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The 21 Day Road to Happiness

The 21 Day Road to Happiness

by Kathy Seaton

a sign post of changing to a new way of life

Today’s post is about happiness and career success, taught in the from a real life experience I had a very, very long time ago. It’s a bit rambling, but stick with it, I promise there’s a moral at the end of the story.

When I was about 28 I worked in advertising. Grueling career. I worked with a ton of cheeseheads, which was epic for me because I love the Packers, especially Brett Favre. I love that man – but I won’t digress into my laundry list unread love letters.

So us fans decided to head down for a Packer game at the ol’ Murph stadium. We rented a bus – which we immediately crashed at the rental place – but it was drivable. We were all decked out in our Packer regalia, face painted, with pom-poms. During the bus ride down, our Wisconsin native, Bob, did a classic Packer cheese and booze passing. After numerous shots of room temp black berry brandy we arrived at the stadium.

We had an amazing time tailgating and an even better time in the stadium when the Packers won. BTW, it’s the only time I’ve seen the Packers win in person after chasing them all around the U.S. I yelled “God Bless Brett Favre” and then thousands of fans chanted with me as we left the stadium. Back on the road we decided more black berry brandy was critical. So we drank the whole way home. Good call right?

Come the next morning. OH MY GOD. I could hear the ants crawling under my carpet. I was dry heaving while putting on my makeup. And what did the day have in store for me? A huge client meeting with our best client, including all of my Packer peers. We were absolutely DYING in the meeting. We were all taking turns hitting the lieu. Somehow, someway we made it through.

The best Sunday of our lives, turned into the worst Monday imaginable. Funny how such a positive experience can turn negative on a dime. Our bleary eyes made us all regret our decisions. The thrill of the day was lost on a stuffy client lunch, with hangovers that could kill a pack of wolves.

Isn’t this relatable to our experiences at work? Massive success one day, complete failure the next. (I told you there was a moral to this story.)

Shawn Achor has done a ton of research on the idea of linking success to happiness. What precedes happiness—is it really success? What he found is that we’re constantly measured on the average and we’re competitively wired to weed out the weirdos, outliers, and those like our selves—that fall in the bar graph as average. Which sucks, because we all have potential that is outside that damn graph. As we complete our last accomplishment, we just raise our own bar that much higher.

Surprisingly, he found that 75% of participants in his study actually viewed stress as a challenge, rather than a threat. How rad is that—only 25% of the sample defined happiness as success!

He says that its time to escape the cult of the average and that starts with NOT studying the average. Our brains our wired for a certain degree of happiness, but that happiness depends on the lens through which we look. He mentions his peers at Harvard. They were so excited to receive their acceptance letters, but once the stress hit, the privilege diminished. And that colored their view of their experience.

He suggests that we need to move the average up, which we all have the potential to do, but it takes hard work. Does that mean working harder? No.

Rather, we decide to reverse the formula for happiness and success. We decide to be positive in the present. And realize that it is proven that by reversing the cycle, sales people have better sales, doctors give better diagnoses and overall we’re more productive as a society. And with that, working harder, smarter, and more intelligently actually pays off.

So, this is his recommendation. There are 5 things that you can do everyday, for 21 days straight to set you on a new path. But you can’t waiver, everyday for 21 days:

  1. Give gratitude
  2. Journal your experiences, keep it positive though
  3. Exercise
  4. Meditate
  5. Perform random acts of kindness

So what do we need to do to be unhappy? Keep living our lives I guess. Or, we can leverage the “Happiness Advantage”. Can I be happy in a mere 21 days? I personally think that his suggestions are at least worth a try. Like most of you, I would love to be satisfied at work and in my personal life—all along feeling successful—and more importantly, happy.

If you get time, try the model for 21 days and let me know what happens.