(TEDx) Exploring Happiness Secrets for Success

In the northern hemisphere we are in the middle of the summer holiday month.

You may be relaxing and enjoying some time off, or maybe like me still working, but either way it has been glorious summer weather and I hope you have been finding time to relax and enjoy the sunshine.

For me summer is one of the busiest times of the year as I give sessions at summer events, including the amazing month-long WOW event at Humaniversity in Holland, and the lovely relaxed and fun Conscious Sexuality Festivals at Osho Leela, where I am this week. With all this going on, and it being the holiday season, I thought I would do something different this week, and am sending you a video by someone else.

Its a TEDx talk by Shawn Achor called ‘The Happy Secret to Better Work‘.

It’s funny, interesting, includes some great tips you can even try on holiday, and is about our hearts and our work. He is sharing a very different way to find secrets to work success.

I don’t know about you, but for me when I take a holiday break the space and slow time it gives me inspires me to review my life and work in a relaxed and easy way, to explore secrets to enjoy life and success with more happiness. Which can lead to me making change so things I’m doing in my work and life feel even more aligned with my heart.

This is he is exploring some ideas here that could inspire you to find an easier path to success when you return to work.

I really enjoyed it, hope you do too…

Of course, feel free to Share this.

And do let me know what you think of his tips at the end of the talk.

With love,

Cassandra Punita

P.S. The approach to finding success in our work that Shawn is suggesting here is the opposite from how most of society is taught to approach life. As Shawn says – ‘by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but a real revolution.’

If you want to put Shawn’s tips into action, below is the transcript for the last part of his talk.

Do still watch the rest as it’s very funny! ….And he explains why he came to be recommending this approach.

“…The absence of disease is not health. Here’s how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. In the last three years, I’ve traveled to 45 countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. And I found that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting and managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. Every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better one, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change it. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon, as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.

But our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, we’ve found that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed.

Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently. We need to be able to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We’ve found there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We’ve done these things in research now in every company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but a real revolution.”