Why we've got the happiness equation all wrong

I’m a real sucker for a good personal development or business book. I have stacks of them by my bedside, and it’s taken me a while to get to the one I’m currently devouring, but wow what a game changer this is.

Author Shawn Achor wrote ’The Happiness Advantage’ after spending over a decade researching and teaching at Harvard University, and conducting one of the largest ever studies into happiness and human potential.

He discovered that most of us have been taught from a young age that if we work hard, then we will be successful, and then we will be happy. 

We hear this message at home, at school, at work and from society in general. Which explains why we chase those high grades, and promotions, and pay rises, and the bigger house or the bigger car, thinking this will eventually lead to happiness.

And yet in the course of his research, he was finding amongst his own students at Harvard that many of them were distinctly unhappy.

Achievement in itself didn’t seem to hold the key.

During his decade long hunt for the keys to happiness, he came across new research from the growing areas of positive psychology and neuroscience which showed that we have had this backwards all along:

In fact, happiness leads to success.

Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement, and a more positive brain is more motivated, more resilient, more creative and more productive.

So where do you begin if you want to feel happier? Well a great place to start is to understand our capacity for change. Many of think we are just born a certain way:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“I’m just not a very positive person”
“I’m good at certain things but not others, it’s the way I am”

But in fact, new research into ‘neuroplasticity’ shows that our brains can adapt and grow throughout our lives. We aren’t stuck with a certain skill set and personality that we thought we were born with. We can in fact continually learn new skills through practice. 
 
So it’s perfectly possible to learn to be happier!

I’ll be sharing one of my favourite happiness tips later this week which you can apply in your daily life, and I’d love to hear how you get on! Feel free to comment and let me know.

So here’s to all of us turning that happiness equation on its head, and seeing how more happiness = more success!

Has it been a slow start to your year?

Hello and Happy New Year.

How have you been?

I'm starting 2023 in bed. I was struck down with some kind of bronchitis bug pre-Christmas and it's been very slow to shift 🤧

I also think it might be burnout, hence the book on my lap (for advice) and the wellness journal (for reflection)...

Sometimes your body just goes on strike, and forces you to listen whether you like it or not.

So I haven't started the new year raring to go with lots of new plans and goals. I've just had to let go, and slow down, and reflect on why I got so run down (answer - probably trying to do ALL OF THE THINGS).

But there is plenty of time to get up to full speed. Or not. Maybe 2023 will be the year of slowing down a bit...

Are you feeling this way too? If so, I sympathise. In fact, we are perfectly in sync with the seasons right now, because nature too is in hibernation mode. So why shouldn't we follow suit?

Here's to starting the year at your own pace and no-one else's.

Why failure could be the key to your career success

We are often told from a young age that failure should be avoided. At school, top grades are rewarded and low grades are penalised.

When we fail at something, it can feel embarrassing, painful, and can even damage our sense of self-confidence.

But what if I were to tell you that in fact, you can re-frame how you see failure and use it to make you more resilient and propel you towards success?

If you start to look around you, you can find many examples of well known figures who have embraced failure and pushed on through to achieve great things:

• JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it

• Michael Jordan was actually cut from his basketball team in high school

• Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the lightbulb before eventually finding a model which worked

• Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a news anchor and told she "wasn't fit for television"

What we can learn from these examples is that you can change the way you see failure. Or even what you call it. Why not call it an opportunity? An opportunity to refresh, to refocus and become more resilient.

This alternative way of seeing failure is also called having a 'growth mindset'.

When you operate with a growth mindset, you don't allow yourself to be held back by your perceived limitations and abilities (also called having a 'fixed mindset'). Instead, you allow yourself to see failure as an opportunity for growth and development.

It's a much more empowering and confidence-building perspective to go through life with.

So if you do one new thing this week, allow yourself to do it badly! Be brave and have a go at something you've never tried before, and be ready to fail, learn and grow your resilience muscles. You'll soon start to see that this process is all part of your path to career success.