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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#231

Post by mightybyte »

nine_k wrote: post #143
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

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…

Research suggests that happiness isn't quite that simple. It's not obvious which direction the causation arrow points. See for example this podcast on the topic:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with...

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#232

Post by lexapro »

sethammons wrote: post #194
artemonster wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have met people who laugh and smile about hardships and I have met people who are sour about unequivocally positive situations. I don't think happiness is a destination, it is a path. The happy person is happy to have chosen to turn right and to have had the opportunity to so. The unhappy person is still unhappy that they have not yet found what they are looking for. That is the decision

>The unhappy person is still unhappy that they have not yet found what they are looking for.

>That is the decision

What is the decision exactly? If unhappy people could just choose to be happy instead, they would.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#233

Post by serverlessmom »

nicoburns wrote: post #180
suction wrote: post #150

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…

I agree with what you are saying for sure. I have spent years working for myself in a variety of roles and while I was certainly happier than when I worked under a boss, the constant stress around lack of reliable income was stressful. Suddenly this last year or so all of the skills I had cultivated with my side hustles culminated in a way that I am both my own boss and making enough money my situation feels less dire. It was the combination of the two that really made a difference in my mental health

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#234

Post by pjc50 »

austincheney wrote: post #223
pjc50 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally just emotional labor: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5ea9f140-f722-4214-bb... > we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators So the job goes to the people who, in the eyes of the interviewer, can best fake happiness. The more desperate you are for the job for economic reasons, the more pressure on you to fake it convincingly. Big bright but not desper…

> I don't know whether it's because I'm not American or just really cynical, but I absolutely hate this kind of mandatory public performance of fake emotions. It seems that you completely misunderstood the study, a longitudinal study conducted over 5 years and compared against a real world factor outside the study: military awards irrespective of any study.

"mandatory public performance of fake emotions" relates to this paragraph of the article which I quoted:

>> Here are three examples of simple exercises, each backed by rigorous evidence of effectiveness. In the first, the Gratitude Visit, participants prepare and present a 300-word testimony of gratitude to someone who changed their life for the better. In the second, Three Good Things, participants write down three things that went well each day and what caused those things to go well, for one week. The third, Using Signature Strengths in a New Way, calls on participants to complete an online strengths survey and then use one of their top strengths in a new way each day for at least a week

Reading carefully, it is not clear whether those exercises were things that were specifically "validated" by this specific study, in the military, since the next paragraph talks about the "ENHANCE" programme in the military.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#235

Post by kranner »

jd115 wrote: post #185
artemonster wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Leaving out people with e.g. clinical depression, this is still only true for some people. The rest don't believe that they can simply choose to be happy regardless of circumstances, and therefore they can't. I don't think we get a choice in the matter: either we're lucky to be in the first group who know it intuitively or figure it out or come across the idea somewhere, or we aren't so lucky.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#236

Post by mgh2 »

Does circumstance cause happiness or the other way around? It is the premise of the article, but I think there is confirmation bias here.

Office perks had this purpose but it is no longer relevant in a remote culture. Now corporations need to snoop into our homes to predict productivity. Employees' lives outside work is not the employer's business, since most often than not, they will abuse it. Ex: They will sack an employee knowing he is unhappy regardless of the reason, creating a spiraling negative feedback loop.

The conclusion is very dangerous. It tells management to measure happiness as a predictor to success (and profit for employer). In fact, it is advocating to use employees' personal life as a proxy for performance, an abuse of data.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#238

Post by Xcelerate »

I’ve noticed my most successful friends are also my happiest friends, and vice versa. I never knew if it was correlation or causation, but I generally find I am happier myself and perform better if I surround myself with other people like that. Negativity is contagious, so I try to avoid it.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#239

Post by lupire »

hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

What did he look like?

How tall?

Did he have any speech impediments?

Obviously "happiness" is not the reason he is so popular, since "happy" dorks are openly mocked throughout culture (at least in the USA) if they aren't physically attractive, and loved (Henry Cavill) if they are physically attractive.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#240

Post by lupire »

whiddershins wrote: post #197
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

I believe the word you want is humbled. Humiliated can almost never be positive, but people often conflate these two words.

The sad thing is 99% people mean "honored" of the the (opposite of humbled) when they say "humbled" ("I'm so humbled to be recognized by the best by so many people"), but here was a rare case that "humbled" fits.
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