Recently a colleague (and friend!) recommended a book by Shawn Achor called The Happiness Advantage. The premise of the book is that happy people are successful; not that success leads to happiness, as is commonly believed. Achor works with Fortune 500 companies to maximize their effectiveness and subsequently their profits. And while profits and business are usually the last thing I’m thinking about in a classroom, Achor’s advice to managers resounded with my everyday work of managing a classroom and guiding students towards sustainable success. In particular, his recommendations for achieving the happiness that subsequently leads to success follows many principles of mindfulness that I love to integrate into my classroom.
Not surprisingly, Achor was inspired to do his research when he noticed that many students attending Harvard, where he was working, were actually unhappy and not reaching their potential. While many of my high school students (who would LOVE to go to Harvard) would be shocked to learn that “as many as 4 in 5 Harvard students suffer from depression at least once during the school year,” this is the reality of our world: putting success before happiness (8).
Achor argues and subsequently works very hard to prove that we have the ability to change our mindset. This positive change can actually transform our reality since “what we spend our time and mental energy focusing on can indeed become our reality” (12). He bases his assertions on studies conducted in the field of positive psychology. He states that, “positive psychology researchers had finished a “meta-analysis,” a study of nearly every scientific happiness study available – over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide. Their findings exactly matched the principles I was teaching – that happiness leads to success in nearly every domain including work, health, friendship, sociability, creativity, and energy” (21). As teachers, we want our students to be successful so it only makes sense that we try to take advantage of this finding. How can we make our students feel more positive and happy, in an atmosphere of high pressure expectations and assessments, to help them achieve success?
Below is a summary of the seven principles from The Happiness Advantage and how they can possibly be applied to the classroom and our lives:
| The Principle | The Principle Explained | Classroom Management | Life (teachers need to be happy too!) |
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Happiness Advantage: A positive mindset can change your performance, literally. |
“…happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential” (40). Achor presents several studies that have found when people are “‘primed’ – meaning scientists help evoke a certain mindset or emotion before doing an experiment – to feel either amusement or contentment can think of a larger and wider array of thoughts and ideas” (44). In the range of studies from giving doctors candy before diagnosing patients to priming people for happy emotions before a mental task, the verdict is that “even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive edge” (48). | I’m sure every teacher would love for their students to “think of a larger and wider array of thoughts and ideas! If “priming” or evoking happy emotions for our students to make this happen, I’m 100% on board. Achor indicates that something even as simple as visualizing success or getting kids to think of something that makes them happy have resulted in better performance in these studies. I interpret this as reminding students of their strengths, believing in them (and letting them know I believe in them) AND offering mindful visualizations of success before assessments (a specific lesson offered from Mindful Schools in the mindfulness curriculum). | Obviously there is skepticism of how quickly happiness can be achieved but Achor does offer specific recommendations for achieving success:
-Meditating -Finding something to look forward to -Committing conscious acts of kindness -Infusing positivity into surroundings (ie. watching less news!) -Exercising -Spending money on doing things versus buying thing -Exercising signature strengths: cool test on finding strengths! |
| The Fulcrum and the Lever:
Our experience of our world is based on our perception of it. |
“The mental construction of our daily activities, more than the activity itself defines our reality” (71). This is essentially the lens through we which we see the world and what we focus our energy on: positive or negative aspects of our reality. Since perception is subjective, “we can change this perspective at any moment, and by doing so change our experience of the world around us” (66). | The most significant take away from this chapter in terms of the classroom is the study that shows people who are primed based on stereotypes, before a task, perform according to the stereotype. For example, women who are told that women generally perform worse on math than men, will in fact perform subpar to other women on a math task. Here’s an example of my interpretation of this: if a class generation is always told they are a “bad” generation they will likely continue to fulfill the expectations of a bad generation. However, if the focus is changed to strengths versus weaknesses this will yield better results, hence tipping the fulcrum towards a positive mindset. | My favourite part about this chapter is the distinction between jobs being labeled “a Job, a Career, or a Calling.” As can be imagined, people who see their job as calling “not only find their work more rewarding, but work harder and longer because of it” (78). This reminded of the educator, Mike Johnston’s response to “What do you do for a living?” “I’m changing the world.” It is highly likely that most teacher do not choose to work in education for the money (a job category) so I believe it’s important we never lose sight of why we chose this profession and remain optimistic that our work will have a positive impact on the world. |
| The Tetris Effect:
We can retrain our brains to focus on patterns of possibility. |
The Tetris Effect refers to the phenomenon of seeing tetris patterns after practicing the game for a long time. This analogy can be applied to the patterns our minds pick up: “problems that need solving, the stresses that need managing, and the injustices that need righting…we get stuck in only that pattern, always looking for and picking up on the negative” (90-1). In the business world, the work training – of picking up mistakes – starts to leak into personal lives because of the patterns that are absorbed. | I have caught myself in certain thought patterns about my students and classes, such as “that class never does their work” or “that student is always off task.” This pattern of thinking can be very harmful to students; similar to the invisible gorilla test we may be missing the student potential that is right in front of us. Achor argues that “when we are looking for something we see it everywhere” (96). Hence, if we retrain our mental models to see students’ strengths, instead of just shortcomings, we can tap into creative methods to lead our students to success. | “Repeated studies have shown that two people can view the same situation and actually see different things, depending on what they are expecting to see. It’s not just that they come away with different interpretations of the same event, but they have actually seen different things in their visual field” because their brains are trained to focus on different patterns (96). Hence, if our minds are trained to see success, that success is more likely to occur. To capitalize on the benefits of the Positive Tetris Effect, Achor recommends gratitude journals, Three Good Things, to jumpstart the change in our mental pattern, since “opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective, and successful at work and in life” (104). |
| Falling Up:
Failure can be used as a path to growth. |
Falling Up means to capitalize on your failure(s). It is based on the idea that if our minds are always scanning for positive opportunities we gain the “ability to move up not despite the setbacks, but because of them” (109). This certainly requires a level of vulnerability where people learn to accept their failures and grow because of them. | The Harvard Business Review wrote about how huge companies deliberately made big mistakes in order to learn from them. How awesome it would be for our students to make these big mistakes (without worrying about grades) in order to learn? A study on software training showed that people who were encouraged to make mistakes during the training “not only exhibited greater feelings of self-efficacy, but because they had learned to figure out their own way out of mistakes, they were also far faster and more accurate in how they used the software later on” (113). I think it can be easy, as educators, to get focused on immediate results – an assessment – versus thinking how the mistakes our students are making are preparing them for the future. These failures can in fact be the students’ successes in the future. | The fear of failure leads to so many missed opportunities; while being okay with failure can lead to so much creative growth. I truly believe, that the “most successful people see adversity not as a stumbling block, but as a stepping-stone to greatness” (111). In reality our psyche can handle A LOT. In fact, we usually overestimate how much a failure will cost us in terms of our emotional well being, but “our fear of consequences is always worse than the consequences themselves!” (126). I think being leaders for our students and admitting to failures to setbacks can really open the doors for our students to feel ok with failing and learning rather than being ashamed of shortcomings, as if often the case in our society. |
| Zorro Circle:
By focusing on tasks within a small sphere of control we can gradually accomplish greater things. |
When the stresses of work and life become too much we seem to feel like we have lost control; however, according to the Zorro Circle if we start with a small thing we can control and manage “we accumulate the resources, knowledge, and confidence to expand the circle, gradually conquering a larger and larger area” (129). | According to the studies Achor quotes, successful people believe that “their actions have a direct effect on their outcomes” versus people who believe their life is decided by outside forces (130). Wouldn’t it be great if our students believed that studying could actually have an effect on their outcome? According to Achor, small, manageable tasks help develop an internal locus of control and subsequently, confidence. This is key for our students. Everyday we ask them to do something new and different, but to help them reach these greater heights of course we need to scaffold with small manageable tasks to help build their confidence and get them to accomplish the bigger tasks. | As teachers, it’s easy for our feeling of control to dissipate in correlation with the amount of grading that piles up in front of us. It’s at moments like that where we need to remember to start small and slowly but surely expand. This certainly also applies to trying new things in the classroom: first mastering a small circle (one new tech app!) before trying to conquer ALL the tech that’s available to educators today! |
| 20 Second Rule: We can replace bad habits with good ones by rerouting the path of least resistance. | “Habits form because our brain actually changes in response to frequent practice” (149). Hence, we need to create good new habits; however sheer willpower is basically impossible since using willpower is exhausting, and we are more prone to take the path of least resistance even if we don’t necessarily enjoy that path as much (for example, most of us would enjoying participating in an activity more than watching TV but tv can often be our path of least resistance). According to Achor, creating tricks for our brains seems to work, like making it harder to turn on the TV by hiding the remote, hence adding 20 seconds to path of least resistance and making it not so easy! | In order to steer our students away from the path of least resistance, aka not doing work, we need to make the work on the path of least resistance. I noticed my students were often very distracted by their cell phones, but forcing them to use their willpower to stay away from their cellphones was too exhausting for them and for me. I took away this arduous task by giving them a spot for their phones very far away from their learning, putting that whole issue on the path of least resistance. As Achor states, “the key to daily practice is to put your desired actions as close to the path of least resistance as humanly possible. Identify the activation energy – the time, the choices, the mental and physical effort they require – and then reduce it” (170). When applying that to students I think about making the hard stuff as easy as possible: the whole essay isn’t due tomorrow, you just need a thesis, and then just a paragraph, etc.” | I would love to say I never procrastinate but I’m pretty sure I have an Instagram addiction. When I see my students getting distracted I remind myself of how hard it is for me, an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex, to stay focused. Finding the tricks to help our students develop good habits can be life changing for them (and us!). How can we repetitively instill good habits in our classrooms knowing that habits are hard to keep for all people? Based on mindfulness I would imagine that awareness is a first good step, like being able to say to yourself: “I’m procrastinating now” and then, with awareness, returning to the task on when your mind is ready. |
| Social Investment:
Investing in our friends, peers, and family members we will be more successful. |
The strength of our social relationships determines our success, and “when we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat, the only way to save ourselves is to hold tight to the people around us and not let go” (173). The results of one of the most fascinating psychology studies from Harvard which followed a group of men for 70 years was summed up by the current project director as, “Happiness equals love—full stop.” Finding the balance between the time put into work and time put into relationships is often challenging, but knowing that these relationships are what actually lead to our success at work and life, it seems counterintuitive to NOT invest in relationships with those close to us! | Students will perform better if they like their teacher. Investing in positive relationship has an “effect size of 0.72,” according to Fisher, Frey and Hattie in Visible Learning for Literacy (13). They way I interpret this is: always have a positive atmosphere in the class AND take the time to get to know students. I have learned so much about soccer from my students, and it mostly stems from working to connect with the boys who are more than often caught watching games in my class. I got tired of reprimanding them so I finally just engaged with them; and, while I haven’t eliminated soccer watching in class, these conversations have at least helped to open a channel of communication. | Taking the time to create relationships with our students, to create good rapport in the classroom can lead to happiness, which can lead to success. I think this demands a certain level of vulnerability in a teacher to open herself to these relationships with students, but it is a fruitful challenge for both students and teachers. Further, the relationships we have with our colleagues can be the life-changing force of a school. I feel that knowing I can bounce ideas/questions/concerns off of my peers at work or just hang out with them, really changes my vision of success at my calling. |
To summarize my summer reading book report and my motto for the year: happiness is what will lead to success. Maybe not every assignment will be graded overnight, and maybe students will hand things in late, but that will not define the success of the year; being able to face one of your most challenging students at graduation and still being able to hug it out and have a positive connection – that is my goal!
Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage. Random House, 2010.
Great review, Alijca, and I love how you manage to relate the content not only to the students and our shared profession but your own personal goal to be the absolutely best teacher you can be while fulfilling your life’s purpose, creating meaning, and contributing to the joy and serenity of the people around you. We are so lucky to have you as a colleague and friend. Un abrazo muy fuerte. Doc
Thanks Doc! It’s awesome to have such an inspiring mentor 🙂