Connecting Happiness and Success_A Guide to Creating Success Through Happiness
Page 1
Connecting Happiness and Success
Daily Happiness Tool
We have created an application that will provide you with daily happiness nudges. Go to MyHappiness.io on any device to login.
You can also find more tools and resources at ConnectingHappinessandSuccess.com
Foreword
I believe success begins with clarity.
In my book Strategic Acceleration, I establish the three-part foundation for succeeding at the speed of life: Clarity, Focus and Execution. Everything begins with a clear vision, and nothing excels without it. You may have laser-like focus, and your execution may be unparalleled, but if there is not clarity on where to apply those efforts, your efforts are wasted.
Another principle I’ve discovered over the past 30 years of working with some of the world’s highest achievers is that those who live the most fulfilling lives are those who don’t sacrifice happiness for success, but rather leverage their happiness to help fuel their success. They view happiness as a strategic asset, and they are deliberate about building a life that helps them do what uniquely makes them happy. They excel in the areas of clarity, focus and execution, and they apply them toward goals that make them happy.
Ray White is now providing clarity on the connection between happiness and success like no one ever has before. What you hold in your hands will not only give you a distinct advantage in your professional pursuits, but, more importantly, in that most elusive pursuit of all … the pursuit of happiness.
So many people go to great lengths to be successful, believing that from success comes happiness. Some cheat their health in exchange for wealth. Others shortchange relationships as they chase down promotions. In the name of “success,” many miss life altogether, its lessons, its experiences and its simple pleasures.
In this book, Ray shows that happiness actually comes before success, not after it. He spells out how the two are eternally bound, and he walks you through a methodology that will change the way you think about success, and life.
Ray lives a life of clarity and conviction. The pages before you make this abundantly clear. His research, experiences, and approach are both unique and refreshing. From understanding the differences between pleasure and happiness, to identifying your unique and higher purpose, to defining success in a way that you have never attempted before, this book is a powerfully inspirational gift to anyone who reads it. As you read each page, commit to putting the principles and guidance to use. Let them catapult your results to another level.
Let this be the day that you make happiness a powerful priority.
Tony Jeary - The RESULTS Guy™
Coach to the World's Top CEOs and High Achievers
Copyright @ 2014 by Ray White
All Rights Reserved.
All Rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without the express permission of the authors. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing.
If you would like to do any of the above, please seek permission first by contacting us at http://ConnectingHappinessandSuccess.com.
Published in the United States by Xilo Media
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940194
Xilo Media, Lewisville Texas
ISBN 978-0-692-21606-4
1 3 5 7 9 10 11 8 6 4 2
Edition 1.0
To my wonderful wife, Lindsey: My life is a reflection of your love and partnership.
To my fantastic kids, Andrew, Spencer, and Gabriele: There is nothing more powerful than our love for our children.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without hours of help from family, friends, and colleagues. Their help, support, and guidance, throughout the process enabled a dream to become a reality and helped me share a message without sacrificing my career and family life.
My wife and kids are at the heart of everything I do, and their encouragement and understanding has been key to ensuring a healthy balance between bringing a book to life and time with the family.
Ali Merchant has shown encouragement from the beginning and helped me refine the early classes and concepts. Jeff Rudluff and his company Online Performance Marketing helped test the theories and implement the marketing plans. Wayne Irwin has been a friend, editor, and confidant. Nicholas Ward provided help and insights at every step. John Weyand understood the message and my communication style and was able to turn a very rough manuscript into something that might be understood by the general public. Tammy Kling and Tony Jeary helped me take this book to the next level and multiply its success.
Thanks to everyone for their encouragement and support.
Contents
1st Concept: Pleasure vs. Happiness
2nd Concept: Take Control of Your Life
3rd Concept: Positive Relationships
4th Concept: Higher Purpose and Meaning
5th Concept: Defining Success
6th Concept: Clarify and Prioritize
7th Concept: Implement with Discipline
"A happy workforce makes for a more successful and productive team.”
Richard Branson
Overview
Chapter 1
On August 15th, 2013, Moritz Erhardt, an intern working for Bank of America in London, died from complications created by working three days straight without sleep. He was doing a “turnaround,” which consists of an employee working all night, taking a cab home at 6 am, asking the cab to wait while he gets a quick shower and change of clothes, then hopping back in the cab to go back to work. He never got back in the cab. He was found dead in his shower. What happened?
Moritz’s death is a dramatic and immediate example of how our culture encourages many people to blindly chase success while being oblivious to the negative impacts it has on their happiness, on their health, and in certain cases on their lives. For most people these things develop over decades. The signs are there, but they are much more subtle and obscure.
I have worked with dozens of people over the past decade who speak about, research, and live happiness and success. We have analyzed definitions of success collected from over 240 people and found that most contained the word “happiness,” or at least concepts related to happiness. Most people connect success and happiness in their minds but have difficulty making the connection in their actions. Much like Moritz, only to a lesser degree, they pursue success single-mindedly, with the expectation that they will be happy once they achieve success; and that the more success they achieve, the happier they will be. Unfortunately that formula is backwards.
Success doesn’t lead to happiness. Happiness leads to success.
Personally, I have been in business settings for over 35 years, and I have seen hundreds of examples of people working hard and unwittingly sacrificing happiness in pursuit of success, which they think will make them happy. It starts out innocently enough--not having time to go out with friends, not getting home in time for dinner with a spouse or kids, not having time to exercise or pursue a fulfilling hobby--but soon amounts to missing positive moments in life because they are busy trying to build a life that will be full of positive moments.
The drawback doesn’t reveal itself until 5 or 10 years down the road, when a goal set early on has been achieved (a raise, a promotion, or a nice car); but for some reason, the satisfaction and fulfillment that were supposed to accompany the goal...don't. I have seen both men and women break down crying from the stress of wanting to give 100% in their work, yet f
eeling sad and unfulfilled because they were missing time with their new baby or significant other. Have you ever met someone who felt they'd missed their biggest opportunity? It's sad. Because missing important moments in your life leads to stress, and stress leads to unhappiness, disease, and a host of other challenges.
One example is a woman I worked with. Her name was Tina.
Tina was poised and confident, the kind of person that her peers wanted to emulate and every manager wanted to hire. She showed great leadership and had tremendous success early in her career. Five years, two promotions, and one baby later, she was sitting in a restaurant, tears streaming down her face from the stress of trying desperately to be successful in so many areas of her life while wondering what happened to the promise of happiness. She is one of hundreds of examples that played out in many different ways, but always had the same root cause. The long hours of hard work and dedication were never paid off with happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction. They only led to more long hours and hard work in trying to reach the next goal, which itself was supposed to lead to happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Let me say it again: Success doesn’t lead to happiness. Happiness leads to success.
This book is intended to teach you how to happily put in those long hours and dedication--how to be happy first, and then have that happiness lead you to even greater success. It is not a choice between happiness and success, or a choice between working hard and being happy. They are intertwined, and the actions you take to make yourself happier will also provide the energy, motivation, and positive habits that will lead to your success.
From early in my career I have been involved in researching success and leadership, and eventually happiness and the science behind happiness.
In the seminars I've led over the years on leadership and success, happiness is always a key discussion topic. People are no longer content to sacrifice everything to become successful at their job. They want to work and be happy at the same time.
The challenge is that people get caught up in an ambitious chase for success and unwittingly delay or even bypass their opportunities for happiness with the belief that happiness would come after the project was finished, after the next promotion, after the next big bump in salary, or after they land that next perfect job. Too often, it doesn’t come as expected, and they end up forever looking over the horizon believing that happiness is just over the next hill. Those I have observed who did find happiness made simple, uncomplicated choices and changes in their lives. They found the secrets of happiness, and as a result, also became much more successful in the process.
How Happy and Successful Do You Feel?
Most people feel relatively happy and successful, and at the same time are looking to become even happier and more successful. It is natural to feel like there is more and to want to move to that next level. It is an instinct that helped our ancestors survive and prosper. The challenge is that many of us don’t know what steps to take to become happier and more successful, or we don’t know the correct steps. See if you identify with any of the examples below.
Have you ever woken up to the alarm and hit the snooze button too many times because you just didn’t want to get out of bed and go to work? Have you ever had that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach where you can’t imagine going back into that office and facing that sadistic supervisor who seems to want to make your life miserable? What about that crazy manager in the other department who makes your life difficult just because she can?
Have you ever left the office at 8 or 9 pm with four more hours of work to do and three impossible deadlines for the next day? Have you ever felt so overwhelmed you wanted to cry or hide somewhere? These feelings can be especially confusing, given that six months ago you were on top of the world and everything was going great. Sometimes we feel as if we are on top of the mountain; at other times, down in a deep valley. What's going on?
Have you ever worked and worked and worked to get a promotion or raise you deserve, been really excited for about 30 days, and then wondered when the next raise or promotion would come? Have you ever gotten your life perfectly in line with your dreams, had everything on track, and then sat back and asked the question, "Why don’t I feel happy? I should feel happy; what’s wrong with me?"
Have you ever felt like what you did just didn’t seem to matter and wasn’t as important as what everyone else was doing? Have you felt like no matter how hard you tried you just couldn’t make a difference? Does it ever seem like you are constantly banging your head against a wall and nothing ever changes?
These feelings are all natural and are indications that, armed with a little more information, you can take steps to become happier and more successful. As part of our culture, we learn to chase success as an end result rather than a daily habit. We are taught that the reward for success is happiness, and some day we will get to be happy if we just fight through and spend enough time being unhappy.
Happiness and success are connected. They are intertwined in our actions, but they are not a pinnacle we reach. They are daily habits and practices. They are small things we choose to do every day that eventually lead to milestones of success along a journey that lasts our entire lives. The antidote to the feelings described above is to choose positive actions every day that will help us feel contented and fulfilled, that will help us feel like we matter and can make a difference, and that will help us feel hopeful and excited to get up every morning.
Research also clearly indicates that happier people are healthier, have better relationships, and are more successful. Stress kills. So the antidote to stress, which is the cause for many health challenges, is happiness.
The good news is that there are steps you can take, and choices you can make, to be happier.
Where Things Get Off Track
“Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are”
John B. Sheerin
We want to be content, and we believe that getting that big house, promotion, or raise will be the thing that makes us feel fulfilled. Unfortunately, it is not achieving those goals that provides contentment. It is actually the daily process of working toward those goals that results in contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment. It is not what we ultimately achieve, but what we achieve every day.
It doesn’t work to try to be eventually happy or eventually successful. Life is better if we can find happiness and success every day in our daily adventures. Like John Sheerin mentioned above, happiness is something we are. The nice house will not bring contentment; it is simply a milestone on our daily journey to be happy and successful. The contentment comes from the satisfaction of knowing how much hard work and grit we put in on a daily basis to get the house. The roadblock to happiness and success is not in wanting to reach these milestones. It is that we are waiting for success and happiness rather than implementing it and experiencing it every day.
You can learn habits and techniques that will help you practice happiness every day. Let’s start by looking at how many of us define happiness and success.
Analyzing Definitions of Success and Happiness
Happiness and success are connected. They are intertwined in our lives by similar thoughts, feelings, and aspirations.
I've compiled more than 240 definitions of success from leadership classes, coaching and mentoring sessions, and research. Based on the key words used in each definition, we categorized the definitions into one or more representative concepts. The results were clear: People use similar concepts to define happiness and success, and the two are interrelated. Happiness was mentioned in more than 25% of the definitions of success, and the top two concepts in the definitions of success were the same as the top two concepts in the definitions of happiness.
“Happiness is more than a mere pleasurable sensation. It is a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment.”
Mathieu Ricar
d
The concept of contentment, which includes contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment, was the top concept mentioned in the definitions of happiness, by a significant margin. It was also one of the most identified concepts in the definitions of success. Different people, in different environments and at different times, all came to similar conclusions when they defined success or happiness. Basically, they all agreed that feeling content, satisfied, and fulfilled in our lives is foundational to being successful and to being happy.
The next highest-ranked concept in the definitions of both success and happiness was others. Others includes building positive relationships with friends and family, contributing to the community, and helping make the world a better place. So most people place a high value on how we help others when they define happiness and success.
The concept of achievement, which includes achieving or accomplishing goals, was the third most mentioned concept in the definitions of success, and was the fourth most mentioned concept in the definitions of happiness. Achievement is part of success, but most people also believe we will be happier if we are achieving.
Interestingly, the concept of acquiring wealth or financial stability was a distant eighth for the definitions of success, only mentioned 6% of the time; and it was not mentioned at all in the definitions of happiness.
When we started this research, our assumptions were that most people would include the concept of acquiring wealth and financial stability in their definitions of success. What we found was that the concept of contentment was significantly more prevalent than the concept of wealth in their definitions. They indicated that money in the bank, a nice house, or a nice car, are all just means to help them feel contented, fulfilled, and satisfied.
How this Book is Organized
This book is divided into seven sections. The first four teach us how to be happier, and the last three focus on being more successful. We start with the research and science so we can understand what creates our challenges and how we can overcome them. We follow that with explanations of what to do and how to do it, and then we provide activities that will help you practically implement the recommendations and build the habits that will help you be happier and more successful.