Before Happiness:
Check out this amazing interview at Google with with author, Shawn Achor. Before Happiness is Shawn’s most recent book and he previously wrote a book called The Happiness Advantage. He’s done some really interesting research on happiness and he even teaches a course on happiness at Harvard.
In the interview Shawn is interviewed by Meng….who is probably better known as the “jolly Good Fellow” at Google. Meng’s humor alone makes the video worth watching. Meng has also written a book on the topic of mindfulness called Search Inside Yourself and it is definitely worth reading too.
Here are a few key notes/topics that are discussed in the video:
- Happiness brings about success
- Mirror neurons & motor neurons
- Calmness is contagious
- Positive genius
- Only 25% of job success is predicted by how smart you are
- Optimism
- Social connection
- How you relate to stress
Happiness Precedes Success:
Most of us are taught by society that we should strive to become successful and that being successful will result in creating happiness for ourselves. However, Shawn does a great job of turning the tables on this idea and explaining that it’s really the opposite.
In fact, being happy often results in success. Therefore, rather than focusing all of our energy towards creating success in our lives, we should actually look first at the things, areas, and people that make us happy and add more of those things into our existing routine and life.
Over time, you may also find that you need to re-define what success actually is for yourself. Your existing paradigm might change and alter over time. Or, you might just be so happy that success itself is simply an afterthought.
Shawn has also done several TEDx talks which you can check out here and here
Which of these topics do you find most interesting?
Photo Via: Before Happiness
