Ted - Shawn Achor
I like the optimism of this video, I don’t know how strong is the correlation between positive actitude and performance but it makes sense in many situations, and in any case is a nice way to live.
If I know everything about your external world, i can only predict 10% of your long term happiness. 90% of your long term happiness if predicted not by the external world but by the way your brain processes the world.
Most companies and schools follow a formula for success which is this: "if i work harder, i'll be more successful, an if i am more successful, then i'll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motive our behaviour and the problem is, is scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons: first, every time your brain has a success, you just change the goal post? of what a success look like: you have great grades, now you have to get better grades, you've gone to a good school, now you have to get a better school, you've got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, now you have to change your sales target (...) we think that we have to be successful, then we'll be happier. The real problem ist that our brains work in the opposite order, if you can rise somebody's levels of positivity in the present, then their brains experience what we now call a 'happinness advantage', which is you brain in positive performs significantly better than it does in negative, neutral or stress. Your inteligence raises, your creative rises, your energy level rises."
I didn’t know the word undergird, I put it in a note.