Happiness -> Success NOT Success -> Happiness

This blog post was inspired by a TED video (as have been many others) called The happy secret to better work. The presenter is Shawn Achor and he studies positive psychology. I've read a bit about positive psychology as a set of tools for improving one's life in many regards.

I won't summarize the TED talk -- it would be like trying to summarize a painting -- but I do want to note the conclusions of positive psychology that he referred to in his talk.

He had a slide entitled "Small Changes Ripple Outward." It lists five examples of practices which can lead to lasting positive change in a person. I have implemented these strategies in my life and I can attest that they work phenomenally. They are:

1. 3 gratitudes (Emmons & McCullough, 2003)
2. Journaling (Slatcher & Pennebaker, 2006)
3. Exercise (Babyak et al., 2000)
4. Meditation (Dweck, 2007)
5. Random acts of kindness (Lyubomirsky, 2005)

I included the authors in case you are interested in reading more about each tool like I am.

What I got from the lecture is that you should make life choices based on whether you will be happy with the results of your decision. For example, if you are choosing a career, you should choose it based on whether you will experience flow in your daily activities.

Flow is a concept with which I first became familiar during summer 2011, when I was doing a lot of introspective thinking. I would describe it as being wholly engaged and mentally involved in whatever it is you are doing. It is living entirely in the present either for just a moment or for an extended period.

Thinking about it, I've experienced this mental state and I'm sure that you have too. For me, it happens when working on an intricate puzzle or problem. My mind is devoid of everything other than the task at hand. I've experienced it a lot lately when I've been working on my 4th year project in the robotics lab at school.

Perhaps you have experienced it too when spending quality face-to-face time with your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend or when playing a remarkably engaging video game. Perhaps it was when you went for a bike ride or a hike and took in the beauty of the world around you without at all considering where in this world you were expected to be next. To an athlete, it might be called "being in the zone" or for a gamer it might be "pwning."

The term was created by Csíkszentmihályi, a researcher in this area. (Don't ask me how to pronounce it) It came from people describing themselves as being carried by a current of water while experiencing the concept of flow. There's also a TED video about flow. In the wikipedia article about it, there are ten factors which accompany the experience:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
2. Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
10. Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Read number eight again. And once more. Work becomes effortless? That sounds good to me. It's for this reason that I think that flow should be an important consideration in all life decisions. You must ask yourself, "Will I be able to have flow if I do this?" It encompasses everything that is needed to be a joyous, creative person with a zest for living. After you've asked and answered this question, then you can ask questions like, "How much will I make? How famous will I become? What will other people think of me?" But if you have your first answer, the other answers won't matter much.

Shawn Achor argues that happiness would ultimately lead to success. In my experience, he couldn't be more correct. Looking back, the only times I've failed at something in life were caused by improper consideration of flow. I've held jobs that I hated and, upon reflection, I never experienced flow in any of them. I've held, (and currently hold), jobs that I loved and each of them allowed me to experience flow at least a large majority of the time.

Success does not lead to happiness. It's the other way around. Why don't they teach us this in school when we're kids? I can't argue with the data.