Filed under: happiness, Lifestyle trends, Thinking | Tags: shawn anchor, think positive
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. He is the CEO of Good Think Inc., a Cambridge-based consulting firm which researches positive outliers — people who are well above average — to understand where human potential, success and happiness intersect. Based on his research and 12 years of experience at Harvard, he clearly and humorously describes to organizations how to increase happiness and meaning, raise success rates and profitability, and create positive transformations that ripple into more successful cultures. He is also the author of The Happiness Advantage.
Filed under: Community, happiness, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends | Tags: Bhutan, GDP, GNH, wellbeing
borrowed from evilcabeeza's photostream @ Flickr
Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product.
The term was coined by Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972. It signalled his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. Like many worthy moral goals it is somewhat easier to state than to achieve, nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for the Five Year planning process and all the derived planning documents that guide the economic and development plans to the country.
While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH is based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.
Measuring our Progress
On the 16th of November Bhutan hold their annual forum on Gross National Happiness A country that has facinated many of us for decades since the King of Bhutan refocused the country’s vision to include and more importantly measure, the country’s happiness in an effort to start to manage that as effectively as it would traditionally seek to manage economic growth. Below is an article from The Australian suggesting that Bhutan’s goal of happiness could be a lesson for us all. I’ve also posted some additional research reports from the global wellbeing studies from the nef in the UK that you might also find interesting.
