise at work with email distractions. Do this next time you're in the office. Quit your email and set your computer so that it doesn't remember passwords. This way each time you go to view email, you have to open the email and put in your password. It seems counter-intuitive because it's demanding more time from you but it's only 20 seconds and it ensures you regain control over when you view your email.
Bottom line is, you put bad habits 20 seconds further away and you make good habits within 20 seconds of activation.
Principle #7 Social Investment
In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to hunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in their friends, peers, and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence - our social network.
There's a stack of research out there that shows working with people you like leads to better results. As Jim Collins said in Good to Great "The people we interviewed from good to great companies clearly loved what they did largely because they loved who they did it with." And to add to the urgency of this thought, there's a stack of research out there that shows working for someone you don't like can kill you. One report - 'A bad boss can send you to an early grave' by Bradberry, T. Philanthropy Journal (2009) - found that employees who had a difficult relationship with their boss were 30 percent more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease.
So we know relationships with family and friends are important and beneficial but what I'll focus on here is how to get the best out of relationships at a professional level.
One quote to feed your mind before offering up ideas is from Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading psychologist of play, who said
The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression.
Action Steps
Invest in new relationships but also reinvest in current relationships. Social support networks grow stronger the longer they are held.
When walking the corridors, greet colleagues and remember to look in their eyes - looking into their eyes actually sends a signal to the brain that triggers empathy and rapport.
Ask interested questions, schedule face-to-face meetings, and initiate conversations that aren't always task orientated.
Supporting people during good times plays a critical role in a relationship. Sharing upbeat news with someone helps multiply the benefits of the positive event as well as strengthen the bond between the two people. How you respond to the good news is key to gaining the benefits. Shelly Gable, a leading psychologist at the University of California, argues that there are four types of responses we can give to someone's good news, and importantly, only one of them contributed positively to the relationship. The winning response is both active and constructive; it offers enthusiastic support, as well as specific comments and follow-up questions. ("That's wonderful! I'm glad your boss noticed how hard you've been working. When does your promotion go into effect?") Interestingly, her research shows passive responses to good news ("That's nice.") can be just as harmful to the relationship as blatantly negative ones ("You got the promotion? I'm surprised they didn't give to Sally, she seems more suited to the job.") The most destructive though is ignoring the news entirely ("Have you seen my keys?").
A leader's responsibility is significant. When a new employee joins the company, the leader should take time to introduce them to everyone. Watching where people congregate to chat, a leader should make the space more comfortable for people to hang like adding couches and coffee machines. Introducing two employees to each other who don't know each other is an important opportunity to build social capital in the company. Interestingly coercing employees into awkward icebreakers or forced bonding activities, like making everyone at a meeting share something about their private lives, only breeds disconnection and mistrust. Don't do it.
To conclude on the social question, genuine acts of encouragement and appreciation in person, via email or the phone will make a difference to you and the recipient, so get going.
TO CONCLUDE
First of all, be thankful that I didn't cover off such interesting mind twisting stuff as Jennifer Michael Hecht's substantial argument on the benefits of thinking about death as a way of appreciating the present moment in her book The Happiness Myth.
The subject of happiness has a sense of new found love with much of the research and conclusive findings coming in to play in the last decade.
As I studied the subject there was a mix of hope and cynicism - almost embarrassment - with the corny nature of the dialogue but I'm past that now and I hope you will get the same feeling after reading this post. This may sound like a push for Scientology - I assure you it's not. Maybe I'm just being influenced by the great article on that subject in the New Yorker.
I'm aware of the absence of multiple research references in this post but that was based on keeping to an economy of words and respecting your attention span. As mentioned earlier, check out some of the sources suggested below to get a more substantive discourse on the subject.
The seven principles offered by Achor offer a constructive starting point for getting to a happier place. It's about longevity rather than single shots, so give it time and see whether it works for you.
Starting everyday with a smile and positive thoughts goes a considerable distance in achieving a state of happiness, so why not start with that and see how you progress.
I'll finish with a quote from Antoine de Saint Exupery
As for the future, your task is not to see it, but to enable it.
Please let us know your state of mind and what you do to find happiness.
Sources
1. The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
2. The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky
3. Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar
4. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
5. Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal
6. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
7. Good to Great by Jim Collins
8. The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Michael Hecht
All referenced research papers are cited next to the reference except for 'Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Gable, S. L., Gonzaga, G. C., & Strachman, A. (2006)
