It pays to get happy

I don’t know.  I’m all for optimism, but this guy looks ‘way too happy for me.

Come on, admit it:  ‘Too happy’ scares you as well, right?  Don’t you squint a little bit and turn away, ever so slightly, from a person who is happier than the occasion warrants?

It’s different if a guy is angry – maybe because his underwear has bunched up and he’s at work behind the counter at the deli and he doesn’t have a break wherein he can make an adjustment for another 20 minutes – I can relate. 

All right, maybe I haven’t been in that exact situation, but I did work 30 years in public schools.  See what I mean?

OK.  Never mind that.  Just stay with me for a moment.  This is a Harvard guy, Shawn Achor, the bestselling author of The HappinessAdvantage, talking on TED about how we’ve had it backwards all along:  Success doesn’t bring happiness – Happiness brings success.

And just as an aside:  Is there any book out these days that is not a “national bestseller”?  Or written by a New York Times bestselling author?  Or a National Book Award nominee? 

I have one on my nightstand right now that is “Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.”  What?  Oprah’s Book Club list of books that all the cool lemmings are reading doesn’t matter anymore?

I’m just sayin’ that it’s starting to seem like there’s a book prize for everyone who persists through all the vagaries of book writing and the industry succumbs and publishes it. 

Actually, I’m hoping that’s true.  So if I ever complete the one I’m slogging through, someone will pin a ribbon on it – maybe the Book Writing for Dummies Award.

Anyway, as I was saying, I like the Harvard guy’s premise:  Happiness leads to success.  The idea is to go ahead and get happy because happiness is a better predictor of success than intelligence and skills.

This works perfectly for me.  I can celebrate my lack of skills.  And brains.

Shawn says, “If we can get somebody to raise their levels of optimism or happiness, turns out every single business and educational outcome we know how to test for improves dramatically.”

It must be working for him because he’s grinning like he has a staple caught in his teeth.  He’s on the way to the magnifying mirror with the tweezers and some floss and he doesn’t want to close his lips until he leans in and removes the offending wire.

And he’s a bestselling author.  Harvard guy.

“You can increase your success rates for the rest of your life and your happiness levels will flat-line,” he says. 

I can’t help wondering though, about the exact altitude of that happiness plateau.  Seems like it must be above sea level – you know, where you were when you were a failure.  It surely did rise as your success was rising.

OK, but wait.  Does he mean if you put happiness first, your success rate flat lines?

NO!  He does not! 

Shawn:  “… if you raise your level of happiness and deepen optimism, it turns out every single one of your success rates rises dramatically compared to what it would have been at negative, neutral, or stressed.”

So all that’s left is the getting happy part.  Luckily, the Grinster, er, Shawn, has a formula:  Here you go, how to get happy and, by extension, be successful.

First, express your gratitude three times a day.  Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  Check.

Next, list the things you’re grateful for every day in a journal.  But, this becomes redundant, right?  Otherwise you wind up going from family, friends and health to sunshine and pets.  All good, of course.  But soon it’s down to fresh ink cartridges and chow mein noodles.  I am grateful but…OK.

Practice random acts of kindness.  Check.

Meditate.  Check-ish.

Exercise.  Oh, I knew it would get to this!  How can something that engenders dread make you happy?  Whatever.

Turn it to your advantage Carolyn:  That exercise cringe?  The one that could pass for a smile, a big, stretched, unnatural smile?  Like your puppy sliced you with his baby razor teeth?  It counts.

Just smile and dance the dance.  See?  You’re more successful already. 

Aldous Huxley got it right

Item:  Man uses mind to control rat’s tail. 

OK.  Set aside your common sense reaction:  A man decides to use his mind and he uses it for that?  To control a rat’s tail?!   

What about the rat’s breeding habits, or his choice of residence, for example.  Why not use your mind to control one of those more pressing rat proclivities? 

Or how about a man controlling his own impulse to browse the channels for hours on end while the cable guide obscures the picture from other viewers in the room?  What about that? 

Or what if such a man used his mind to remember someone’s birthday, as a suggestion, or her ring size? 

But I digress. 

The point of the news out of BBC Future is that a man in the United States has successfully used his mind to control a rat’s tail in Brazil.  It’s scientifically documented. 

Yeah, me too.  I’m still hung up on the why of it all, but let’s press on. 

It’s a breakthrough, you understand.  The man wired up in a lab here thought “twitch” into an internet connection with the rat’s brain in South America, and voila!  That rodent wagged his hairless appendage as though he thought to do it himself. 

Still feeling a little underwhelmed. 

And they don’t mention any concern regarding reverse signals, from rat brain to man brain.  Nevertheless. 

Very serious grown men with clipboards and grant money, neuroscientists at Duke University, Harvard and the Pentagon, are focused on such brain-computer interfaces.  They are hell-bent it seems, to take steps beyond the already established ability of human brains to commandeer computer cursors, artificial limbs and virtual drones. 

We can extrapolate with confidence that they want that rat to dance to whatever tune is stuck in their heads.  It’s a small world after all.  (Sorry.)  Achieving that pinnacle they most certainly will move on to bigger and more bizarre brain-to-brain interactions. 

Hold that thought.   

Item:  Researchers at the 2012 conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams report lucid dreamers sending signals to each other over the internet while in the dream state. 

These guys strap on their brainwave headbands and when the EEG recognizes they’re in the dream state via rapid eye movement, it alerts them.  The first one to get that signal becomes lucid - self-aware in the dream state - and signals his pal who’s sleeping in another room, or another state.  

These Avant guard techies even created a rudimentary competition in which the dreamer who signals his counterpart first, wins.  Now they’re exploring dreaming-brain-to-dreaming-brain connections via social media.  What a time saver!  Find your perfect mate while you sleep. 

The dream guys jumped ahead of the Pentagon guys and their pet Brazilian rat.  They established a conscious - at least lucid - contact between two human brains in remote locations.  The difference is that the dreamers aren’t trying to control each other, they just want to play. 

And finally:  

Item:  Google has opened a new service to let people control their email, blog posts and online photos posthumously, as concern grows over what happens to a user’s "digital life" when he dies. 

This service allows living Googlers to set up binding instructions for what happens to their electronic legacies when they pass into that great Ethernet in “the cloud.”  It heralds a common clause in wills of the future.  

And it’s worrisome for those of us who’ve had this experience:  One of my LinkedIn connections died a couple of years ago but he continues to ask for my endorsements.  “Does ‘John’ know about project management?” the screen prompts hopefully.  “Does ‘John’ know about Microsoft Word?” 

It’s creepy.  And by the way, “John” was creepy when he was alive.  I didn’t like him in the first place.  We started out as Facebook “friends” because we worked together and I didn’t want to draw his attention by declining his request.  Twisted, I know.  Then, he never even “liked” my posts or LOL’d one time!  I guess he wants sympathy endorsements now! 

In summary:  Mad scientists work feverishly toward methods of controlling us from afar.  Fun-loving researchers develop dazzling means to connect and entertain us.  And search engines allow us to communicate from beyond the grave. 

We have, indeed, a Brave New Electronic World.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley