If there's one theme that dominates the field of positive psychology, it's that we can become happier human beings--and that increased happiness will benefit our health and success. Indeed, evidence suggests that we can rewire our brains for greater positivity through relatively simple daily practices, such as mindfulness meditation. In a recent article, Kira Newman highlights five research-based strategies for cultivating happiness, including the exercise of personal and professional strengths and the pursuit of deeply meaningful activities.
But is happiness simply a function of what we do? Emma Emma Seppälä, in her book The Happiness Track, suggests that conditioning happiness on our performance is a trap. Our well-being, she suggests, is a function of our relationship with ourselves: how we think of ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves. Is it possible that, when we treat ourselves conditionally and negatively, we're actually rewiring our brains for unhappiness?
I recently gave a talk for portfolio managers, traders, and analysts in New York. The most common question people asked was, "How can we stay positive when we're losing money?" The question makes sense. If your job is to trade financial markets and earn a good return for investors and you lose money instead, haven't you failed in your mission? How can you sustain happiness amidst failure?
It's a question I've heard many times--and often from the most achievement-oriented, successful professionals. They are never happy with the status quo, and that drives them toward greater achievement. It also drives them to never being happy. Over time, pushing for more and never being content leads to burnout and lost productivity--not exemplary success.
To become a happier human being, we need a different relationship with ourselves. And there is one secret to that better relationship:
Stay relentlessly constructive.
Not positive, not negative: constructive.
A constructive self-relationship is one in which you fully accept that you are going to mess up at times. If you undertake enough challenging goals, you will sometimes fall short. You'll make bad decisions as a parent or as a partner, you'll make bad decisions at work, you'll make bad decisions in financial markets--and all of those will lead to unwanted results.
You. Will. Fail.
You. Are. Fallible.
But constructive means you have the opportunity to learn from your setbacks.
Constructive means that you actually embrace those mistakes and mess ups as opportunities to learn and become better.
When you condition your happiness on your success, you'll always be unhappy when you don't succeed. When you condition your happiness on your ability to learn from failures, you place yourself in control of your well-being--and your relationship with yourself.
You become a happier human being when you talk to yourself constructively--and when you actually construct solutions to the messes you create.
In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin found that well-being is the result of small, positive daily actions. So it is with our relationship with ourselves. Daily constructive self-talk and action build a deep satisfaction with our own learning and evolution.
Consider keeping a failure journal. In one column, jot down every occasion in which you fall short and feel frustrated. In the next column, identify where you went wrong and why you fell short. In the third column, highlight how you could rectify that mistake and/or make a better decision in the future. Then turn that third column into an action step--a goal. Consciously place yourself in situations where you can confront a similar situation in a better way.
Such a failure journal encourages us to look for our shortcomings and make the most of them. It is a way of structuring a different self-talk, a more constructive relationship with ourselves. If we are going to be happier human beings, we have to learn to make the most of our humanness.
