Shawn Achor: The Happiness Advantage
EPISODE 197
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health.
How small shifts in our mindset and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere. Happiness is not the belief that we don't need to change; it is the realization that we can. Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we'll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, and lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
Habits are like financial capital – forming one today is an investment that will automatically give out returns for years to come.
― Shawn Achor
INTRO
Shawn shares that happiness is not just a mood—it’s a work ethic
Happiness first, success second (2m56)
MINDSET
Shawn on how we can use our brain to change how we process the world, and that in turn changes how we react to it
The Fulcrum and the Lever (2m19)
Productivity Game breaks down Shawn’s idea of visualisation and conditioning
The Tetris Effect (1m07)
BEHAVIOUR SHIFTS
Earning Ability discusses Shawn’s idea of prioritisation of happiness, and how when we reframe failure as an opportunity for growth, we are all the more likely to experience that growth
Falling Up (1m26)
OUTRO
Shawn and Oprah close with how the most successful people, in work and in life, believe that their actions have a direct effect on their outcomes
Cause and effect (2m05)
READING:
The Happiness Advantage: Shawn Achor
If you would prefer a short summary of the book you can find it here on Blinkist.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 197. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning. Good morning,
Mike. This is a great, exciting, dare I say, happy day for us as we're digging into another fantastic show on in happiness series.
However, Mike, we are coming to the end of this series today. Aren't we?
Oh, no. The only way. Our expert today would have us process. That information is in a happy way. That's right. Let us turn ourselves for one last time. Two, this idea of happiness and what are we going to do today?
Today, listeners and moonshots members.
We are digging into Shawns the happiness advantage. Shawn Achor is perhaps doesn't need too much of an introduction. Actually, Mike, he has one of the. Popular talks ever on Ted's channels. He was a teaching assistant to another moonshot member Tal Ben Shahar. He did a popular happiness course where Sean was one of the teaching assistants, as well as a huge learning class with Oprah Winfrey.
So Shawn is pretty well embedded in what I would call the happiness space. And I think he's a perfect bookend for the end of our happiness series because he touches. Some of the framework ideas approaches that maybe we've heard from some of the other individuals within the series. But he also brings to light a handful of really interesting new ideas, frameworks, and even mindsets that I think you and I, and the listeners can really learn from.
Yeah. So I think coming up first on this show, we have got perhaps one of the best articulations of. Perhaps the theme of the series. And Shawn, he's gonna bring it home and really kinda wrap up this aha that we've been having throughout the series. But importantly, he's not just stopping there.
He's gonna go into some really cool techniques, some habits, the Tetris effect, the fulcrum and the lever. Falling up. So if this all sounds interesting to you, if you wanna bring it home on happiness at the end of this series, then stay tuned to the happiness advantage with Shawn. It's all there for us to enjoy.
So mark. This has been a big series. We're about to close it in a very big way. Why don't you guide us, mark? Where do we begin?
We need to hear from the author himself, Shawn, who's done all this incredible amount of research at Harvard studies with test subjects around the world. We need to hear from Sean himself and how he believes, and he wants all of us to start doing it.
Withs. And following success second. 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've found is that 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 than undergraduates, most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior and the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two. First every time your brain has success, you just change the goal post of what success looked like.
You got good grades. Now you have to get better grades. You got into a good school and actually got into 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've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a. And that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier. But the real problem is that our brain's 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 positively performs significantly better than it does at negative neutral stress. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we found is that every single business outcome. your brain, a positive is 31% more productive than it.
Your brain has 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 of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully.
As we're able to work harder, faster, 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've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to come more positive in just a two minute span of. Done for 21 days in a 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 in every single company that I've worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they're grateful for 21 days in a row, three new things each day.
And at the end of it, 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. 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 thinking of somebody on their social support network. And by doing these. And by training your brain, just like we train 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,
Mark. I listened to this clip and I'm like, I've got it all wrong in line
oh, yep. Oh so what Shawn does. In his book, the happiness advantage is he basically framed how so many of us are. And I will admit how I have often thought, which is if I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier. And he's saying, ladies and gentlemen, You need to invert.
You need to reverse all this way of thinking and bring the happiness to the front and the success and everything else will follow later. Mark. Do you think you could admit you've fallen for this big trap that Shawn points out?
Look, I'll listen and whisper between friends. It's not like you and I just, you and me, it's not like you and I have a handful of listeners as well.
I am very guilty of it. I have been for probably I would say most of my childhood and adult life, in fact , but I would say the. Direction that Shawn's taking us here is specifically around success. You don't wanna be chasing that promotion, that pay rise or that new job in a. Situation or new business, but for me, actually, Mike I go one step further when it comes to the idea of happiness.
And actually I've been guilty in the past of looking to maybe purchase something like a car, or maybe it's a new phone or whatever it is something that I think will make me happy. But the truth is exactly as Shawn's breaking down in that first clip, once you get it, are you happy? Maybe a tiny bit, but then you're always gonna be looking for the next thing.
So there's constant. Chase this constant road that we're trying to almost sprint down in order to get success or be seen as successful. We're really starting to see the ego, I think come through with regards to the idea of happiness here. Instead, you flip it round in starting with happiness.
Mike, I dunno whether I've really thought about doing that before, have you?
It's hard for me to answer the co. Question in that way, because I look at what he's proposing as things that we can do. And we're gonna break all of these down throughout the show. Many of the things he talks about journaling, writing, exercising, meditating, those are things that are in my daily practice, but here is where I had a big.
It is my choice right now. I can smile. That's a choice. And that was something where he was talking about happiness first, success, second. I think I was doing. Some of the practices bring happiness, but I wasn't deliberately choosing happiness. I was deferring it much like he talked about in that clip and what the most powerful thing, not only in Shawns work, but in many of the people we've studied, they're saying, choose for happiness now.
And it can be happiness that the coffee you are drinking. Tastes great. Or that it's ridiculously sunny and it's the middle of winter, or that I have the chance to sit with a friend and talk about happiness for an hour. How good is that? No deferrals needed right there. And this is where we touch upon mindful mindfulness practices, which I think are essential in unlocking happiness as a practice in the here and now.
So I think that's the help that I needed. Like I can smile. And it's so funny when you can just you can walk down the street and you can be frowning. You can be blank or you can smile. And the crazy thing is if you choose to smile and if you just choose to appreciate something around you, how powerful that can be in realizing.
Happiness just right now. And it doesn't have to be such a big thing way off in the horizon. Does it?
Yeah. And I think you've touched upon it really well, there, it isn't this huge aha moment singularity that one day you might reach, say when you retire, I'll be happy when I retire.
So it's always this big moment or event monument. Life changing, but instead it's exactly, as you said, Mike, it's as simple as sitting here smiling while we record it's as simple as walking to the coffee shop, maybe smiling at a neighbor and all those small little things that seem inconsequential and pretty small, not big enough to maybe write a book about.
Profoundly when they're all put together. I feel pretty good when I go out and see somebody out in the street and they're smiling. If I see somebody else happy, I feel a little bit happier if I'm positive or pleasant to other people, generally they're pleasant back. And this formula suddenly.
For me switches. And then I start thinking, okay, actually it is achievable to have that small injection of happiness here and there. It, isn't just one big thing that we are all running towards our, I know something we can inject right here right Now, and much like anything else, like working out at the gym, happiness is something you can work on and you can do every day and you'll feel better every day.
And it can just be small things. Smiling being grateful, these sort of habits and behaviors that we're gonna talk about a lot on this show, but the thing is, if you do it regularly throughout the day on regular days throughout the week, throughout weeks in months in years, it's when you get to the other side of that, that you go, wow.
I just feel really good. I feel happy. I feel a sense of abundance, around me, but the thing is we it looks like one of those city horizons way off in the future. And what the invitation on this show today is gonna be, is to bring the happiness advantage into your daily life. Your hour practice, bring it into the moment is what is so powerful and why we chose to put Shawn as the closing thoughts on a world of happiness to bring a smile to your face.
And mark, I tell you there's a whole bunch of people. Who've got a smile on their face too. Isn't
it? They're so right. These individuals have not only put a smile on their own faces, but certainly a smile on all of the Moonshot's family on this side of the microphone as well. So without further ado, in fact, I better do two trumpets because I missed it.
Last time we were welcoming. We are welcoming Bob Niles, John Terry Nile, Marling, Ken and DeMar Marja and con Rodrigo and Yasin, Lisa and Sid Maria and Paul Burman, David and Joe crystal Ivo, Christian and hurricane brain, Sam Kelly, Barbara and Bob Andre, Matthew, Eric and Abby, Jose and Joshua, Chris and Kobe Damian and Deborah Gavin.
And Lasse Steve Craig, Lauren Javier. Daniel Andrew Raven avert as well as our brand new members. LGV and Susan, welcome to the happiness around the moonshot show. Thank you for joining us. I wonder
what the LG V stands for. What do you think of loving? Good vibes. Oh yes. Loving good vibes.
That's in keeping with the series. I think yeah, super super delighted to see that we've crossed the big 50 mark in our Patreon members. We're very grateful for the support that you give to us. And it's just a little token from you towards us saying, Hey, I'm digging the moonshot vibes, the happiness vibes.
So thank you so much. Super grateful. And we hope that you're enjoying your V I P exclusive moonshots master series that you can get if you are a member of Patreon. And if you're interested in becoming a member, if you're sitting there saying I'm filling the vibe ahead of it to moonshots.ao, click on the members button.
All shall become yours. We've got a very deep back catalog of goodies and content in. You can ask us questions and we answer we're actually good on the old emails. So that's all part of being a member of the moonshot podcast. So super grateful. You now, mark, with all that gratitude swelling inside of us with all of this happiness that we've been indulging in for many weeks.
I think it's now time for us to turn towards how we should approach happiness. How do we unlock the happiness advantage mark in this great book by Shawn.
I think what's fascinating and brilliant about Shawn's book. He delves into quite practical matters. Let's call them formulas equations, but also behaviors around your physical behavior as well as your behavior around mindset.
First of all, let's hear from Shawn again, talking about how your appearance and your approach towards happiness and the way that you process the world all begins with something called the fulcrum and the.
So what we've been looking for or what are some very practical things that people could do to change the way that they view the world.
And what we found is that your brain has only a limited amount of resources to think about your world, your life, your family, what's going on, that you see happening in the media. And what happens is that if our brain goes first for the negatives, Your brain has literally no resources left over to scan the world for the things we're grateful for or the meaning in our life.
So what we started realizing is, as people were constructing this picture of reality, that there were actually multiple realities that you could construct in every moment. Then we could help people actually start to pick the most valuable reality at the time, the reality that helped move them forward and help them to either be happier or more successful or both.
So for example, one thing we had people do is a very simple activity called the advantage points technique. And what we have people do is think about something that they normally think about is. Frustrating or negative, like they're overflowing inbox with their emails or dirty dishes in the sink.
When I talk to people about dirty dishes in the sink, they think that's the opposite of happiness . But what we found is even within those moments, we're finding that. Most people when they describe it, they'll describe things like, it's a chore, it's dirty, it's constant. I can never keep up with it.
Both of those different types of descriptors are negative and it causes us to feel like we don't want to do that work and we don't do it. We are slower towards doing it. And afterwards we feel frustrated that we have to go through the process. What we have people do is do something different.
You can think of all those negative descriptors, but in one minute we have somebody think of every descriptor they could possibly think of for that activity. They get one point for all the negative ones and three points for any positive ones. So about halfway through that minute with dirty dishes, for example, people start thinking things like it's an opportunity to feel productive, or it's an opportunity to show love to my spouse.
And what happens is if we have those multiple visions, if we could view something like doing dirty dishes in the sink, if we could do dishes in the sink as an opportunity to show love, What happens is not only do we feel happier through the process, your brain actually has more energy for doing it.
You're motivated towards it. When you finish, you actually feel rejuvenated instead of tired. So simply changing the way that we think about things to choose. The positive path actually helps even the most negative tasks become something that can create happiness.
Mark, this is a fantastic shift.
This is what we love on the Moonshot's podcast is when you actually listen to the idea and the happiness advantage and you're like, yeah. That sounds great, but how do I do it? And this idea of the fulcrum and the lever is where it really transitions between how you think about it and things that you can go and do.
Mark. When we go about using this. Approach the fulcrum and the lever. Where do we start? How do you start doing this in your day? For
me, I start to really consider, and this is how I interpret it. I really sit back and I consider what are the things that I am Seeing around myself that are perhaps impacting my mindset.
So some of those things might be positive. Some of them might be negative, but what I try and do is maybe objectively look at that. Maybe I'm stressed with work. Maybe it's an item on the to-do list. Prepare a moonshot show. Maybe it's something I've gotta do around the house. And then I'll start to objectively think about each of those items and think, okay how do.
Make me feel, are they stressful moments? Maybe the work thing is stressful. Okay. Let's dig into that. Maybe there's an element of excitement that I can instead pivot around and I can start weighing up the items that are causing me that little bit of anxiety or feeling a bit uneasy and instead try and shift them into something that's a little bit more, I would say proactive, maybe a little bit.
Positive. And then what you start to do. And as I've tried to practice these a little bit this week, you start to move away from the items that are really causing you. That stress, that anxiety, you know what we might say keeps you up at night and instead you're starting to see there's much. More weight, I suppose you could say in the positive stuff, the things that are around you that you've gotta do, maybe it's fixing a house.
This is great. My taps start working again, or the moonshot show. I love doing moonshots. This is great. And suddenly those things that maybe. Upon initial review were things that you wanted to put off until later, but actually when you start to do it and you start to think about them from a happiness or positive perspective, it suddenly feels that little bit more exciting to try and do.
What, how do you interpret them? Yeah.
Definitely there is this little thing that I do, whereas if I feel, find myself. Judging or being negative. The best way I can describe it is to build like an allergic reaction. No. I try to become very aware of if I just allow that little voice.
And to the back of my head, allowing any sort of judgment or negativity. So a great example is if someone does something. Then, don't be in a rush to assume malice. If someone does something that has a negative effect on you, step back and say maybe there were things happening that I'm not aware of.
And you'll be amazed at how many times we choose to perceive something as. A deliberate negative thing that someone has done towards us, but in fact, it was just an honest mistake and the difference on the energy that I spend on something that's just an, on an honest mistake versus some, form of hard shipping, convenience, whatever.
If you just go, oh, it was probably just this benefit of the doubt. The thing is you save yourself all of that energy of God, what the F you know, like all of that energy that would happen if you were taking things so personally, and this is a choice. And that to me is where you can rise above Michelle Obama in her show talked about when they go low, we go high.
That's a choice and that costs you a lot less than spinning your wheels in negativity, judgment, just really unhealthy thinking patterns. And if you continue to say I'm gonna take a different approach, I'm gonna avoid these negative thinking patterns and you are gonna. A bias towards happiness, a bias towards positivity.
That is a choice. And you create positive momentum for yourself. You spend your energy going forward rather than being dragged back into the past, digging up old, slight problems, debts, whatever it is. That's a choice. And I think that what happens over time, if you continually stop yourself from judging or thinking negatively and choose to create a reality of happiness, then in fact that spreads.
So let's say you focus on that in the morning. Then, inevitably the afternoon's gonna be pretty good too, but also likewise, Mike, if I'm in a well of self pity in the morning, it's pretty hard to transition into a fabulous, happy afternoon. Isn't it?
Look, we've heard from individuals like William H McRaven telling us to make our bed in the morning.
And I think so. Insight around that behavior is actually pretty similar to what we're discussing here. It really depends on how much control you take around the way that you behave and then B visualize or C that world around you. Because those are the things that you can control. You can't control whether your drill Sergeant is gonna bury you up to your neck and sand.
As part of an exercise, you can't control. If somebody's gonna cut you off. In their car, you can't control. If you are gonna receive maybe a bad email or a message. And like you say, it's because everybody else has their own things going on as well. But the reality that we carve out of those situations is then something that we can control.
We can't control how other people are reacting to things, but we can control how we react to things. And what I think to build on what you are saying is this reality is just your kind of understanding of the world. And if you can change that, if you can recognize the way that you are behaving, the way that you interpret things through reflection, and we'll come onto some of these in a minute, then you can start to change that perspective.
And I think that's the biggest aha for me during this series, this idea of perspective, how you view. Happiness. Yeah. How you can try and start to take that little bit more, let's say ownership or engagement around happiness in order to go out and feel that little bit better.
Let's take one. Another show.
I think that is the absolute epitome of this, which is Yoko willing, extreme ownership. Yeah. And something that we always have a lot of fun with is in our Navy seal voices. when Yoko says The world's against you. Things are are not going your way. The way you respond is a problem. Good. Good. And that really is it.
You can say. Problems. Oh, this is really bad. Oh man, man stuff is falling apart. Or you can say, you know what? Okay. There is something inside of this that is gonna teach me, help me grow, help me learn. And I'm not saying from a moment that it's easy, but what I'm saying it is a choice. You can go about stretching yourself.
Embracing life, because things are always gonna go wrong in life and you can go and say, when these things happen, you can say, okay, good. There is, for some reason, this is happening for me. And I'm gonna choose to see this as an opportunity for growth, and I'm gonna do everything I can to make this a positive.
And if you get on, really. If you get through that, you can then get into the Gogan sphere. And that is where you actually search out hardship, challenge. You search for your boundaries and you go beyond, this is the highest level of performance where you not only when things don't quiet, go as planned.
You're like, okay, we'll get through this. There's something in this. It'll be. Problems. Good. Then you can go, Hey, I am going to search out challenge. I am gonna get so comfortable with discomfort. Aah, Joe Rogan, that you're gonna go through such big challenges and you are gonna enjoy being on that edge because that's where all your personal growth and potential is.
This is where Sean Aker's thinking goes far beyond happiness, but we can go right up into self actualization right at the top of Maslow's period. And that I think is super exciting. That is really at the destination here is far beyond overcoming challenges and having a happy disposition, but you can really.
And truly mark the very best version of yourself. And I think that's very exciting, but that ain't all we can learn from Shawn. Is
it? No, absolutely not. I think building on where you were just breaking down in terms of Seeing the world around you is almost visualizing how you see those challenges and those problems.
Good. Let's hear again around the book of happiness advantage, this time told from one of our favorite YouTubers productivity game who breaks down Sean's idea of the Tetris effect. At a study
At Harvard medical school, researchers paid 27 people to play Tetris for multiple hours a day, three days in a row.
For days after the study, some participants literally couldn't stop dreaming about shapes falling from the sky. They couldn't stop seeing their world as being made up of a sequence of Tetris blocks. One participant said that he would go outside for some fresh air after work, rub his eyes and look up at the Philadelphia skyline.
And. If I flip the victory building on its side, would it fit into the gap between the liberties one and two? What this study shows is that when we have repeated exposure to something, it spills into our daily experience, changing the way that we view situations in our daily lives. We have the opportunity each day to activate a Tetris of.
Act of opportunity. This could mean constantly surrounding ourselves with stories of perseverance and success. For me, this involves listening to books in my vehicle about successful historical figures like Ben Franklin and Winston Churchill, or listening to a podcast on personal development while working around the house.
Each moment, we have an opportunity to condition ourselves with positive resources that increase our ability to naturally see more opportunity
around us. Oh, ah, mark, this one, for me, This is priming your subconscious. This is something that we learned from Napoleon hill, think and grow rich, but I cannot begin to tell you the power of manifesting, imagining, visualizing.
Embracing a practice of happiness, of resilience, of strength, of determination. It's not only something you can use for happiness, this Tetra effect, but I believe if you want to be a well rounded thriving individual, then you can daily repeat and manifest how you choose to be in the world. And I think happiness is a key part of it.
Don't.
I think this approach, this Tetra effect idea is a huge Element mechanic framework practice that we can take away from Shawn's book. I think the, and I've been guilty of this mic before, and I'm sure you have, and I'm sure lots of listeners when you are really stressed about something, when maybe when you're feeling in the dumps or you've got, this thing hanging over your head.
I tend to dream about it. I'll think about it and maybe I'll obsess over it and I'll dream about it. And I love this experiment they did at Harvard, very simple play. Teris suddenly spills into your real life. If I'm immersing myself, as we've been discussing on the show in. Stressful dark thoughts, oh, life's so unfair. Oh, I wish I didn't have to deal with this. I'll put it off until tomorrow and you make excuses and the world is against you. What naturally happens? It's like coffee, it's percolating away. Isn't it. staying there. It's got nowhere to go, whereas, and it's just getting stronger and stronger for me.
This is such. Vivid and useful visualization that proves the value of. Daily mantras writing down into your to-do list, which is what I do. Things that inspire me about working hard. Maybe it's being positive, maybe it's being efficient. And occasionally looking back at them, I think journaling or reading plays a huge part as well, just surrounding yourself in these pretty positive practices that start to, as Sean calls out, train the mind.
Into recognizing panning recognition into noticing those things that kind of make you feel, maybe it's happy, maybe it's positive. Maybe it just puts a smile on your face. And then it starts to have that positive effect on everything else. You start to notice it more. Like we were learning with the Dalai Lama.
It's this. Topic or this habit that once you start doing it, it gets stronger and stronger. You get better at doing it. Like you've already said, Mike, it's a muscle that needs training. And this idea of conditioning your mind to view the world in patterns in order to train it, to see what I want it to see the positive blue sky, the smile on my partner's face.
Maybe it's my dog, whatever it is, these small things that at the time seem pretty small. Once you start to build them up into a very positive, almost Tetris effect. Again, building on that visualization for a second. It makes the whole, and I think that's such a fun pattern and behavior that we can do, not only for our mindsets, but also things that we can put into practice each day.
What are you, what come are you feeling? The Tetris effect?
Like I am. Yeah, look I'm very big on listening to and repeating mantras. Every single day. And it was a technique that I developed from reading, thinking and growing rich by Napoleon Hill. He talks about how you have to prime your subconscious to want to live, breathe.
Your success realizing your potential. And a great example was in the months before I ran my first marathon this year, I visualized committing to repeated a promise to myself that I would run that race. And I did it. I didn't stop. Thank goodness, cuz I was a bit of a knackered mark, but the point is this, I was of no doubt.
That I would run that race because for months and months I was repeating. I will run 42 kilometers. And I said it every day. So this is the Tetris effect. It just infuses it. It goes from conscious to subconscious and that's the compound effect. If you really work on things, you can Every single day, this is why we love atomic habits, because it's all about not just building habits, it's about building a lifestyle.
And what I would propose to you mark, this Tetris effect is part of it. The other part of it, I think, might be listening to the moonshots master series. What do you think?
Yes, I think you're right. I think one of the things that puts a smile on my face is being able to open up my Spotify or any podcast app and actually go out and seek out the moonshots master series, particularly when I'm fancying a bit of a deeper dive into topics like minds inter first principles, managing people motivation.
All sorts of interesting details into habits. Like we love to talk about as well as communication Mike.
Yes. So here's the thing. Maybe Patreon Isn't your thing, but for more than 40,000 of you, Spotify is. So if you actually. Go into your Spotify app, you can actually get access to the Moonshot's master series.
You can subscribe to that so you can get it all in the same place. Now you can go and do it in Patreon, but mark, why don't you walk us through, how do we find this Moonshot's master series? On Spotify.
It's pretty simple. Actually. You pop open your Spotify. Like a lot of us, 40,000 of us in fact are doing, when we're listening to the weekly show and you go up to the search bar and type in moonshots master, and that should come up pretty easily.
I don't think there's anybody else out there connected with us. Now, when you're in there, you can see a series of episodes. Some of them have a little icon say paid. Some of them are free trailers, but if you click on the about section and see more, there'll be a link. It'll say something quite inspiring about the deep dive that we do into the entrepreneurial growth area, but also a URL to anchor.fm where any of us can become a paid subscriber.
Now we're gonna continue off offering Patreon, of course, but this is gonna be a brand new way for those who want to maybe stay in the Spotify ecosystem, where you can subscribe to the Moonshot's master series.
Very handy. So if you're into Spotify and you wanna pick up the master series, jump in there into your search bar and get loaded.
Massive deep dives into the moonshots model, all of these practices to learn out loud together, to be the best version of yourself. And we have not stopped learning with Shawn and the happiness advantage. And we're gonna do something in a second. That sounds really weird, mark. You're gonna have to help us out.
He's gonna talk about falling up. What's all that? It's gonna be a tricky one, isn't it. But particularly when we are thinking about the opposite side of happiness, where you feel like you're falling down. So in this next clip, we're gonna hear about earning ability, who's breaking down and discussing Shore's idea of this idea falling up, but also this concept of prioritization of happiness.
Now, no matter how hard you try to be positive, bad things are going to happen to you. And when stress and crisis hits our brains map different paths to help us. You've heard the saying what doesn't kill. You only make you stronger. That's only true if you view those crisis points as an opportunity to grow and develop.
When being sent off to battle, soldiers are regularly told by their doctors that they'll either come back normal or with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder, but acre tells us that there's an often overlooked third option called post traumatic. Basically the story you tell yourself about adversity determines how you will deal with it.
People that have a positive explanatory style interpret adversity as a local and temporary, or as those with a pessimistic explanatory style. See the events as global and permanent to help you see a path from adversity to opportunity practice the A, B, C, D model of interpretation, adversity. Believe.
Consequence and disputation adversity is what happened. We can't change it. Belief is our reaction to the event, which is a conscious choice. Our belief leads to a consequence. And if our current belief about the situation leads us down a path to a negative consequence, we can dispute our belief because that's all it is
a belief.
Mark. Look, if you can say, everything happens for a reason and that reason is to serve me. This is the technique on how to do what Shawn a refers to in the happiness advantages. This is how we follow up. Now, what I think is interesting, mark is often when you know what is hitting the fan. We almost invariably always.
Think, oh, it's terrible. You get stressed, you get anxious and you totally lack the capacity to see the bright side. Isn't that the enemy
here? I think that this might be one of the big. To build on what we were saying earlier, the bigger aha here. And it's similar to what you were saying in the previous clip mic, this idea of seeing challenges as opportunities to say.
Good. But I think this, again takes some practice, doesn't it? Because not only is it something where you are trying to. See an opportunity for growth from a particular challenge, right? This is a bit tough. Maybe I'm learning something new, but that's great. I can journal about it later. I can reflect on it.
I can get stronger for the next time, but I think it's also about reframing your idea of disregarding certain situations. So exactly as you were just saying, then Mike, when something hits the fan. Then you naturally wanna shy away, don't you? Yeah. It's fight or flight. Yeah. Yeah. You feel as though it is the only option.
The only desirable option is to flee. I'm gonna save that problem for another day tomorrow. I'll feel better about it, but invariably, you feel exactly the same or you feel worse the next day because you've delayed the attention that you need to give it. And for me, Mike, again, going back to the idea of percolating on something that's quite negative when I've got something on my mind, that feels a little.
Let's say the UN is positive. Maybe it's something about hitting the fan. And I feel a bit nervous about it. If I put it off for too long, you know what happens? I feel worse and that's because I'm not addressing it. I'm not trying to go out and take action over it. And I think what, where Sean's idea around post-traumatic growth can really come in here is trying to reframe that moment of.
Noticing, it feels a bit unpleasant. Ooh. That email, that call that conversation. That didn't feel so good. okay. Let's have a think about this. Let's reflect on it rather than instantly, going out and blaming that person, whatever it may be.
This really, for me, Brings us to one of the biggest themes of the Moonshot's podcast, which is a growth mindset.
And we don't have to avoid failure. We can embrace it. Some of the arguments that I would give you, let's say we failed at something just then at least we know in the future, what not to do, that's like the most pessimistic upside I can give you on something. But maybe this brings me closer.
To find the right answer. Because let's say there's a hundred possibilities and I tried one far. At least now I'm down one. I'm down to 99 possibilities. Yeah.
Fair. Exactly. Yeah. And this is the same concept I believe when we come to creating. Products and utilizing prototypes.
Yeah. Testing and learning. Yeah.
And it's okay if it fails we're that much closer to success, but the other bigger thing is something that clip touched on is if it doesn't. Kill me then it's making me stronger. And this reminds me of Zaha. Who did who? As an immigrant woman in the sixties was learning to become an architect in London.
And you can only just imagine. The challenges she faced getting into that boys club, but then she decided to bring some radical curvy, organic design shapes to a world of angles. . Yeah. And her mark has been enormous on the places that occupy our cities and spaces and environments and shapes, and she transformed architecture.
And she literally said every challenge she met, she saw is actually making her stronger and more capable. And I think that's the highest form of this kind of falling up. You're reducing the variables. You're cutting it down. Like I if that didn't work, at least now I can focus on other things cuz maybe that'll work.
But more than that, you can know that you have overcome that. And do you know. When you've just run a marathon mark. One of the most powerful feelings is the whoa, that was tough, but I did it. And there is a feeling of completeness that you cross that line and you are done your you are really done and I've never experienced dumb like that before, because I was so peaceful.
That I had run as hard as I could. I had run 42 kilometers or 26 miles. And I felt I wouldn't say that I was exuberant. It was even more profound than that. I had planned and worked for months. I had achieved something I had as, as they say in America, I'd left it all on the field. Like I I couldn't have gone, a second faster.
And I was just happy and so satisfied. Was it as fast as I'd wanted to? No. Was I saw, yeah, but here's the thing, like I gave it everything. I had a good plan, stuck to the plan. Got the job done and yeah, next time I'll do it better and prepare even better. And. This to me is at the very heart of falling up.
There were runs in practice that really hurt. There was soreness and discomfort that really hurt. But at the end of the day, when you look at something that's very easy to measure, you ran the race, you complete it. It was a very deep sense of happiness and fulfill. And that's, what's there for all of us on anything we want to do is see all of that hardship as falling up and that we will all have our own math post marathon satisfaction, regardless of it's something in your personal or your professional life, it's all there for the taking.
I think we have to demystify, take the veneer of how bad failure is and say, good. Now I'm that much closer to finding success. That didn't kill me so I can keep going. So I can take so much from failure. I
think, as you, as I'm listening to you to speak, Mike, something's really coming back to me.
And that's the work of Mark Manson, the subtle art of not giving a hand. As you might remember, when we did a show on a number 167, I think he was really helping us. Compartmentalize how much we are influenced by the opinions of others. And I wonder what might happen when it comes to let's continue the marathon case.
What probably puts off a lot of people is the perception of others. Why what might they think of me? Maybe they are questioning why I'm doing a marathon. Maybe they'll be really interested in my finish time. Maybe they'll think negatively of my training regime. Maybe they'll laugh at me behind my back.
All of these things that. Are gonna trip you up and probably either a make you train poorly or B not make you take the challenge or the risk or booking the marathon at all. Cause you're worried about those other people. And I think isn't it a shame how much we are influenced. And again, coming back to this topic of happiness.
You are influenced by, unless you keep it in check the opinions of others, to the extent that you won't give yourself a chance at being happy. Yeah. Cause you haven't given yourself a chance to go out and face adversity and overcome it. What a,
what an ironic twist that we deprive ourselves of a human rider feeling happy either through fear of failure, self doubt.
Which are just things in your mind. That's the craziest thing. Yeah. Like you might not go out to a social event because you're uncomfortable meeting people. You might not dance on the dance floor cuz you don't wanna look like an idiot. You might not run a marathon cuz you don't wanna fail. And everybody goes, you didn't finish.
Who cares?
Yeah,
exactly. Who freaking cares. Just do it. That's the invitation here, but our invitations. Unlocking the happiness advantage mat we ain't
done yet. That's right. We do have one more clip. Don't we, Mike, and actually this one more clip sadly brings us to the end of this current series on happiness, but don't you worry, listeners and members.
We have a stomping bookend to the happiness series, as well as closing the show with Sean AKA on the happiness advantage. And that's hearing from the queen of television. And the individual who I think Mike has probably brought to light a lot of the members of our moonshots library by now, and that's Oprah Winfrey.
So we're gonna hear as closing out the show in today's episode on the happiness advantage, Sean and Oprah, talking about cause and effect. How do we
become happier
today? I think that to be, to recognize the fact that this moment, the fact that you got to watch this conversation on happiness is a privilege, right?
It's an opportunity that many of the people in the world didn't get and. We've gotta not only be grateful for that moment, but take it to the next moment.
Yeah. Then the question, why did that show up in your life right now? Yes, because people needed a little
happiness lift and to recognize that people around us need to hear what they didn't just get to hear.
If there's somebody in your life who didn't. Get to hear about that happiness could be a choice. We need to actually be living models for that for other people.
Yeah. One of the other things I liked that we didn't mention before is you talk about random acts of kindness. Yes.
Which for years on the Oprah show, we would, we actually created shows around. Random acts of kindness and oh my God, you wanna feel good about a day, right? Do's just something randomly good for somebody that they wouldn't expect. And it doesn't have to be like a big gift or something, just a random
gesture.
It's a happiness multiplier, right? Because not only does it make you happy and make those people happy, but as soon as you start talking about it, even. Thinking back to some of those random acts of kind, we immediately started to smile. Yes. And what I'd love about it is, yeah. I remember going through the door,
knocking on the door with a woman during that years, knocking on the door and saying you have the day off, I've checked with your boss.
Oh, that was such a fun moment. First she went, ah, slammed
the door breaks, right? yeah. Yeah. I, but the other thing it shows us is how much power we have. We have the power to actually change the reality we see around us. Yeah. And one thing, so we've talked about is that, oftentimes we just feel like this world.
My happiness are not like, if thanks are not going well, it's because of what the world is giving me. It's always about powerlessness compared to our genes or to our chemicals or to our environment. And what we're finding is that when you do a random act of kindness, it shatters that because what it says is.
Whoa. I could actually not only change my own levels of happiness, but I could change 'em for other people. I'm gonna start writing the social script and I'm gonna write a script that causes people to be able to choose happiness,
better mark cause and effect. This brings a beautiful loop back to the first clip that we had, which is happiness.
First success later that's caused an effect right there. ISN. And
again, if in a funny sort of way, it brings me all the way back to that first episode we did in the happiness series with Dan Harris. Oh yeah. Who was always chasing success. And in doing so he burnt himself out and then he discovered these tips, tricks and habits to be that little bit happier.
And where we've ended up here with Sean Aker is somebody who devoted his life, his career, his education, or around happiness. And I think it's funny. Formula or maybe it's the fulcrum and lever, in fact, where we've got Sean throughout today's show talking to us about how, if you start with that happiness, you can influence and change your reality.
And what he's covering there with Oprah, not only is. This great little proactive daily tip to do may be a random act of kindness whether they're buying a coffee for a stranger or just opening the door for somebody, whatever it might be. It can be very small and has a compound effect, but he's also talking about how we all have the ability to change the reality that surround us because ultimately the reality that's around us is influenced by how we visualize it and see it, how we interpret events and
so on.
And I think this. Has. So much to give us in terms of happiness, but I would argue that this kind of thinking is that the highest level of Moonshot thinking is where we understand that our situation is our choice. The situation is our responsibility. There is no blame or judgment for anybody else.
We can make their choice. If we're not happy, make the choice, start with a smile, start with a random act of kindness. Start the ball. Rolling. Continue to do it every single day. This is so moonshot, this interconnects with so many other things that we've talked about over almost 200 years, let me tell you this to me is like a great way to bring together the work of Sean Aker. Take ownership for it, make it a practice, it's like going to the gym. You gotta do it every day. You gotta get that exercise and flex those muscles. Whew, mark. This has been a great way to close out. Not only the Shawn AKA show, but the happiness series.
What does it leave? You with? What's the one thought that's gonna get more attention from you after we finish recording?
Oh, I think it's gonna be the Tetra effect. Only because for two reasons, one, because it's such a vivid and easy to understand F. And mindset hack, but also it just reinforces the idea of reflecting on things quite regularly, revisiting that journal, revisiting those mantras and trying to focus on the things that make me happy because they will ultimately ladder up.
Maybe it'll complete the whole line, like Tetris, take it one step further, but more importantly, it's gonna be something that I'm going to. Then existing within it'll be something that's continually on my mind, which I really like from a positive reinforcement aspect. Yeah. What about yourself, Mike?
I'm loving the Tetris effect. I'm loving Fulman. I just love anything. That's taking an idea and putting it into practice, bit of a sucker for that. So I'm gonna happily swim in those two for days, perhaps weeks after this. Listen, thank you for sharing your fulcrums and your levers and your Tetra effects and your falling ups, because this has been a delightful one, even might say a happy show and series, and thank you to you.
Our listeners and our members. Today was show 197, where we studied the work of Sean Aker and his book, the happiness advantage. And it started with the fight, the battle that when we're in real hard work, we think, if I work just a little bit harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm a bit more successful, I might then just find happiness.
You're wrong. It's happiness. First success. Second. This is a big idea. And it starts with changing your performance by changing your mindset, using the fulcrum and the lever. And then. You have to understand that you cannot control the world, but you can control your reaction to it, your view, and use that testos effect.
And as you go out on the journey every single day, every single week to try and be the best version of yourself, some things aren't gonna happen. And you have to understand the mantra. Everything happens. For a reason. And that reason is there to serve me. This is what Sean called falling up and bringing it home where Sean and Oprah together saying this is all about actions, have a direct effect on their outcomes.
You're the boss, your driving it's cause and effect. And the choice is yours. That's so much of what we got from Shawn Aker and the entire happiness series. And it really truly is what we're all about. The moonshots podcast, where we're about learning together, learning out loud together so that we can be the very best, happy version of ourselves.
Okay. That's a wrap.