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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#181
post #89

> we suggest that leaders follow the science and take a structured approach to hiring for, promoting, and developing employee happiness > Measure happiness in both employees and job candidates. > we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators, or tiebreakers, because the risks are low and the benefits could be important. Good luck getting a job, unhappy people… I don’t think the…

even if they recruit only happe people, what guarantee they will stay happy? should they fire them once they are not?

Some jobs literslly ruin lives / your health, or make you miserable, so with this outlook these jobs should be paying massive fines or compensation?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#182
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you…

You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.

They're just stating facts. Good or bad, antidepressants help people cope with life just as opioid help people deal with physical pain. Chronic usage can become a problem, but short term usage is unquestionably beneficial for many people.

Sometimes your mental state is so bad you can't make any decision or improve your current situation. Maybe you're working during the day and dealing with your family the rest of the time and feel stuck and sinking. Antidepressants can help dissipate the fog in your mind, allowing you to think clearly and actually make the decisions you needed to make and improve your live to a point where they are not needed anymore. You also talk with the doctor prescribing the drugs, if it's not improving how you feel they will suggest other solutions.

Also I totally agree with parent. Decent material conditions and the knowledge that they are stable are absolutely needed for a healthy and flourishing mind.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#183
Honestly I have to agree... for one to be a top performer, attitude needs to be pair with cognitive power as well other factors like health.

I have a friend from school who is smart and in good health. However he always critical and points out problems with services and work. Rather than being positive and building things up, he likes to deconstruct and complain. He is then upset as to why he is not doing well in his career after having lost jobs...hard to change ones attitude. Then I play a sport with someone who is always encouraging of others, tries hard and is uplifting. When he is on your team, he adds an X factor and I think this guy, while young, will go far in life and if he wants to, could become a CEO.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what do I win if I disprove your 'I see'?

Employment is a common source of unhappiness. That to be a source at all requires a job. If you are unemployed you aren't just "less unhappy about your employment", you don't have any. I'd wager economic instability far outweighs the negatives of one's employment. After all, it's why many people still attend their jobs. I'd be absolutely amazed if you managed to disprove him, because nothing I've ever observed or exp…

he said "I see you've never been under any economic hardship ever in your life."

I said "so what do I win if I disprove your 'I see'?"

you said: "I'd be absolutely amazed if you managed to disprove him, because nothing I've ever observed or experienced seems to fit into it. "

So, you've spent your whole life tracking my levels of economic hardship? What organization do you work for?

to say it another way, as I have lately noticed people not following what I say:

I have had greater economic hardships than most Americans, the poster said they could tell I have not had any economic hardships, I made a response meant to cause them to think again by asking what I would win if I showed I had been under economic hardships, finally you seem to think that both you and the poster would absolutely 100% know that I have never been under any economic hardships - either that or you have grossly misunderstood what I wrote in response to them even though it was quite a short sentence and thus should be relatively clear.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#185
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you choose whether to be happy. In fact, it is the ONLY thing you have control over. But it's the key to everything. It's the one choice you have to make in every living moment. Keep making this right choice, and life is a song. Choose to look the wrong way and life becomes hard work. There is nothing more to it. This is all anyone ever needs to know about life.

That is just a load of shit, I am so tired of this toxic positivity. Of course its a choice in the first place, but choice is not what brings you there. You need to choose right turn, yes, yes! But you have to walk the path towards the destination and that is a whole different story. If all you postulate that it is enough just to make the right turn, then… ah, whatever.

There can be no such thing as toxic positivity. Your doubts are toxic, yes. But positivity can never be toxic. Life IS utterly binary and clear-cut in this respect, there are no grey areas, no nuances. There is an absolute good and it is joy. And it is 100% a personal choice, regardless of circumstances. Once again - it is the only ONE thing over which you have any control, at all times, no exceptions. You can always choose to be happy. AND that's enough!

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

I know plenty of people who will say "you know what, I'm out" despite living paycheck to paycheck, or maybe having 1 or 2 months living expenses saved up. They're just open to the risk of going with the flow, and confident they'll find something to keep them going. They tend to be a lot happier than those I know who are focussed on money and career. This doesn't work if you're literally struggling to make ends meet t…

It works if you don't have many responsibilities. I recently lost my only source of income and that became crippling to my overall performance when it comes to side projects that could eventually replace that source. It was really surprising since I expected to head full forward with my projects. It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#187
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? You cannot „choose“ to be happy as you cannot just „choose“ to be not depressed or anything else for that mattter

Of course you choose whether to be happy. In fact, it is the ONLY thing you have control over. But it's the key to everything. It's the one choice you have to make in every living moment. Keep making this right choice, and life is a song. Choose to look the wrong way and life becomes hard work. There is nothing more to it. This is all anyone ever needs to know about life.

Sure, it's a choice in the same way that the outcome of an if-branch is a "choice". You have control over it in the same way a computer program has control over its own output. Which is to say: no actual control at all.

Free will/choice isn't a coherent concept philosophically and I find it almost impossible to take anyone seriously when they propose "just change your mind" as a solution to anything. I am already struggling to resist the urge to leave this comment at "WOW THANKS, I'M CURED!".

Twin studies show that happiness is a stochastic phenomenon where the genetic heritability of the stable component of happiness is estimated to be almost 80% [1].

If you're unhappy and reading this with a sense of disappointment, I'd just say "don't count yourself out yet".

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb...

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really interesting you say that. In Melbourne, where I am (~10% church attendance rates, most left-wing/liberal city in Australia), I see the same thing from liberal atheists. As soon as these arbiters of morality see a friend or colleague in need, they have nothing but platitudes about mental health or mindfulness followed by a rapidly-constructed mental wall. It wasn't until two coworkers from Brisbane experienced…

Well I guess I should apologize on behalf of Liberals, Atheists, and Christians at least: I’ve been some version of all of those things if we go back enough decades. Few of even my critics would call me a fair-weather friend. And I’ve grown ever-more impatient with fair-weather friends. There’s another word for that, but everyone knows it and so I do to spend it. Real Christianity, in my opinion, is a lot like FDR-li…

>I don’t know what that philosophy is even called these days. I want to join that movement.

In all seriousness, I think the only place to find this "movement" is offline.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#189
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you…

You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.

My first single dose of antidepressant changed my life when I was stuck in depression and anxiety. A few years later, remembering that it worked so well, it brought me to the verge of addiction with no benefits. From my perspective antidepressants work but are extremely dangerous.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>happy unemployed - unhappy employed I see you've never been under any economic hardship ever in your life. Good on you, but that really, really doesn't apply for most people. Poverty sucks.

so what do I win if I disprove your 'I see'?

Brownie points, of course.

Were you happier when you were homeless and needed to rely on other people's pity to survive than when you could buy your own food due to your job? I would find it rather surprising if you were.

I supposed it could be that you're from one of these places where workers' rights aren't really a thing or that you can survive on your own without monies, however.

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