The point is, as we will see throughout this book, what we spend our time and mental energy focusing on can indeed become our reality.
This is a very important study because it shows that when we perceive a reality in which success is likely, that success become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As Harvard Business School professor Peter Bregman advises, ‘Don’t write a book, write a page... Don’t expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well.
As researchers at New York University have found, putting unrealistic, fantastical goals onto a vision board actually makes us feel worse about ourselves because it makes us think we are missing out on life.25.
And only when we choose to believe that we live in a world where challenges can be overcome, our behavior matters, and change is possible can we summon all our drive, energy, and emotional.
Look around at the people in your office, on the subway, sitting across from you at the cafe. Have you ever wondered if the world you see is the same one they see?
This is why Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leader in the scientific study of well-being, has written that she prefers the phrase “creation or construction of happiness” to the more popular “pursuit,” since “research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.”13.
Afterward, I jokingly asked Salim why the children of Soweto were so weird. “They see schoolwork as a privilege,” he replied, “one that many of their parents did not have.” When I returned to Harvard two weeks later, I saw students complaining about the very thing the Soweto students saw as a privilege. I started to realize just how much our interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality.
In fact, rarely have I seen an optimistic and motivated worker under the supervision of a pessimistic, apathetic manager. As the leaders go, so go their employees.
It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive.
When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism.
When you write down a list of “three good things” that happened that day, your brain will be forced to scan the last 24 hours for potential positives –.
Now I realize that I want Leo to be like my father. I don’t just want him to be happy, but also to make everyone around him happier. To not only be creative, but to make everyone around him more creative. To not only be successful, but to make everyone around him more successful. I don’t just want him to be a bright light; I want him to make others shine brighter as well.
You are what you read. And science confirms this. Researchers from Dartmouth and Ohio State found that when you become engrossed with a book you may actually begin to not just identify with, but actually take on some of the traits and characteristics of, the main character. For example, if you read a book about someone with a strong social conscience, your likelihood of doing something socially conscientious rises.
In the midst of challenges and stress at work, nothing is more crucial to our success than holding on to the people around us. Yet when the alarm bells at work go off, all too often we become blind to this reality and try to go it alone; and as a result we end up like I did, circling helplessly at some dead-end corner until we run out of air.
So when a colleague stops you in the hallway at work to say hello and ask about your day, the brief interaction actually sparks a continual upward spiral of happiness and its inherent rewards.
Turn on the news, and the majority of airtime is spent on accidents, corruption, murders, abuse. This focus on the negative tricks our brains into believing that this sorry ratio is reality, that most of life is negative.
For me, happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.
Think about it: In the work world, as in our personal lives, we are often rewarded for noticing the problems that need solving, the stresses that need managing, and the injustices that need righting. Sometimes this can be very useful. The problem is that if we get stuck in only that pattern, always looking for and picking up on the negative, even a paradise can become a hell.
When you write down a list of “three good things” that happened that day, your brain will be forced to scan the last 24 hours for potential positives – things that brought small or large laughs, feelings of accomplishment at work, a strengthened connection with family, a glimmer of hope for the future. In just five minutes a day, this trains the brain to become more skilled at noticing and focusing on possibilities for personal and professional growth, and seizing opportunities to act on them.
Just as our brains can be wired in ways that hold us back, we can retrain them to scan for the good things in life – to help us see more possibility, to feel more energy, and to succeed at higher levels. The first step is understanding just how much of what we see is solely a matter of focus. As William James once said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.