“Fun leads to success”… “Software companies like Yahoo, Google and somewhat Facebook are making the work environments relaxed and fun centered to increase the productivity of their workers”….. The notion that fun and happiness is a behavioral trait that gives advantage in competition is the core of the “positive psychology”…. Positive psychology has emerged in response to traditional psychology that were focused in curing the psychological problems…”diseases”…..the results were that psychologists knew a lot more about the dark sides of human psyche than positive sides….
Let me provide a little background (though it might be boring a little bit; what positive psychology tries to avoid)…
Measurement is the core of Science. It quantifies things and provides the basic data to determine the outcomes of the experiments. The traditional way is to conclude results by following the general ….“average”….. trends of the data…. The “average” is taken as “normal” and what is below and above the average is mostly ignored… In tradition psychology the focus was on the individuals who were below the average or “abnormal” individuals and most of practices were concentrated to bring below the average individuals to the level of average individuals…… The individuals that were above the average weren’t in need of any help… so they were lying out of the lens of the psychological studies…..
What brought the positive psychology in spotlight?
When “smart” individuals in their strives for success….. faced the same problems as those individuals who were lying below the average then the need for positive psychology were felt…… The positive psychology got even more attention when the abilities of “smarts” were questioned by recent global economic meltdown…. The economy of the developed nations and multi-national companies are run by “smart” individuals from elite institutions like those of Harvard…. The question that why this smart layer of society has failed in predicting the massive economic meltdown? And worst than that… why they are failing in the fixing the problems?..... are putting enormous pressures on them and make them face hard times as the people below the average……
It is not just economic meltdown that has exposed the weaknesses of the “smarts” but also the studies of Shawn Achor (A Harvard Professor of Positive Psychology)…. On Harvard students revealed that Harvard students suffer the same problems as below average people (His book ….”Happiness Advantage” is an interesting read)….. The reason is the pressure of the success….. These students have already achieved a lot in their lives and the enormous expectations from them put them under more pressure so they strive harder for bigger successes and sometimes they harm themselves because they don’t understand….how human psyche works……
Professor Shawn Achor studies have revealed that “happiness”…”fun” …..even those very small ones like …..presenting a candy….. improves the performance and makes the relative happier ones able to outperform their otherwise equal competitors…….
This is a cool finding that I think everyone should be aware of…. As not all people follow these studies and remain unaware of these small but very effective findings that can help improve their lives… so it is the duty to those who come to know …..to spread the words……..
I really admire the efforts of people in “positive psychology” that are using the findings of the “Neuroplasticity” to find ways and techniques to help, optimize the abilities of the smart individuals……
It is not necessary that one should be a psychologist to be able to use the results of the scientific findings to help others… The art teacher Betty Edwards is an exemplary in this regard…. Betty Edwards was a school art teacher where she found that some of the students were facing problems in improving their drawing skills… To her lines were like letters and drawing was like combining letters in proper order to make words and putting words in proper order to make sentences… It is a skill that everyone can learn and is not limited to artist…. She was not convinced by general conceptions that reading and writing is a skill that all should learn but drawing is a skill that need artistic ability that …..only artists born with….
She came across of the studies that certain brain areas are specialized for certain functions… for example the left brain is specialized for speaking skill… People who get hit and injured seriously on the left sides of their skulls usually have lost their speaking ability…. She become excited by learning that right side of the brain is specialized with sense of sight, perceptions or in short in artistic skills………….. Because left side of brain controls the right side of our bodies and also in rational thinking (like solving mathematical problems) so we tend to use more our left side of brains than right side….
It is a common observation that most of the people are right-handed (rely heavily on left hemisphere of brain)…..
She used the findings of the specializations of brain areas to develop techniques to help her students who were slow in developing drawing skills… one of her famous techniques is drawing downside up……
She joined University to do research and improve her findings.. After completing her PhD, she joined California State University as a Professor of Arts and wrote her bestselling book on art “Drawing on right side of brain”….
I might have not noticed the Achor and Betty’s findings unless I didn’t know some of the ingenious experiments in evolutionary studies. One of the experiments that I liked most is conducted by Malte Andersson of zoology department, University of Gothenburg. It was known that extremely long tails of male widow birds was evolved as a result of female preference… The male with longer tails have advantage over those with relatively shorter tails. In a field experiment, Andersson artificially increased the length of the tails of some male widow birds and compared them with other males and found that male with taller tails got higher rate of mating successes…..
This is a very simple but ingenious experiment as the findings are applicable to human life… Just as longer tail (even if artificially elongated) provide an advantage to outcompete those with shorter tails so…..DO ENHANCING SOME BEHAVIORAL TRAITS PROVIDE ADAVANTAGES TO INVIDUALS IN OUTCOMPETING OTHERS THAT DIDN’T ENHANCED THEIR BEHAVIORAL TRAITS?.....
Professor Achor’s answer is YES…. He says enhancing the happiness even by very small things can provide those advantages…..
So a little attention on work spaces, study areas and the way we work and study can increase our outputs enormously…. A little fun through what we do everyday like eating, playing, conversations, readings, clothing and work can change a lot……
By saying all these I am not endorsing the “Fun-centered” life style… because fun is not the goal of life ….. Fun is to increase our performances….. A lot of people confuse these two………
Smiley ends up to smiles :)
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