How do you create your happiness?
Happy is a word we probably use several times a day without really thinking about it. The dictionary definition is “the state of pleasurable contentment of mind”. Sounds nice.
I think about happiness a bit differently. Many years ago I stumbled across the fact that Aristotle talked about happiness – “being well and doing well” – as an activity rather than an emotion or state… a reframe I found to be so simple, but extremely powerful.
If you think of happiness as a state, it will always be fleeting and out of reach. If you can think about it as an activity, you can be where your feet are and immerse in the present.
Our wellbeing and happiness are everything. It’s something we create – which I talked about in my Purpose & Happiness post a few years ago. It’s often the first thing I coach people on. The approach I take is to help you build habits that integrate wellbeing and happiness habits into your workflow.
On Phoebe Zhang’s Balanced Achievers podcast last year, I shared a bit about my personal wellbeing and mindbody practices that I’ve been doing since I was 12. Wellbeing has been core to the work we do at Dynamic4 since day one, and still is 22 years on. What that means might surprise you. Dynamic4 Fitness was half of the business for the first few years.
Success Will Make Us Happy. Right?
I’m a big fan of Shawn Achor’s happiness research. A key finding is the belief most of us hold that we’ll be happy when we achieve a particular goal and experience success. It’s inherent in many of the things we’re taught, and we often over-index for goals.
In his energetic, insightful, and hilarious TED talk, he says our brains actually work in the opposite order. “…if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon, as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier”. This was another powerful but profound reframe for me.
“If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, we’ve found that every single business outcome improves.”
Shawn Achor
To quantify that… in a range of contexts, it was found that we are at least 30% more effective and productive when we are positive.
One of the things I love about Shawn Achor’s work is his focus on the practical things we can do to create positive mindset habits… to increase our happiness. Happiness is something we need to create… and keep creating. It’s a practice. A habit.
How Do I Create My Happiness?
From the research, there are simple actions we can take that literally change our brain chemistry and make us feel good – they also activate the learning centres in our brain, and make us more creative and open to new ideas.
Read my full post where I go into more detail and share some practical, quick and easy things you can do to build happiness habits.
Solve Problems That Matter
In my book Solve Problems That Matter, I go into a lot more detail on all of the things I’ve covered in this post… and plenty more.
It’s a playbook with actions and worksheets to help you take a human-centred design and living systems approach to design, build, and launch your idea. Ideas that customers love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet… all while increasing wellbeing.
Let’s Collaborate
At Dynamic4, we specialise in coaching, training, and working alongside leaders to solve problems that matter.
A key way we do this is by designing and delivering action learning experiences with masterclasses, workshops, innovation sprints, and leadership, design thinking & innovation programs.
These sessions build personal, team, and organisational capability to solve problems that matter with more:
❤️ Clarity on your purpose, goals, and approach to navigate complexity and make progress
🎯 Momentum to achieve your goals by building the workflows, rhythms, and habits for success
🌿 Confidence to move forward with more certainty and less risk while increasing your wellbeing
I also work alongside you and your design, product, and digital transformation teams to do strategic design with a focus on business, experience, and solution architecture. Delivering work while helping build internal capability.
Ready to have fun collaborating to solve problems that matter? Book a free 15-minute discovery call.
What brings you a deep sense of achievement and joy at work?
I’d love to hear your thoughts…
I’m doing some research with leaders who navigate complexity to lead, design, and deliver change. I’ll present the findings from my research in a report. It might even evolve into my next book.
I’m curious to learn more about how you’re adapting to meet the rapidly shifting expectations of your teams, customers, investors, and regulators.
Get involved!
Join the waitlist for the report now to be the first to get it. When you join the waitlist, you’re also invited to complete the survey that takes ~5 minutes, and you can express interest in being interviewed.
There’s been a great response, so the patterns that are emerging are reliable and based on plenty of data. I’ll start sharing some key insights next month as I continue with the interviews…
Ideas
A blog post and an event for you…
Dynamic4 2024 Strategy
Over the past few months I’ve been reviewing and refining our strategy. Earlier this month I published Dynamic4’s 2024 strategy for horizon 2027.
Dynamic4’s strategy exists within the context of our purpose, vision, and theory of change – it describes our theory on where we’ll play, how we’ll win, what we need to win. For us, winning doesn’t mean competing with or beating others. We’re here to collaborate and win together.
I find there’s more value in sharing and testing my thinking, rather than trying to do things in stealth mode. It’s in that spirit that I’m sharing our refined strategy. It might also answer some questions for people who wonder what I/Dynamic4 do, and why.
SydDT #101: AI Needs Design, More Than Design Needs AI with Chris Rollings
Next month (11 July), we’re lucky to have Chris Rollings leading a conversation on the role of design in shaping how we want AI to impact our lives – starting with service design to help businesses ethically explore and adopt AI.
It’s almost sold out, but it’s not too late to grab your ticket and join us for some fun conversations with interesting people. If you miss out you can always watch the recording. We’ve got a bunch on Youtube…
Keen for some help solving problems that matter and to have some fun collaborating? Book a free 15-minute discovery call…
Have fun!
Ben
