The Power of Beliefs (Shawn Achor)

 

I loved this book! I have to put it on my list of books to re-read annually.

Notes:
Re: Attention
p. 83 What we give attention to becomes our meaning. The reverse is true as well. Want to make someone feel like they don't matter? it's easy. Just look at your phone while they talk to you. Researchers James Roberts and Meredith David at Baylor University, in my hometown of Waco, call this phubbing, a portmanteau of "phone" and "snubbing".

....which makes me think about being on my phone at church. Hmmmm.....

Re: Lightning bolt change

Gretchen Rubin talks about the strategy of the lightning bolt - when something causes you to make a sudden change. I think Shawn Achor would say the lightning bolt strategy relies on a foundation of belief. The chapter is called The Nature of Belief. 

He starts of talking about a hiking trip he and his girlfriend did that was really hard. Later, when they were married, they did it again, this time with their 8 year old in tow. It was way harder than they remembered and they ended up having to stay up on the mountain over night. He says the night was painful and felt unending and so cold his sons lips turned blue while he slept. They hiked down when the sun came up, piled into their car, and basked in the heat blowing out of the vents. Through this experience their beliefs changed from what they thought possible about themselves, one another and the world.

He says that when we encounter new information that contradicts our existing beliefs when we do something we previously thought was impossible. Because of this, we experience internal conflict/cognitive dissonance that causes us to have to change what not just what we believe, but what we know. It can be really uncomfortable to make that shift, but those experiences fundamentally change us. 

What we need for it to happen is an anchor point: a mountain hike, a book that suddenly brings light to a confusing topic, etc. We can change out anchor points if we believe we can make the change. 

He also says that we should review those moments that caused pivotal change so that we can keep ourselves well-anchored at that new higher level of life. 

He said they had done several hikes previously with their son - but this was the one that caused his son to declare that he was a hiker. Achor says that both positive and negative events can change our life in positive ways

p. Why be early:

p. 90 Scarcity and Time

The "Good Samaritan" study conducted by John Darley and Daniel Batson in 1973 at Princeton University is among the most renowned experiments examining altruism and the impact of busyness on ones willingness to assist others. The researchers recruited seminary students who were told they would be delivering a talk on The Good Samaritan....Prior to heading to the location for their talk, some participants were informed that they had a few minutes to arrive, whereas others were told they were running late and needed to hurry.
The subjects were given directions to the location of their talk, but on the way, they encountered a dilemma: an undercover researcher slumped in a doorway, head down, eyes closed, and not moving. As the subject passed by, the person in trouble would cough twice and groan while keeping his head down. What would these seminary students do?
Sixty-three percent of the students who believed they had enough time stopped and offered to help the victim. But only 10 percent of those who believed they did not have enough time stopped to offer assistance. Same world, different beliefs, vastly different outcome. The study showed an enormous difference in response simply based on whether one believed they had enough time or they didn't.
In this study, being in a rush significantly diminished the likelihood of altruism - even among individuals who had devoted their lives to the study of compassion and morality. They were literally going to give a sermon on a story about how religious leaders kept walking by a man in need and only the hero of the parable (a social outcast, the Samaritan) stopped to help. Yet wen under time pressure, their ability to act according to their values was impaired.

Re: Sense of Purpose and Engagement in Work

p. 99 Social cohesion and perceived shared meaning were the most important predictors of team success - far outweighing individual talent, skill or educational background. In other words, whether the members of the team believed they were alone or connected had a higher impact on performance.
Gallup's extensive research into workplace engagement revealed that having a close friend at work is the strongest predictor of employee engagement, productivity, and retention. In their analysis of more than fifteen million employees worldwide, Gallup found that employees who strongly agreed with the statement "I have a best friend at work" were seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. These employees also demonstrated higher levels of performance, were significantly less likely to be injured on the job, and reported fewer safety incidents and quality defects. Moreover, teams with high workplace friendships showed 21 percent high profitability and 41 percent lower absenteeism. Gallup concluded that genuine social bonds at work are not merely a "nice to have" perk - they are essential to sustained organizational success.

On Re-reading

p. 177 The best conclusion I've ever read was in Miracles by C.S. Lewis. In that book, he tries to make a logical and rational case for why miracles could exist. By the end of the book, you feel like you can follow his logic, and that maybe, just maybe, miracles seem possible when they might not have before. Your world feels like it is expanding.

But, Lewis notes, the logical pathways you took to get to those conclusions begin to vanish behind you, like the water of a swamp closing behind your footsteps. And the ideas recede into your memory like the tide - unless you read the book again. I had a Harvard professor in the English department who said if you read a book only once, you never read it. I don't totally buy that; to me, it feels like the equivalent of saying if you climbed a mountain only once, you never climbed it. But there is something very different about a hike you did once versus a hike you have done so many times it becomes part of who you are and can still show you new things each time you walk the trail.

Goodreads says:

The internationally bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential illuminates how harnessing our beliefs can influence our success in the real world.

Same world. Different beliefs. Different outcomes.

The greatest predictor of your future is the beliefs you hold about the world. In this extraordinary book, world-renowned researcher and author Shawn Achor illuminates how beliefs change the math about what is possible and probable in our lives. And by changing the math, beliefs change our path.

Drawing on two decades of research, as well as his work with NASA, the NFL, and over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, Shawn has discovered that the predictive power of beliefs has increased significantly. Beliefs about ourselves, money, the world, politics, faith, and work do more than shape the lens through which we see the world. They shape what happens next. Scientifically speaking, beliefs don’t just reflect reality. Beliefs bend reality.

Unfortunately, our beliefs can be empowering or they can be destructive. During what Achor calls the Great Drift, we have seen the staggering rise of the Four Horsemen of the Modern World: burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. We are underperforming our true potential. But there is hope. Stunning new research in this book reveals the seven most predictive “core beliefs” that alter our future health, success, wealth, and education. Scientifically, these core beliefs take the cap off our potential, enrich us, strengthen us, and heal us.

Shawn explores the six main ways of changing your and others’ beliefs using research-based strategies he has tested everywhere from Wall Street to impoverished schools in Africa, from Camp Pendleton to Camp David:

• The Disaster Elevator: change what part of the brain processes the world.
• The Memory DeLorean: change the memory.
• Stopping Negative Mantras: change the language.
• Creating a Neural Tribe: change the sources.
• Starting the Wave: change the contagious actions.
• Common Texts, Common Action: change the texts.

The Power of Beliefs shows how seven core beliefs predict your present, bend the probability of future success, and, in the modern world, are the key to creating a better life for you and for others.

What Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Laura Vanderkam)

 

This is a quick one hour audio book read by the author. She says: 

• The hopeful hours before breakfast are far to precious to waste.
• Small rituals can accomplish great things.
• A habit has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the laborers of a spasmatic Hercules. 
• When you make over your mornings, you can make over your life.
• Self-discipline is a muscle and it depletes over time - this is why you should do the most. important things in the morning. It is usually the time when you have fewer interruptions. 
• evenings are when diets are broken, crimes are committed, commitments are broken.
• the best things for mornings rituals are the things that result in long term benefits.
• Pick one new habit and work on it until you have made it part of your life. As you go, track your progress.
• The reason we stay in bed in the morning is we think of all the things we need to do instead of the things you look forward to. Plan to do things you look forward to.
• Tune up as necessary. Life changes and routines should change along with life's changes.

What most successful people use morning time for:

• nurturing their careers: strategizing and focused work
• nurturing their relationships: giving their families and friends their best
• nurturing themselves: exercise and spiritual and creative practices
• choose things you actually enjoy (no self-flagging!)

Other interesting facts she shares:

People more likely to achieve tenure, working on writing on a daily business.

The networking breakfast concept is incredibly underrated.

If you want to get more out of your time, track your time.

Goodreads summary:

Mornings are a madcap time for many of us. We wake up in a haze--often after hitting snooze a few times. Then we rush around to get ready and out the door so we can officially start the day. Before we know it, hours have slipped by without us accomplishing anything beyond downing a cup of coffee, dashing off a few emails, and dishing with our coworkers around the water cooler. By the time the workday wraps up, we're so exhausted and defeated that any motivation to accomplish something in the evening has vanished.

But according to time management expert Laura Vanderkam, mornings hold the key to taking control of our schedules. If we use them wisely, we can build habits that will allow us to lead happier, more productive lives.

Drawing on real-life anecdotes and scientific research that shows why the early hours of the day are so important, Vanderkam reveals how successful people use mornings to help them accomplish things that are often impossible to take care of later in the day. While many of us are still in bed, these folks are scoring daily victories to improve their health, careers, and personal lives without sacrificing their sanity. For instance, former PepsiCo chairman and CEO Steve Reinemund would rise at 5:00 a.m., run four miles, pray, and eat breakfast with his family before heading to work to run a Fortune 500 company.

"What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast" is a fun, practical guide that will inspire you to rethink your morning routine and jump-start your life before the day has even begun.

Big Potential (Shawn Achor)

 

I've noticed Shawn Anchor mentioned a lot when it comes to talking about happiness. He hit the nail on the head with this book!  I can't remember what led me to this book, but I was I pleasantly surprised and the more I read the more I loved it. My word of the year is "swing". I wrote about it here. I was able to add a lot to my cache about the value of swing by reading this! 

My notes are below the Goodreads summary.


Goodreads says:

“With cutting-edge research, penetrating insights, and practical examples, Shawn Achor describes a new conception of ‘success,’ and in doing so, reveals exciting new strategies we can use to meet our highest potential.”—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project

“A vibrant book on how to bring out the best in others—and how they can bring out the best in us.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the podcast WorkLife

In a world that thrives on competition and individual achievement, we’re measuring and pursuing potential incorrectly. Pursuing success in isolation—pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard—not only limits our potential but makes us more stressed and disconnected than ever.
 
Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor reveals a better approach. With exciting new research combining neuroscience and psychology with Big Data, Achor shows that our potential is not limited by what we alone can achieve. Instead, it is determined by how we complement, contribute to, and benefit from the abilities and achievements of people around us.
 
When we—as individuals, leaders, and parents—chase only individual achievement, we leave vast sources of potential untapped. But once we put “others” back into the equation, and work to make others better, we ignite a Virtuous Cycle of cascading successes that amplify our own.

The dramatic shifts in how we approach work today demand an equally dramatic shift in our approach to success. In Big Potential, Achor draws on cutting-edge original research as well as his work with nearly half of the Fortune 100 and with places like NASA, the NFL and the NBA, and offers a new path to thriving in the modern world.

Notes

p. 1 When dusk slowly crept upon a mangrove forest lining a river deep in a jungle in Southeast Asia, a biologist far from his home in Washington State looked out over the lush, alien landscape lining the snake-infested waters. While drifting slowly in his boat, Professor Hugh Smith surely heard the calls of the nocturnal creatures uncoiling from their dens or taking flight from their nests and beginning their nightly hunts. I can envision how the water must have shimmered under the light from the stars, unspoiled by the light pollution that existed in the remote cities. What happened next on that humid day in 1935 is part of recorded academic history. Smith looked up at one of the mangrove trees, and suddenly the entire canopy glowed as if a lightning bolt had show out from the tree instead of striking it. Then it all went dark, leaving a burned image on his vision....once his capacity for mental reasoning returned, he realized that the trees were not, in fact, glowing; rather they were covered with a critical number of bioluminiescent lightning bugs, all illuminating at the exact same time. Upon returning home, Dr Smith wrote up a journal article on his discovery of the synchronous lightning bugs. It seemed too good to be true, like something out of a storybook. I'm sadly unsurprised by the next part of the story. He was not believed. Biologists ridiculed his account, even calling it fabricated. Why would make fireflies glow in unison, which would only decrease their chances of distinguishing themselves to potential mates? Mathematicians were equally skeptical. How could order come from chaos in nature without a leader to direct it? And entomologists asked how million of fireflies could see enough other fireflies to create the exact same pattern, given the limited visibility i the mangrove forest. It seemed physically, mathematically, and biologically impossible. 
Yet, it wasn't. And thanks to modern science, we know how and why. Turns out that this puzzling behavior actually serves an evolutionary purpose for the fireflies. As published in the prestigious journal Science, researchers Moiseff and Copeland found that when lightning bugs light up at randome times, the likelihood of a female responding to a male in the deep, dark recesses of a mangrove forest is 3 percent. But when the lightning bugs light up together, the likelihood of females responding is 82%! That's not a typo. The success rate increased by 79 percentage points when flashing as an interconnected community rather than as individuals.
The lightning bug researchers discovered than when fireflies were able to time their pulses with one another with astonishing accuracy (to the millisecond!), it allowed them to space themselves apart perfectly, thus eliminating the need to compete. ...Like the lightning bugs, once we learn to coordinate and collaborate with those around us, we all begin to shine brighter, both individually and as an ecosystem.

p. 23...almost every attribute of your potential - from intelligence ot creativity to leadership to personality and engagement - is interconnected with others. Thus, to truly thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we need to change our pursuit of potential in the same way we need to change our pursuit of happiness. We need to stop trying to be faster alone, and start working to become stronger together.

p. 41 ...connecting with high-potential people dramatically increases your likelihood of high-potential outcomes. ...it turns out that not only do people around us powerfully shape  the type of person we'll become, but that their influence begins to take root at a very young age. For example, they found that when three- or four-year-old children were surrounded by peers who were hard-working or social, they too would begin to work harder and be more social. 
...Our finding, that personality traits are contagious among children, flies in the face of common assumptions that personality is ingrained and can't be changed.

p. 46 ...if animals don't care about a pecking order and they get along, that energy is transferred to production. In other words, when members of a group - be they human beings or chickens - focus only on competing their way to the top, they are likely to peck one another to death. They they work to lift one another up, however, everybody wins.

p. 51 A virtuous cycle (as opposed to a vicious cycle) is an upward spiral of potential whereby with each success, you garner more resources, which, in turn, allow you to achieve greater and greater successes.

p. 65 In basketball, for example, you would think that shooting percentage would best predict the outcome of a game, right? But in fact, a large BYU study found that the ratio of assists to turnovers is much more predictive of success. That's because lots of turnovers means players are hogging the ball so that they can score, whereas lots of assists means the players aren't trying to make individual shots; they are trying to get the collective win.

p. 117...praise is actually a renewable resource, Praise creates a Virtuous Cycle - the more you gibe, the more you enhance your own supply. When done right, praise primes the brain for higher performance, which means that the more we praise, the more success we create. And the more successes there are, the more there is to praise.

p. 119 By denying the light of praise, we extinguish it. By bending the light toward others, we magnify it.

p. 121 The easiest way to stop comparison praise is simply to eliminate superlatives from our vocabulary - "the best," "the fastest", "the smartest", "the prettiest". All of these undercut others instead of telling people they are great in their own right. Instead, follow what I consider an inviolable law of praise for leaders and parents: Do not compliment at the expense of others. ....the best praise is by actions changed.

p. 127...if we want to encourage excellence, we need a daily practice to shine attention on instances of excellence. The most powerful one in my life, and the one I suggest in every talk, is to take to minutes (maximum) each morning to simply write and send a text message or email praising or thanking someone in your life. Of all the positive habits I have, this is the most powerful one for multiple reasons. First, you have just scanned your relationships for something positive to spotlight, helping you see more positives, which, in turn, gives you more to spotlight. When I suggest this at companies, managers say that that simple email in the morning causes them to look for and see more things to praise and recognize on their teams the rest of the day.

p. 151 He had some strategies on defense against the dark arts of the world:

1. Build a moat (ie no social media or news in the first or last hour of the day.....not a new concept! I really should consciously do it! On p. 153 he said individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning were 27% more likely to report their day as unhappy six to eight hours later - it was like taking a poison pill each morning that made all of your efforts, energies, and interactions throughout the day more toxic)
2. Built a mental stronghold. This means to develop habits routines to remain calm, on task and hopeful in the face of immeasurable stress and sadness. (this was in reference to hospital teams who deal with big tragic events best)
3. Learn the art of Mental Aikido - look at stress positively. Accept it and work with it. Reframe failure as a learning opportunity.
4. Take a vacation from your problem - taking time away from your problems may actually help you reap one of the greatest competitive advantages that exist today....maintain a positive and engaged brain. Plan time away on a regular basis.
5. Pick your battles.

p. 182 How to channel collective energy
1. General more positive energy by creating Tours of Meaning (look for the beautiful in your every day life)
2. Use vivid direction to generate a path for that energy to flow
3. Accelerate the momentum you have created through the power of celebration. When you celebrate the good the negative seems to take care of itself.

p. 212 Realize that change is not a one time event. You will have to keep working on this for a lifetime! 

You can't exercise today hoping to never need to exercise again. In truth, we exercise today so we can move our body again tomorrow. We must always be on guard and repairing what breaks down over time.