This article by Eric Barker originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
We all want to be more successful.
But everything you read probably sounds like a lot of work. Isn’t there a scientifically proven method that’s a little more… fun? There is.
Shawn Achor is the bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and for years at Harvard he studied exactly that: happiness.
He gave an extremely popular (and, in my opinion, the all-time funniest) TED talk.
And his ideas even attracted the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who filmed an interview with him.
What’s so special about Shawn’s work? His research shows that success doesn’t bring happiness — happiness brings success.
He did what a lot of researchers never do: instead of scrubbing the freak outliers from the data he aggressively studied them.
He wanted to know what people with happiness superpowers do that we don’t.
Here’s Shawn:
Instead of deleting those people that are weirdos in the data what we do is we intentionally study them. We try and find out why it is that while an entire sales force has low numbers, we’re finding three or four people whose sales are skyrocketing. Or we’re looking at a low socioeconomic school in Chicago, where the academic scores are below average, there are a couple students whose grades are skyrocketing. By studying those outliers, what we’re doing is we’re gleaning information not on how to move subpar performers up toward that average point, but how to move people from average to superior.
Shawn believes (and his research shows) that you can do things to be happier. And being happier will make you more successful.
I gave Shawn a call to find out what he’s learned. Want more joy and success in your life? Here’s what Shawn had to say.
- Success Brings Happiness? No. Happiness Brings Success.
We all chase success hoping it will make us happy:
I’ll be happy once I get that promotion.
I’ll be happy once I get that raise.
I’ll be happy once I lose 15 pounds.
But the research shows that isn’t true. You achieve a goal and you’re briefly happier… but then you’re looking toward the next big thing.
What Shawn’s research showed was when you flip the formula and focus on increasing happiness, you end up increasing success.
Read the entire article, Harvard Research Reveals a Fun Way to Be More Successful
Shawn Achor is the founder of Good Think, Inc. and the author of New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage (2010) and Before Happiness (2013). In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for “Positive Psychology,” the most popular course at Harvard at the time. He holds a Masters from Harvard Divinity School and has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences. Watch his popular TEDxBloomington video on TED.com, The Happy Secret to Better Work.
