The Woohoo! Report

February 09, 2009, 8:15 PM
by
Ray Williams

Does happiness bring you financial success? Or is it visa-versa. Or
is it a chicken-and-the-egg question. Recent research seems to support
the idea that happiness brings financial success and not the reverse.
In fact, there’s a growing body of research now that supports the
connections among happiness, effectiveness, productivity and success.

Sonja Lyubamirsky, a University of California author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, has studied happiness extensively for almost 20 years. In her research she often asked, “What makes people happy?” Until a few years ago, her answer always reflected the common wisdom and empirical findings – “It’s relationships, stupid.”
In other words, she responded that our interpersonal ties – the
strength of our friendships, familial bonds, and intimate connections -
show the highest correlations with well-being.

Lyubamirsky was
surprised, after completing a study with fellow researchers Ed Diener
and Laura King, to discover that not only social relationships are both
the causes and consequences of being happy but just as important was
being involved with meaningful work.

The evidence, for example,
demonstrates that people who have jobs distinguished by autonomy,
meaning and variety are happier. The research also showed that superior
performance, creativity, and productivity are significantly higher with
happier people than less happy people. . And, of course, the income
that a job provides is also associated with happiness, though we now
all know that money has more of an impact when we have less of it than
more of it.

Why does our work make us happy? Because,
Lyubamirsky claims, it provides us a sense of identity, structure to
our days, and important and meaningful life goals to pursue. Perhaps
even more important, it furnishes us with close colleagues, friends and
even marriage partners. The story doesn’t end there. Not only does
productivity at the office make people happy, but happier people have
been found to be more productive. They are better “organizational
citizens” (going above and beyond their job duties), better
negotiators, and are less likely to take sick days, to quit, or to
suffer burnout.

But here’s the real point. Happy people appear
more likely to accrue greater wealth in life. For example, research has
demonstrated that the happier a person is at one point in his life, the
higher income he will earn at a later point. Researchers showed that
those who were happy as college freshmen had higher salaries 16 years
later, when they were about 37!

But before we find yet another
reason to be envious of very happy people (not only do they get to feel
great, but they get to have good jobs and make more money as well!),
consider what the research on happiness and work suggests. It suggests
that, when it comes to work life, we can create our own so-called
“upward spirals.” The more successful we are at our jobs, the higher
income we make, and the better work environment we have, the happier we
will be. This increased happiness will foster greater success, more
money, and an improved work environment, which will further enhance
happiness, and so on and so on and so on.

So why don’t executives
and managers take advantage of this research. Why isn’t happiness
assessed in hiring and promoting people?

Ray Willams is
Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams
Associates, companies proving leadership training and executive
coaching. Reach him at rwilliams@successiqu.com.  www.successiqu.com

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Studies demonstrate value of mental training

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune
Posted: 02/05/2009 07:57:57 PM MST

Evolution has given the human brain a vast prefrontal cortex, a ball of neural tissue that enables us to engage in abstract reasoning, reflect on the past, and make predictions about the future.

It also allows us to wander a mental landscape filled with emotional minefields, says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

“It allows us to screw up our emotions far more than other animals,” he said during a visit to the University of Utah this week. “It allows us to persist in emotional responses beyond which they are still useful.”

The answer to that disordered brain function may lie in mental training perfected by Buddhist monks over the centuries in Tibet, Davidson told a crowd of at least 600 who overflowed the Utah Museum of Fine Arts auditorium Wednesday for the Tanner Lecture on Human Values.

Davidson has become famous for using high-tech imaging to document the startling control the monks demonstrate over their emotional states. His resulting ideas about “neuroplasticity” — the notion that we can enhance brain function through purposeful mental training — threaten to upend conventional psychotherapy, which has little scientific basis.

“We were all taught that the brain is different from other organs in the way it changes over time. We thought the process was one of irrevocable death,” Davidson said. “We now know that view is definitively wrong. The brain is capable of generating 7,000
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to 9,000 cells a day.”

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, allows researchers like Davidson to observe brain function with unprecedented precision, bringing new scientific rigor to social science, experts said Thursday morning at a follow-up panel discussion. Davidson’s findings hold potential for developing mental training techniques to improve people’s health and quality of life, said psychiatrist Daniel Siegel.

“These are not just weird ideas. These are research-based interventions that can be applied in the real world,” said Siegel, an expert in the field of interpersonal neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “When you teach these reflective skills to kids, they not only do better emotionally and socially, they also do better academically.”

Davidson’s work with monks was triggered by a visit with the Dalai Lama. The exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism recruited masters of the faith, monks who had spent an average of 34,000 hours in intense meditation, for Davidson’s studies.

Using scans that track brain function, the psychologist recorded high levels of activity in the parts of the monks’ brains associated with emotional well-being. In further studies on other people, Davidson documented measurable changes in brain activity after two-week periods of mental training.

“The brain is the only organ designed to change in response to experience. Musical training changes the structure of the brain and when it begins earlier in life the greater the influence,” he said.

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