Happiness author Shawn Achor is at it again, letting us know how transforming the pursuit of success raises our achievement, happiness, and well-being.
Achor starts his case of how teamwork leads to success by pointing out examples of anti-teamwork. Toddlers are praised for doing things by them self - and so it begins. Children are reminded that their future success depends on individual grades and test scores. The problem is, kids who test so well struggle to work with others, Achor says. At the workplace, we value what we accomplish on our own.
"We spend the first twenty-two years of our life being judged and praised for individual attributes and what we can achieve alone, when, for the rest of our life, our success is almost entirely interconnected with that of others" points out Achor.
Achor says this emphasis on individual achievement is due to "the rise of technology and social media (which) allow us to broadcast individual accomplishments 24/7, constantly feeding competition while simultaneously stoking insecurity." Also the competition schools and companies put on us as a way of measuring higher success by individual accomplishments.
Big Potential's message is that we achieve our highest potential not by survival of the fittest, but survival of the best fit.
Happiness is an interconnected choice, not just an individual one. Our potential is interconnected with others. Small potential is limited success you achieve alone, whereas big potential is the success you can achieve in a virtuous cycle with others.
Achor asserts that research proves this in a variety of ways:
- A study of male lightening bugs lighting up in unison to attract more females. When they light up randomly, their success rate is just 3%. When done together, it's 82%.
- The 1948 Framington Heart Study on cardiovascular health and social connections finding that healthy people in a network increase the chance of others being healthy.
- He reminds us of when Aristotle's famous quote "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
- Edison worked with a team of collaborator inventors.
Achor's Virtuous Cycle is every success achieved gives you more resources, which leads to greater success. To create Virtuous Cycles of potential, you need to plant SEEDS which are surround, expand, enhance, defend and sustain.
His chapters on these SEEDS with practical ways to apply them, and personal anecdotes make for an interesting read.
Big Potential's message of working together, not alone, to achieve success, is really such a basic idea at the core. "Big potential is about gaining a competitive advantage not by limiting others' success rates, but by raising them." So in other words, be more social, less self-centered, and work with others to achieve success, which ultimately is happiness.
I received Big Potential in a GoodReads giveaway.
Until next time,
Kara
His chapters on these SEEDS with practical ways to apply them, and personal anecdotes make for an interesting read.
Big Potential's message of working together, not alone, to achieve success, is really such a basic idea at the core. "Big potential is about gaining a competitive advantage not by limiting others' success rates, but by raising them." So in other words, be more social, less self-centered, and work with others to achieve success, which ultimately is happiness.
I received Big Potential in a GoodReads giveaway.
Kara
