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Transcription of interview with Shawn Achor on October 21, 2013.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Shawn Achor is the New York Times bestselling author of Before Happiness and the international
bestseller of the Happiness Advantage.
He is a happiness professional.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Achor on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: You do a lot of research about happiness.
How did you get into that?
Shawn Achor: I fell into it backwards.
I was actually studying at the Divinity School.
I was studying how peopleís religious beliefs change the actions and the decisions that
they make in the world and when I was doing that there are people in the psychology department
including Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar who is that I could be asking those same question about
what causes this to make the choices we do in life, what caused this meaning but to do
it from the scientific perspective which is what theyíre attempting to do in positive
psychology and so I got hooked.
Douglas Goldstein: From your research what are some of the things that bring people over
to happiness?
Shawn Achor: I think whatís fascinating is that often times we think that happiness just
happens based upon our genes for our environment that a lot of people say ìI canít be happy
right now because this is whatís going on at workî or ìI canít be happy right now
because my kids are not in the right schoolî or ìI canít be happy because I grew up with
genes that are more pessimistic and cynical and thatís just who I am.î What we started
to realize was that you will be just your genes and your environment unless you decide
to change your habits and your mindset and what we started to realize was that a lot
of our research on what caused people to be like they were in terms of their levels of
happiness was wrong.
It turns out that only 10% of your long terms levels of happiness is predicted based upon
the external world which is why we find people in extremely in [paver] situation who can
still be optimistic and in some people who could be extremely wealthy and yet can be
miserable at the same time.
Ninety percent of our long-term level of happiness is predicted not by the external world but
by how your brain is processing the world which means if we can change the lens which
we view the world, we can change the levels of happiness and then other side of it was
the genes.
This is the part that just fascinate me the most is that the average person doesnít fight
their genes so when we did the scientific studies we kept finding genes are so important
but if you look at those grasp and you look at people who are not average, they are the
people who actually decide to make changes to their life and what we find is that they
can deviate dramatically from their genetic stat-point.
Douglas Goldstein: When youíre referring to happiness, what are you really talking
about?
Shawn Achor: Often times when people think about happiness, they think about just pleasure
or they think about a big yellow smiley face.
Actually I got a call from the Harvard Business Review a little over a year ago and they said
ìShawn, weíd been following your research on how happiness leads to greater levels of
success, the company weíre going to put on the cover of the magazineî and I was like
ìThatís great.
Just whatever you do, make it palatable because as soon as we start talking about happiness,
people think itís about smiley faces and having to smile all the time so whatever you
do, donít put a smiley face on the coverî and they were like ìWeíre the Harvard Business
Review, we would never put a stuff like that.î The cover January-February of that year was
a huge smiley face with dollar sign dimples.
The reason I mentioned that is when I looked at it, I realized that the smiley face had
no eyes, it was blind happiness and I think thatís how often times people think about
happiness.
We have to be blind to the problems we see in our current moments, in the political or
economic landscape or sicknesses in our family or struggles we have at work.
We have to be blind at those in order to have a little bit of pleasure in our lives.
The way that we define happiness in this research we took from the ancient Greeks and the definition
that we use is ìthe joy that you feel striving towards your potentialî and I love that definition
because joy is something you can experience in the ups and downs of life and itís on
the way towards your potential but not at it.
What I love about this is itís not just pleasure because pleasure can just cause us to stagnate.
What weíre interested in is how do we link joy to growth within our lives, joy with aspiration.
Douglas Goldstein: You said that joy is how you feel striving towards your potential and
I talk to people a lot about what their goals are, where they are trying to go.
Is it okay that when they hit those goals, they can be happy about that or feel joy?
Shawn Achor: The fascinating part is that when we hit those goals, we actually donít
get happy for very long.
The whole purpose of writing the Happiness Advantage was that I realized that most of
us follow a formula which is if I work harder and Iím more successful, Iím going to achieve
these goals and once I achieved those goals then Iím going to feel happier.
So if I can just save this amount of money for retirement then Iíll be happy.
As soon as I get this promotion then Iíll be happy.
As soon as I finished this project or lose 15 pounds then I feel happier.
That formula undergirds our parenting styles or managing styles or leadership styles and
it turns out it scientifically broke in backwards for two reasons.
The first reason is every single time you have a success, your brain changes the goal
post of what success looks like.
So if you got good grades in school and now you have to get better grades, you can get
into a better school or if you get a job now, you need to get a promotion, if you hit your
sales target, we raise your sales target.
Somebody says itís million dollars, they realized they need 2 million because everyone
around them has a million.
What we realized was that if we raise your success rates, raise your income, raise amount
of money you have in retirement for the rest of your life, it turns out your happiness
level is flat line.
They remain basically the same but if you flip around the formula, if you try and gets
somebody to change the way that they view the world first, if you deepen their social
connection, if you change your optimism level, if you change how they view stress in their
life, it turns out every single business and educational outcome we can test for significantly
improved.
Their success rates rise.
In other words, we found that if we raise your success rates, your happiness remains
the same but if we raise your levels of happiness and change your mindset first, every single
one of your success rise, youíre better at making financial decision making, your better
at doing your work, youíre 31% more productive, 37% higher levels of sales so maybe we have
the formula backwards.
Douglas Goldstein: Youíre just talking about people who are happier tend
to be more successful.
Why is it?
What is it that being happy makes more successful?
Shawn Achor: The research that Iím talking about is wrapped around something called the
Happiness Advantage which is when the brain is positive, it turns out youíre not diverting
your brainís limits of resources to scan the world for the threats and the hassles
and complaints constantly.
Your brain is actually able to focus and be more engaged with your task which increases
your intelligence levels.
We found children when theyíre positive put blocks together significantly faster than
children in the negative or neutral category.
We found that doctors are 19% faster more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis
when they are in the positive state as opposed to a negative or neutral one.
We actually found that every single business and education all come improved when your
brain is positive but what that doesnít mean is that the happy people are the smartest
people in the room or that the happy people are the most successful people in the room.
Whatís the indication of this is all of us have a band of potential and what we found
is that your band of potential is determined based upon your genes, your previous experiences,
the environment you find yourselves in, the luck or opportunities you have around you
but within that band of potential, when your brain is negative, youíre at the bottom end
of your potential, when your brain is positive because your brain is able to focus more of
it resources scanning for opportunities to make changes believing that your behavior
matters.
What we find is youíre actually at the upper end of your band of potential so what it means
is your intelligence rises, it doesnít necessarily mean youíre the smartest person in the room.
I met lots of people at Harvard who are extremely smart but also extremely depressed and what
we found was that if we could change their levels of optimism, if they can get them over
that depression, it turns out their intelligence and their success rates rose dramatically.
Douglas Goldstein: Tell me about the expression ìMoney doesnít buy happiness.î A lot of
people say those who say money canít buy happiness just donít know where to go shopping.
Shawn Achor: I would agree with that they donít know where to go shopping.
It turns out that money absolutely can buy happiness.
What we found is that if itís just your income level, youíre right, that doesnít have very
much of an impact upon your levels of happiness.
Thereís conflicting studies on this but even the best ones that argued for money, they
show that thereís only very slight rise in your levels of happiness as you move above
the poverty line up to higher and higher levels.
We donít have the highest levels of income so we donít know if they maintain at that
high level because the billionaires donít respond to our surveys for this research,
but what I think is fascinating is money absolutely can buy happiness.
It turns out there are some studies who are coming out of Stanford right now where they
just found out that what we already knew I believe through common sense is that if you
spend your money pro-socially, in other words, if you spend that money trying to create an
experience with somebody in your family or with a friend or if you use that money to
help somebody else out so that you can raise up their own levels of happiness, it turns
out instead of just reaping a short term level of increased pleasure which is what happens
when we buy a new car or buy a new house and 6 months later, we go right back down to our
baseline.
It turns out that the prosocial spending, when we spend that for other people, that
altruistic spending, we actually reap an advantage that continues to cascade that every time
we remember it, we feel good about it, we smile about it and we tell other people about
it.
So whatís amazing about that is if you can create some disposable income or money that
you can then spend prosocially, you actually could buy some happiness for yourself.
Douglas Goldstein: My theory in this is that if you begin to see the money that youíre
earning not as your own money but youíre the trustee of some trust, if youíre the
trustee of Godís trust account, you have this obligation, youíre no longer giving
away your own money.
You just have this awesome fun job of actually deciding where can I go help people and I
think that means that the money isnít adding stress rather it really is helping to make
others happy which I think can make you yourself happy.
Shawn Achor: Itís a change in philosophy that money is just there to provide security
for you and if itís just for security that means we constantly feel threatened actually,
but as soon as the money is there, youíre stored to be able to help other people that
youíre part of a larger narrative.
Youíre part of the larger meeting of being able to help and get back to the world and
youíre a steward.
What we found is exactly that and thatís what I was finding at the Divinity School
is that people who believe this money is not just theirs but they can use it to make a
better world.
I see it with my own work that when I go give a talk and if itís about money for myself,
Iíll feel stressed about it or Iíll be like do I want to do this but as soon as itís
for somebody else, as soon as Iím like I could donate this or Iím going to give this
to this charity then suddenly Iím so excited, Iím so engaged with that exact same external
reality.
What I think is so important is how we think about the money we have and how we use it.
I believe thatís fits so well with positive psychology.
Douglas Goldstein: What is the one thing they can do today to just make it a happier day?
Shawn Achor: I think ride along with it.
This idea is making somebody else happier but we donít necessarily have to give way
99% of our income to make that happen.
In fact, we found that you can change your levels of happiness from your genetic stat-point
and actually maintain it.
We did actually at Facebook that I have them take 2 minutes each day for 21 days in a row
and write a positive email praising or thanking somebody that they know and within that 2
minutes what happens is we do it today, youíre going to be addicted because youíre going
to spend all day long thinking about how amazing you were for writing that email in the morning
but 21 days later, your brain realizes you have incredibly robust social support.
You have 21 people you meaningfully activated with your actions and we find that social
support is the greatest predictor of your long term happiness, social connection is
a greater predictor of profitability than your intelligence and the collective idea
to use on your themes and the last one is that social support is as predictive of how
long youíll live as obesity, high blood pressure or smoking.
We know how important the negative is but we forget about how powerful the positive
is.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow your work?
Shawn Achor: You can find us at www.happinessadvantage.com or you can watch that free TED talk online
if you just search for Shawn and Happiness and it will pop right up.
Itís a 10-minute version of the research that Iíve been doing.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
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