The Happiness Advantage

I've been following the positive psychology class, and today the students have to watch the TED Talk video about The Happiness Advantages by Shawn Achor. I'll write down the summary of that video here:)

In this world, there's people who assume that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels. But in reality, even if someone knows about someone's external world, he/she can only predict 10% of someone's long-term happiness. The 90% of our long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world but by the way our brain processes the world.

Also, we have to know that only 25% job successes predicted by IQ, while 75% successes predicted by our optimist levels, our social support, and our ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

Our brain positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. The happiness advantages are our intelligence rises, our creativity rises, our energy levels rise. Our brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. We’re 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19% faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Lyubosmirsky (2005) said the happiness advantages are better secure jobs, better keeping jobs, superior productivity, more resilient, less burnout, less turnover, greater sales

And ways we can train our brain to be more positive are:

3 Gratitude: Getting us to write down three new things that we’re grateful for 21 days in a row, 3 new things each day. And at the end of that our brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling : Journaling about one positive experience we’ve had over the past 24 hours allows our brain to relive it.

Exercise : Exercise teaches our brain that our behavior matters

Meditation : Meditation allows our brain to get over the cultural ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brain to focus on the task at hand.

Random acts of kindness : Random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. For example we write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network, etc.

And by doing these activities and by training our 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.