I have another 13 minutes of video to recommend which could just change how you view competition and happiness. Shawn Achor has been researching how we can achieve happiness in this highly competitive world. And I think his findings will astonish you. He presents them in a very entertaning manner in a TEDx Talk which lasts just 13 minutes. It is called The Happy Secret to Better Work and you can view it by clicking here.
Achor has followed up his 2011 book The Happiness Advantage with another published in 2018 that carries forward his theories about happiness and competition entitled How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Our Achievement, Happiness and Well-being. Shawn’s new book looks at how if we pursue happiness and success individually, there’s a cap on what we can achieve. Only by pursuing happiness and success together with others can we see our Big Potential.
Right now with hyper-competition at work and in our schools, it can feel like success is zero sum. The extreme pressure to achieve and stand out means people are working harder than ever, well-being is declining, and depression rates are skyrocketing.
Shawn is not just a researcher and author. He is an extraordinary storyteller. Everyone can take away something from him. So whether you read his books or not, don’t miss his TEDx Talk.
And if yet another perspective on how our brains deal with happiness would make you happy, I urge you to watch the Ted Talk, The Surprising Science of Happiness by Dan GIlbert. Dan challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned.
Dan is the authour of the book Stumbling on Happiness. Bringing to life scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, this bestselling book reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. He is an American social psychologist and writer, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University .
