The Surprising Secret Shawn Achor Reveals About Bringing Others Along to Success
Schawbel: Why and how is our potential influenced by those we surround ourselves with at home and at the office?
Achor: If you stop smoking, your health improves, but if everyone around you is still smoking, you will never see your full health. Similarly, initial research coming out of the famous Framingham heart study revealed that not only was happiness “contagious” so was obesity, heart disease, divorce, smoking habits, and depression. Thus, our happiness, health and success are interconnected with others. Moreover, think about it, you are more creative around certain friends. You are funnier or more extraverted around certain people. Yet, when science has measures you, we make you take creativity and personality tests alone and in isolation. We have been measuring potential incorrectly. Now with Big Data we can see that even moral choices spread. If you donate a dollar with a group of strangers, those strangers give a quarter more in their next group, and that group then splinters out into third tier groups that give a nickel more. You may never meet those people two degrees separate from you, but you have influenced them, and they you. We also know that productivity, energy, sales are all interconnected traits. And from the Happiness Advantage we know that the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged brain. Now that’s contagious too.
