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Health & Fitness

The Happiness Advantage (Part 1)

How happiness can fuel your success!

While a large portion of the books we read at Achieve Fitness are on fitness and nutrition, we always make it a point to seek out information that will not only help us become better coaches and business owners, but also better people. We believe there is always room to grow, so we seek out the experts in the areas where we seek to improve.

Most recently, we've read the book The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. The Happiness Advantage lays out seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. The entire book was enlightening and incredibly well-researched. We’d love to delve into each principle, but for the purposes of this blog, we are going to focus on the two that we have found most pertinent to what we do at Achieve Fitness – Principle #1 and Principle #6. We will cover Principle #1 today and will cover Principle #6 in part two later this week!

Principle #1: “The Happiness Advantage: How Happiness Gives your Brain – and Your Organization – the Competitive Edge.”

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In this principle, Achor discusses how it is conventionally thought that happiness follows success. For instance we believe that if we just get into the college of our dreams, or just get that job we want, or just lose 10lbs, then we will be happy. However, what we usually find is that once we are successful in reaching those goals, we run into new stressors that continue to keep us from being truly happy. Once we lose 10lbs, we decide that we still don’t like the way our stomach looks, and we say, “if I just lose 10 more pounds, then I will be happy.”

Through years of positive psychology research, the happiness advantage principle shows that we’ve actually had it backwards all this time. That in fact success follows happiness – or in other words – happiness fuels success. Study after study has shown that when people are primed to feel happy, they are more successful in completing the task at hand than those who are primed to feel stressed or those who are not primed at all.

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We’ve seen this come in to play time and time again as a personal trainer for people trying to lose weight. More often than not, the goal of losing 10lbs becomes an all consuming, stress-inducing task, and the person at hand won’t allow themselves to feel happy until they’ve reached the goal. This type of person is typically setting themselves up to fail. The stress causes an increase in cortisol (a fat storage hormone) which makes it more difficult to lose weight, and keeps the person further away from finding happiness.

The more successful cases of fat loss are typically seen in people who – while striving for weight loss – focus their energy on things like lifting more weight and getting stronger. These people find happiness in the journey, rather than in the outcome. Shawn Achor describes his interpretation of happiness as, “the joy we feel striving after our potential.” My experience over the past 6 years has shown that this inverse view on happiness – that it precedes success – is in full effect when it comes to accomplishing fitness goals!

Now, it’s one thing to say, “okay, I’ll just be happy and success will follow” and it’s another thing to put it into action. Knowing that it’s not always easy to just put on a happy face, Achor offers several proven ways to improve your mood and raise your level of happiness. Here are a few:

Meditate: Achor explains that research shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness, lower stress, and improve immune function.

Find Something to Look Forward To: Often the most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation. When you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about an upcoming event that you’re really looking forward to. The anticipation will light up pleasure centers in your brain!

Commit Conscious Acts of Kindness: Achor recommends picking one day a week and making it a point to commit five acts of kindness. These need to be deliberate and conscious (looking back on your day and remembering that you held the door for someone doesn’t count.) The example he gives: pay the toll for someone behind you on the highway!

Exercise: (our personal favorite!) Exercise releases endorphins which are pleasure-inducing hormones. Being more physically active can boost your mood, reduce your stress levels, and help us be more engaged in the rest of our every day tasks. In many studies, exercise has actually been shown to be as effective as anti-depressants in raising happiness levels in depressed patients.

The Happiness Advantage was an extremely constructive and beneficial book for us and we hope our brief overview can help you get on track to putting happiness and positivity at the forefront of your priorities!

Stay tuned for part 2 where we’ll discuss Principle #6: The 20-Second Rule: How to Turn Bad Habits into Good Ones by Minimizing Barriers to Change!

Stay Happy!

The Achieve Fitness Team

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