Livestream: Rewire ‘job’ perspectives with a positive push

Shawn Achor is the CEO of Good Think Inc, where he researches and teaches about positive psychology. His Ted Talk offers a fresh perspective on helping individuals rewire their thought patterns and use positive reinforcement to turn perspectives in their favour. In his hilarious repartees, Shawn across as an individual who seems to have mastered psychological reasoning at a relatively young age. He recounts an incident as a 7-year-old, involving his sister Amy, 2 years his junior. The children are play-acting a battle in their bedroom using their bunk beds as their equivalent of trenches. In the middle of warfare, Shawn to his horror sees that his sister has fallen out of her bunk and landed on her knees, and on her palms, on all fours, almost like a cougar in the wild. But instead of allowing her to raise an alarm, Shawn tells her that no animal other than a cat lands on her feet, and that Amy might be – a special unicorn. Amy spends the rest of the night dreaming about her new identity, while nursing a mild sprain.

He even talks about the state of mind of students who have gotten into Harvard. Shawn says that the initial rush of excitement gradually makes way for anxieties regarding semesters, tests, grades, employment opportunities and more. So, the entire logic of success being a determinant of happiness is a flawed premise, according to Shawn. But not all is lost as help is around the corner, a minor tweaking or rewiring of the way we look at things could bring about massive changes to our attitude both professionally and personally. Shawn tell us, “Writing down three new things that you are grateful for 21 days in a row (three new things each day) is how we start. And at the end of that, the brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.”

Journalling about a positive experience one has had over the past 24 hours allows the brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behaviour matters. Follow this up with meditation which allows your brain to get over the idea of doing multiple tasks at once. It allows the brain to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness – like writing one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support network.

Title: The happy secret to better work   

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?

Synopsis:  Traditional wisdom dictates that we should work hard to be happy, but could we be thinking about things backwards? In this hilarious talk that moves at a rapid clip, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that happiness inspires us to be more productive. 

SHAWNSPEAK: “If I’m interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, we’re creating the cult of the average with science. If I asked, “How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom,” scientists change the answer to “How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?” And we tailor the class towards the average.