A happy broker is a successful broker – but does happiness have to come first?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of listening to Shawn Achor speak at a conference in Istanbul, Turkey. Shawn is a Harvard-trained researcher and an expert in happiness and human potential. He has a fantastic Ted Talk which only lasts 12 minutes which you should listen to – click here to watch it online.

Let me share with you some of my notes from Shawn’s presentation:

• Most people are not average – average is just a statistical measure – it’s not relevant. If you study the average you miss out on learning. Best to study the above average.
• It’s not reality that changes us, it’s the lens that we view the world that changes us. What you focus on is your reality. If we know everything about your external world, we can only predict 10% of your happiness. 90% of your happiness is how you process that information. Learn how to control your mind and focus, then you can only focus on the positive.
• School grades do not predict success. In fact, studies suggest that a roll of dice is 2% more likely to predict success.
• If we know a child’s IQ we can only predict one third of success – so intelligence has little to do with it.
• There are three things that determine success/happiness: 1) Optimism – belief that behaviour matters and you can alter the outcome 2) Strong social connection 3) View stress is a good challenge – not a negative thing.
• Be careful because negative patterns train your brain. E.g. If you always look for mistakes at work (e.g. such as an auditor does) you’ll look for mistakes in personal life.
• Happiness is a choice. What you attend to first is your reality.
• Happiness spreads. The best way to change someone is to change yourself.
• Happiness is a work ethic – it takes effort.

So how do you make yourself happy?

Shawn offered a few exercises that you can do daily – start by doing one of them only – don’t try and do all of them at once:

1. 3 gratitude’s – each morning write down and say out loud 3 things you are grateful for
2. The doubler – think about one meaningful experience and write it down and think about it and visualise it
3. The fun fifteen – 15 minutes of exercise
4. Meditation – start with one minute of meditation and do more gradually
5. Conscious act of kindness – do something nice for someone such as sending someone an email of appreciation (because it creates social connection).

Do one of these for 3 minutes a day for 21 days and that is all that is required to rewire your brain.

How do you ensure you follow through with these ideas?

Reduce your activation energy. Activation energy is the initial investment of time to start doing one of the tasks above. Decrease the energy it takes to do something to 3 to 20 seconds and the chances of you doing it increases significantly. For example, if you are going to exercise in the morning, sleeping in your training gear will increase the likelihood of you actually doing the exercise. The reason is that it takes less energy to get start – you don’t have to think “now I have to get out of bed in the cold, get changed and then go – it’s all too hard”.

Final thought

The problem is we think we might be happy when we achieve a certain volume in our businesses – $3m, $5m, $10m… whatever it is. So you work harder and harder to get to that volume so that you’ll be happy. Once you are there, you’ll move the happiness goal post up – so you’re never really happy. Problem is, that’s broken – it doesn’t work. Get happy first and that is what’s likely to get you more volume. A happy brain is 37% better at sales than a natural or negative one. Get happy first and success will follow.