The happy secret to better work Shawn Achor
[Music]
[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]