I have recently come across this book and corresponding TED talk by Shawn Achor. I am writing to share my thoughts around it. When I first heard Shawn's findings, I was able to immediately connect with his ideas and agreed with them. The core thought is about how the universe's misconception with happiness. The way we are brought up has made us believe that happiness is something we achieve at the end of success. This whole idea, according to Shawn, is flawed primarily because once we reach our goal, there is always a next one. The goalposts keep moving and thus we can never truly reach the end of it, to feel happy about it. When I applied this to my life, this explains everything. With every achievement, instead of feeling happiness I just kept moving my goal. The same is true today. I should be grateful and happy for what I was able to do while working on my next goal. But without this realization itself, that seldom is the case. Shawn further argues that if we turned this around and put happiness first, we can see improved performance in our work lives which can lead to our definition of success faster. When I think back about the best things in life that I am proud of, I remember myself in a happy state of mind. A happy state of mind can lead to clearer thinking, while we are prone to make wrong decisions under stress. That brings us to the next question though.
How do we achieve this happy state of mind?
Shawn distinguishes between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure can come from short term things while happiness is a state of mind. We can feel pleasure by playing video games for hours and hours. But that doesn't change our happiness state sometimes. As pleasures often lack something meaningful, it can lead to discontent within ourselves. But then how do we pursue happiness without pursuing pleasure? I have been searching for this for a while. Shawn again has answer to this. He argues that through practicing simple techniques daily one can attain peace of mind and thereby happiness. He specifically suggests doing five small tasks daily for 21 days or more. These small tasks include writing three things you are grateful for, writing one good experience for the day, write one thank you note to somebody, meditate for 2 minutes and exercise daily. The idea is to develop these habits that generate positive energy within us by forcing us first to search for positive things in our lives and eventually and eventually making it an automatic thing.
As I have changed careers I have noticed how there is little correlation between money or position with happiness. I have seen poor people happy and rich people unhappy. I have seen employees at the lowest levels with a calm state of mind while senior managers panic. These observations prove that how our mind perceives that things around us can affect the way we feel about it. It has many a times very little to do with outer world itself and much more to do with what we are looking for. One parallel I can draw is from when I was studying words for an exam. When I learned a new word. I often started coming across them again and again at various places. Perhaps because now I was looking for it, I was finding it more often. To train my mind to look for happiness may do something similar and help me find it!
Does it work?
I am myself still in the process, I would say. So I wouldn't be the best example for this. However, I would like to mention my friend who introduced this concept to me. He is an epitome of living a meaningful life. After leaving a high paying corporate job, he went to become a teacher for underprivileged kids. He is not only taking classes but working on the complete development of these children. His life is truly meaningful. After taking a 60% salary cut, he works for 16 hours a day and still tells me that he can only remember two instances in last one year when he was unhappy about something. He attributes some of this to his regularly following Shawn Achor's 5 habits everyday without fail. He has a notebook specially for this. He calls it 'The Gratitude Journal'. He believes it has made him appreciate the things around him a lot more and feels truly blessed to have all the people in his life. Yes, it works!
How to implement?
Keeping the tasks simple is important. Make sure it doesn't take so much of your time that you start running away from it or making excuses that you were too busy and didn't have time. I spread it across the day. I usually wake up in the morning and send a thank you note/email to someone. Then after getting ready for work, I meditate for 2-3 minutes. This has a calming effect on the mind. Simply concentrating on my breathe slows things down. Then during lunch time, I usually go to gym to exercise. Then at night, after lunch I sit down quickly for 5 minutes to write down 3 things I am grateful for and one good experience. Excluding exercise, it just needs 10 minutes to complete these small tasks and if you are making excuses you are giving the stress a chance to creep back into your life!
If just one of you start following this technique, I would be happy that I returned the favor by making this world a happier place. Instead of chasing success, chase happiness, do meaningful work and appreciate small things in life. Success will find you.
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