The happy secret to better work Shawn Achor

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[Music]

[Applause]

when I was seven years old and my sister

was just five years old we were playing

on top of a bunk bed I was two years

older than my sister at the time I’m two

years older than her now but at the time

that meant she had to do everything that

I wanted to do and I wanted to play war

so we were up on top of our bunk beds

and on one side of the bunk bed I put

out all my GI Joe soldiers and weaponry

and on the other side were all my

sisters Milo’s and ponies and ready for

a Calvary charge there are differing

accounts of what actually happened that

afternoon but since my sister is not

here with us today let me tell you the

true story which is my sister’s a little

bit on the clumsy side and somehow

without any help or push from her older

brother at all

suddenly Amy disappeared off the top of

the bunk bed and landed with this crash

on the floor and I never sleep eared

over the side of the bed to see what had

befallen my fallen sister and saw that

she landed painfully on her hands and

knees on all fours on the ground I was

nervous because my parents had charged

me with making sure that my sister and I

played as safely and as quietly as

possible and seeing as how I had

accidentally broken Amy’s arm just one

week before

heroically pushing her out of the way of

an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet for

which I have yet to be thanked I was

trying as hard as I could she didn’t

even see it coming I was trying as hard

as I could to be on my best behavior and

I saw my sister’s faces wail a pain and

suffering and surprise threatening to

erupt from her mouth and threatening to

wake my parents from the long winters

nap for which they had settled so I did

the only thing my little frantic

seven-year-old brain could think to do

to avert this tragedy if you have

children you’ve seen this hundreds of

times before I said Amy Amy wait don’t

cry don’t cry did you see how you landed

no human lands on all fours like that

Amy I think this means you’re a unicorn

now that was cheating because there’s

nothing in the world my sister would

want more than not to be Amy the hurt

five-year-old little sister but Amy the

special unicorn of course this was an

option that was open to her brain to no

point in the past and you could see on

my poor manipulated sister’s face

conflict as their little brain attempted

to devote resources to feeling the pain

and suffering surprise she just

experienced or contemplating her

newfound identity as a unicorn and the

latter one now instead of crying instead

of ceasing our planes of waking my

parents with all the negative

consequences that would have been sued

for me instead of smile spread across

her face and she scrambled right back up

onto the bunk bed with all the grace of

a baby unicorn with one broken leg what

we stumbled across

at this tender age which is five and

seven we had no idea at the time was

something that was going to be at the

vanguard of a scientific revolution

occurring two decades later in the way

that we look at the human brain what we

had stumbled across is something called

positive psychology which is the reason

that I’m here today and the reason that

I wake up every morning when I first

started talking about this research

outside of academia out with companies

in schools the very first thing they

said to never do is to start your talk

with a graph the very first thing I

wanted to do is start my talk with a

graph this graph looks boring but this

graph is the reason that I get excited

and wake up every morning and this graph

doesn’t even mean anything it’s faked

out of what we found is if I got this

data back studying you here in the room

I would be thrilled because there’s very

clearly a trend that’s going on there

and that means that I can get published

which is all that really matters the

fact that there’s one weird red dot

that’s up above the curve there’s one

weird in the room you know who you are I

saw you earlier

that’s no prom that’s no problem as most

of you know because I can just delete

that dot I can delete that dot because

that’s clearly a measurement error and

we know that’s a measurement error

because it’s messing up my data so one

of the very first things do we teach

people in economics and statistics and

business and psychology courses is how

in a statistically valid way do we

eliminate the weirdos how do we

eliminate the outliers so that we can

find the line of best fit which is

fantastic if I’m trying to find out how

many advil the average person should be

taking too but if I’m interested in

potential if I’m interested in your

potential or for happiness or

productivity or energy or creativity

what we’re doing is we’re creating the

coal to the average with science if I

ask you a question like how fast can the

child learn how to read in a classroom

scientists change the answer to how fast

is the average child learn how to read

in that classroom and then we tailor the

class right towards the average now if

you fall below the average on this curve

then psychologists get thrilled because

that means you’re either depressed or

you have a disorder or hopefully both

we’re hoping for both because our

business motto is if you come into a

therapy session with one problem we want

to make sure you leave knowing you have

10 so you’ll keep coming back over and

over again we’ll go back into your child

have necessary but eventually what we

want to do is to make you normal again

but normal is merely average and what I

pause it and what positive psychology

posits is if we study what is merely

average we will remain merely average

then instead of deleting those positive

outliers what I intentionally do is come

into a population like this one and says

why why is it the some of you are so

high above the curve in terms of your

intellectual voting athletic ability

musical ability creativity energy levels

your resiliency in the face of challenge

your sense of humor whatever it is

instead of deleting you what I want to

do is study you because maybe we can

glean information not just how to move

people up to the average but how we can

move the entire average up that our

companies in schools worldwide

the reason this graph is important to me

is when I turn on the news it seems like

the majority of the information is not

positive in fact is negative

most of us about murder corruption

diseases natural disasters and very

quickly my brain starts to think that’s

the accurate ratio of negative positive

in the world what that’s doing is

creating something called the medical

school syndrome which if you know people

who have been to medical school during

the first year of medical training as

you read through a list of all the

symptoms and diseases it could happen

suddenly you realize you have all of

them have a brother-in-law named Bobo

which is a whole nother story

Bobo married Amy the Unicorn Bobo called

me on the phone

from Yale Medical School from Yale

Medical School I’m bill Bessette Sean I

have leprosy which even at Yale is

extraordinarily rare but I had no idea

how to console poor Bobo because he had

just gotten over an entire week of

menopause see what we’re finding is not

necessarily the reality that shapes us

but the lens to which your brain views

the world that shapes your reality if we

can change the lens not only can we

change your happiness we can change

every single educational and business

outcome at the same time when I applied

to Harvard I applied on it there I

didn’t expect to get in and my family

had no money for college when I got a

military scholarship two weeks later

that allowed me to go suddenly something

wasn’t even a possibility became a

reality when I went there I assumed

everyone else would see it as a

privilege as well that they’d be excited

to be there even if you’re in a

classroom full of people smarter than

you you’d be happy just to be in that

classroom which is what I felt but what

I found there is while some people

experienced that when I graduated after

my four years and then spent the next

eight years living in the dorms with the

students Harvard asked me to wasn’t that

guy but what happened

I was an officer of Harvard accounts

those students through the difficult

four years and what I found in my

research my teaching is that these

students no matter how happy they were

with the original SAS success of getting

into the school two weeks later the

brains were focused not on the privilege

of being there nor on their philosophy

or their physics the brain was focused

on the competition the workload the

hassles the stresses the complaints when

I first went in there I walked into the

freshmen dining hall which is where my

friends from Waco Texas which is where I

grew up I know some of you’ve heard of

it when I when they come to visit me

they look around they say this freshman

dining hall looks like something out of

Hogwarts some movie Harry Potter which

it does because Hogwarts and movie Harry

Potter and that’s Harvard when they see

this they say Shawn why you waste your

time studying happiness at Harvard

seriously what does a Harvard student

possibly have to be unhappy about

embedded within that question is the key

to understanding the science of

happiness because what that question

assumes is that our external world is

predictive of our happiness levels when

in reality if I know everything about

your external world I can only predict

10% of your long-term happiness 90% of

your long-term happiness is predicted

not by the external world but by it

through the way your brain processes the

world and if we change it if we change

our formula for happiness and success

what we can do is change the way that we

can then affect reality what we found is

that only 25% of job successes are

predicted by IQ 75 percent of job

successes are predicted by your optimism

levels your social support and your

abilities see stress as a challenge

instead of as a threat I talked to a

boarding school up in New England

probably the most prestigious boarding

school and they said we already know

that so every year instead of just

teaching our students we also have a

Wellness Week and we’re so excited

Monday night we have the world’s leading

expert coming in to speak about

adolescent depression Tuesday night is

school violence and bullying Wednesday

night Wednesday nights eating disorders

Thursday night is illicit drug user

Friday night we’re trying to decide

between risky sex or happiness

I said that’s most people’s Friday

nights

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which I’m glad you like but they did not

like that at all silence on the phone

and into the silence I said I’d be happy

to speak to your school but just you

know that’s not a Wellness week that’s

the sickness week what you’ve done is

you’ve outlined all the negative things

that can happen but not talked about the

positive the absence of disease is not

health here’s how we get to health we

need to reverse the formula for

happiness and success in the past three

years I’ve traveled to 45 different

countries working with schools and

companies in the midst of an economic

downturn and what I found is the most

companies and schools follow a formula

for success which is this if I work

harder I’ll be more successful and if

I’m more successful then I’ll be happier

that undergirds most of our parenting

styles are managing style is the way

that we motivate our behavior and the

problem is it’s scientifically broken

and backwards for two reasons first

every time your brain has a success you

just change the goalposts of what

success look like you got good grades

now you have to get better grades it’s

gone to good schooling after you get a

better school you got a good job now you

have to get a better job you hit your

sales target we’re gonna change your

sales target and if happiness is on the

opposite side of success your brain

never gets there what we’ve done is we

pushed happiness over the cognitive

horizon as a society and that’s because

we think we have to be successful

successful then we’ll be happier but the

real problem is our brains work in the

opposite order if you can raise

somebody’s level of positivity in the

present then their brain experiences

what we now call a happiness advantage

which is your brain and positive perform

significantly better than does a

negative neutral stress your

intelligence Rises your creativity Rises

your energy levels rise in fact what we

found is that every single business

outcome improves your brain a positive

is 31% more productive than it your

brain and negative neutral stress you’re

37% better at sales

doctors are 19% faster more accurate at

coming up with a correct diagnosis when

positive instead of negative neutral

stress which means we can reverse the

formula if we can find a way becoming

positive in the present then our brains

work even more successfully as we’re

able to work harder faster and more

intelligently what we need to be able to

do is to reverse this formula so we can

start to see what our brains are

actually capable of because dopamine

which floods into your system when

you’re positive has two functions not

only does it make you happier it turns

on all the learning centers in your

brain allowing you to adapt to the world

in a different way we found that there

are ways you can train your brain to be

able to come more positive in just a two

minute span of time done for 21 days in

row

we can actually rewire your brain

allowing your brain to actually work

more optimistically and more

successfully we’ve done these things in

research now and every single company

that I’ve worked with getting them to

write down three new things that they’re

grateful for for 21 days in a row three

new things each day and at the end of

that their brain starts to retain a

pattern of scanning the world not for

the negative but for the positive first

journaling about one positive experience

you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows

your brain to relive it

exercise teaches your brain your

behavior matters we find that meditation

allows your brain to get over the

cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating

by trying to do multiple tasks at once

and allows our brains to focus on the

task at hand

and finally random acts of kindness or

conscious acts of kindness we get people

when they open up their inbox to write

one positive email praising or thanking

somebody in their social support network

and by doing these activities and by

training your brain just like we trained

our bodies what we found is we could

reverse the formula for happiness and

success and in doing so not only create

ripples of positivity but create a real

revolution thank you very much

[Applause]