Are We Happy Yet? The Unexpected Links Between Happiness and Choice

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — The key to happiness lies in the choices you make, or so they say.  

Yet, new research by long-time collaborators Jennifer Aaker, Cassie Mogilner, and Sep Kamvar suggests that people don’t make choices based on a single or shared notion of happiness. In “How Happiness Impacts Choice,” a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, by Cassie Mogilner (The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania), Aaker (Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business), and Kamvar (Stanford University Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering), they conclude that people’s relationship with happiness is a complex one, subject to factors both demographic (age) and psychographic (living in the present versus focusing on the future). Still, people’s individual experience of happiness can be influenced in systematic ways, and can lead to predictable choices.

In their 2010 collaboration, Mogilner, Aaker, and Kamvar identified two types of happiness. Some consumers define happiness as an “arousing” or exciting emotion. Others experience it as a calm, peaceful feeling. In their 2011 work, these researchers concluded that people can toggle back and forth between these two distinctly different experiences. Depending on which view of happiness they favor at a given moment, people will make different choices.

Based on earlier studies, the researchers believed that attitudes toward happiness — as either exciting or calm — depended largely on the individual’s age. “The Shifting Meaning of Happiness,” published in early 2011 in Social Psychological and Personality Science, summarized those findings. For that paper, the researchers analyzed 70,000 independent instances in which online bloggers wrote about feelings of happiness. Younger bloggers were much more likely to describe situations that reflected the happiness-equals-excitement mindset. Older ones tended to subscribe to the happiness-equals-peacefulness point of view. “We knew that as we grow older, our priorities change.  But what we haven’t known is that our definition of happiness also changes — in systematic and predictable ways — over the course of life,” said Aaker.

Yet, why would these effects hold? Why is it that people’s definition of happiness changes as they age?  The results of six new studies answer this question.  As people age, their temporal focus changes —whether they are likely to be focused on the here and now or on the future.  And it is this temporal focus that drives the basic effects. “We now think that individuals’ views of happiness depend far more upon their sense of time than their age per se,” said Aaker.

In one of the six studies, the researchers recruited young adult volunteers — individuals who they expected would perceive happiness as an exciting experience. They told half of the volunteers to focus on the present, and to relinquish thoughts of anything but the current moment. That group of volunteers was later far more likely to define happiness as “peaceful” than the volunteers who were not led to focus on the present moment.

As a result, “we now believe that attitudes toward happiness are highly malleable, and, in fact, easily influenced, simply by shifting the timeframe people consider,” said Aaker.

Businesses promoting the idea that their brand will make consumers happy should first consider which type of happiness (calm or exciting?) their products are most likely to evoke. They then need to place marketing images, slogans, or activities in a context that encourages consumers to think of happiness in the appropriate timeframe.

For example, BMW’s global “Stories of Joy” campaign includes a website where consumers can upload homemade videos that demonstrate the joy of driving. Whiskas created the “Happy Together” online community as a place people could share happy moments with their cats. Based on Mogilner, Aaker, and Kamvar’s most recent research, these brands could be more effective by “preparing” consumers to experience happiness in a way that puts the campaign in the best light.

BMW’s campaign clearly hopes that consumers will view happiness as an exciting state. To maximize its effectiveness, BMW should push consumers to take a long-term, future view of happiness. Alternatively, Whiskas’ website portrays happiness as an exceedingly peaceful emotion. It should provide contextual cues that encourage consumers to savor the present moment.

Since happiness doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, marketers should consider what types of consumer they want to reach. They also need to consider how to convey happiness. As a benefit of using the product? As an aspect of brand personality? Even the colors they deploy in advertisements and collateral matters.

In one of the other studies detailed in their most recent paper, the researchers presented 50 consumers between the ages of 19 and 68 with a list of colors, objects, people, activities, and brands. The consumers indicated which items on the list excited them, and which ones calmed them down. Hot colors like red tended to excite participants. Cool colors like blue promoted a sense of peacefulness. Nike, Target, and Apple brands were deemed exciting, but Johnson & Johnson, Lululemon, and Borders evoked calm feelings. Even certain types of people (kids, friends) and activities (dancing, running) were considered exciting, whereas other types of people and activities (spouses, parents, reading, yoga) induced calm.

Brands that want to promise happiness should consider that these associations already exist in consumers’ minds. Although such associations will vary based on demographics (such as age) and psychographics (whether they are focused on the present or future), companies do have the power to shift them. To fully leverage investments in “happiness” campaigns, companies need to forgo generalized or generic ideas of happiness and focus on the real experiences their customers seek.

Source: Alice LaPlante, STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS; Stanford Knowledgebase © 2012 All Rights Reserved.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/knowledgebase/cgi-bin/2011/12/05/are-we-happy-y...

You're in a "funk." You've noticed that your state of being is other than "go-go-go" or "carefree" or whatever your preferred default state usually seems to be. So now what?

Three options...

Option 1: Live through it. Be the funk... Until it shifts. If it is truly just a funk, then it will eventually subside. (If it is a more chronic condition, then seek support from a confidant, coach, and/or healer.)

Option 2: Practice being the observer of your funk rather than being the funk. Understand that a funk is merely like passing weather within. Be the weather man, not the weather. Practice being in observance of your state, and then choose to act according to a plan or a vision for your actions. Act according to plan rather than according to your internal weather.

Option 3: Take direct action to alter your state. Go for a walk. Engage in physical exercise. Splash cold water in your face. Drink a cool, refreshing beverage. Drink a warm and soothing beverage. Listen to compelling music. Read inspiring ideas.

You are the author of your experience. You choose.

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Source: Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
http://www.360achievementcoaching.com

So, what are your values as you seem them today? (Do you EVER ask yourself this question? Most people rarely, if ever, do.)

What are your high-level goals (your vision) for the rest of the week? For the next few weeks?

What are your action items today? Tomorrow?

Do your action items align with your vision?  (If not, it's time to re-commit to your values.)

http://www.360ACHIEVE.com

THIS IS YOUR MIND ON MEDITATION: LESS WANDERING, MORE DOING
By Melissa Healy/Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots Blog
7:41 p.m. EST, November 22, 2011

The brains of experienced meditators appear to be fitter, more disciplined and more "on task" than do the brains of those trying out meditation for the first time. And the differences between the two groups are evident not only during meditation, when brain scans detect a pattern of better control over the wandering mind among experienced meditators, but when the mind is allowed to wander freely.

Those insights emerge from a study to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looked at two groups: highly experienced meditators and meditation novices, and compared the operations of the "Default Mode Network" -- a newly identified cluster of brain regions that go to work when our brains appear to be "offline."

"I think it's safe to say this is brain-training at work," says Yale University psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who conducted the study with psychologists from Yale, the University of Oregon and Columbia University. "It makes sense," adds Brewer. "Anything you train to do, you do better."

By the definition of the latest study, mental control was defined as the ability to keep two key nodes of the default mode network from becoming active during meditation. The posterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex appear to be hubs of the brain's "neutral" setting--areas that come alive when we are not engaged in a task that requires more specialized attention and let our minds wander. (Not coincidentally, they are also areas that tend to become active when we remember events in our past and think about other peoples' motives and intentions.) In the 12 veteran meditators who participated in the current study, those two regions were quieter during meditation than they were in the brains of the 12 meditation novices with which they were compared.

The study also detected greater connectivity between some of the brain's key cognitive control areas and elements of the default mode network. During meditation and in the mental rest periods in between, a brain region known to be important in focusing and maintaining attention, the dorsolateral anterior cingulate cortex, was more likely to activate in tandem with the posterior cingulate cortex in regular meditators than in those who are new to the practice: that, says Brewer, suggests that during meditation and in everyday life, meditators may have more skill in reining in their wandering thoughts and bringing the brain back "on task"-- than those who don't routinely meditate.

Why would mental control over our daydreams make us more healthy? It turns out that having a well-functioning default mode network--one that lets us explore ourselves and our lives but doesn't intrude into our efforts to concentrate when that's what's needed--is critical to mental health.

Those of us who daydream more often are more likely to be depressed--either because we get caught in a cycle of rumination or because depressed people have poorer concentration (which comes first isn't clear). A study that tracked the daily activities and moods of iPhone users-published in Science magazine last November--found that those whose minds were wandering off task more often were more depressed. People who suffer from attention deficit disorder also have difficulty keeping mind-wandering at bay, which may be why many studies have found that meditation helps those with attention deficit disorder.

In fact, Brewer cites the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, who is quoted as saying" Practice doesn't make perfect: perfect practice makes perfect." Meditation, suggests Brewer, appears to be "perfect practice" in the skills that make undistracted work a possibility: the ability to detect the first signs of mind-wandering, to recognize and essentially forgive the impulse, and then gently to draw the mind back to the task at hand.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

This article brought to you by...
Present² Awareness (P²A)© — http://www.PresentAwareness.org
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By Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° ACHIEVEMENT COACHING and Group Coaching Forums

As a student of human performance, a productivity consultant, and a professional coach for more than twenty years, I've identified "Effects of Coached Collaboration" that help create and sustain change for individuals. It is human nature for an individual to become comfortable with discomfort and to procrastinate—even when s/he knows better. It is the habit of the mind to be preoccupied with the past and fearful of the future. Your willingness to strive for achievement beyond the foibles of the mind and to exceed your basic human nature improves greatly when a trusted partner engages with you to create and support your goals. "Coached collaboration" differs from mere collaboration in that a client's investment of trust with a coach creates a uniquely powerful and productive synergy. Several effects of coached collaboration that create and sustain change for individuals are...

The Partnership/Commitment Effect: It is a phenomenon of the human condition that commitment to intentions and goals intensifies and partnership is generated when a coaching client invests his/her trust and chooses to engage in collaboration with a performance and achievement specialist who is professional, broadly knowledgeable, trustworthy, unbiased, fun, enthusiastic, and whole-heartedly dedicated to the client's achievement.

The Awareness Effect: Peaked awareness, clarity, reflection, and heightened creativity are achieved for the coaching client through coached collaboration.

The Focus Effect: Collaborating with a trusted partner to give attention to the present moment and real-time circumstances produces focus on what is really going on and what has greatest priority.

The Discovery Effect: Coached collaboration allows for the realization of questions and the discovery of answers that cannot otherwise be realized if an individual attempts to explore alone.

The Revelation Effect: Engaging in collaboration with a coach reveals to the client that which the client did not know that s/he did not know. In other words: You can't have a breakthrough about what there is to do to succeed if you don't become aware of what you didn't know that you didn't know.

The Accountability Effect: Responsibility, confidence, keeping one's word to others, and follow-through increases and the client does not settle for that which does not work when engaged in coached collaboration.

The Momentum Effect: Coached collaboration fosters rapid turnover of methods and action-plans resulting in fast and efficient discovery of the best methods, processes, and action-plans to achieve the most desirable results.

The Breakthrough Effect: Each of us manifest beliefs and behaviors that seem second-nature, automatic, and sometimes even unconscious to us. When coached collaboration is at play, we have the unique opportunity to expose and become aware of judgements and attachments hiding-out in our "blind spots." Amazing breakthroughs happen when we become aware of and take responsibility for what's been going-on in our blind spots!

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Article: Effects of Coached Collaboration
By Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° ACHIEVEMENT COACHING and Group Coaching Forums
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A message to experienced sales people…

Do you ever ask yourself, “Am I firing on all pistons?” or “Am I playing the sales game with attention to all of the critical essentials of effective gameplay?”  I think many sales people who are ambitious and excellence-driven wonder this, yet they procrastinate about resolving their concerns.  Avoidance is also human nature, so many deny there’s any need for concern at all.  If you don’t routinely ask yourself these questions, then you should.

Study of adult learning reveals that it is human nature to be drawn to learn new concepts that present themselves with a context or experience of novelty.  We tend to give prioritized attention to new and seemingly uniquely valuable ideas.  Yet as time passes, novelty and prioritization of previously fresh ideas lessens.  We take for granted the value of concepts, and they lose their luster in our field of attention.  It is a false assumption (most everyone makes) that, if we learned a concept before then we “know” it forever…  And since we know it forever, well then, we will always benefit from that knowing and we most certainly apply that concept at every opportune occasion.  Right?  Yeah, right.

What’s more, even important concepts, such as effective communication techniques or productive business strategies, from which we would benefit to re-consider and perhaps implement with a new vigor, are dismissed reflexively if the mind thinks, “oh, that sounds like something I’ve heard before.”  The mind reacts with, “I already know that, I’m smart enough and good enough as it is, and so everything is fine as it is.”

A moment of earnest and honest introspection reveals to us:

• We carry around the false assumption that we we know everything we’ve ever seen before.
• And we keep falling back into living on auto-pilot mode, “good enough and fine.”

If you don’t choose to ambitiously act out extraordinarily on your own behalf, then your mind will live your life for you as “good enough” and “fine.”  I don’t know about you, but “good enough” and “fine” have never been enough for me!  So, I seek-out fresh, bold, concise, and compelling new presentations of fundamentals for effectiveness, productivity, and success as often as I can.  While experiencing a same-old idea that is newly-framed, and so freshly-compelling, we give renewed meaning and newly-inspired attention to the most recent presentation of a concept that we have perhaps previously learned and since let slip away from our active mindfulness.

About how learning works and a message to students of sales, new sales people, and people who merely want to learn to be more effective communicators and be more persuasive…

When you are seeking out resources for engaging your mind to increase your knowledge and improve your effectiveness, some resources are better than others.  The field of educational psychology tells us that we learn more information more quickly and more deeply when the information is presented using generally-conversational language, carefully-chunked concepts, patterns, memory devices, and triggers.  So, whenever I am learning new ideas and concepts, I don’t just look for the book with the brightest colors and the glossiest cover…  I seek out resources that employ information presentation techniques and formatting that I know will best support my understanding of the information and ease the challenge of retaining new information.

THE GOOD NEWS for new sales people and experienced sales professionals…

Dale Brakhage’s book, ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, is an ideal refresher course for essential sales concepts.  To begin with, the ABC-format of this book is easy-to-read and very understandable.  Readers will appreciate the bite-sized chapters and enjoy the insights and anecdotes featured throughout the book.  Moreover, ABC’s of Selling incorporates techniques to enhance learning.  Readers of this book become engaged in a “conversation” with the authors.  The style of the text is less formal and more accessible to attract and hold the attention of younger readers and those who communicate more frequently via the Internet.  Selling is persuasive communication, a complex process.  ABC’s of Selling breaks the complex process of selling into simple behaviors that readers can easily learn and demonstrate.  Those behaviors, called essential concepts, appear in a matrix, the alphabet, which all readers can easily recall and recite correctly at any time.  Associating the simple behaviors of selling with the alphabet provides readers with an effective memory device, called a trigger which allows them to recall the behaviors easily.

Also a valuable feature of the of the book, acclaimed celebrity chef, author, philanthropist, speaker and advertising industry business woman, Edie Hand, co-authored ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette by contributing the book's "etiquette essentials."  Hand has authored, co-authored, and helped to develop over twenty books ranging from inspirational cookbooks to novellas from a strong woman’s perspective.  Not only does ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette recommend essential “selling” strategies and methods for expressing yourself and your ideas, but the book also emphasizes a dimension of sales that is often neglected, the human-to-human conscientious courtesy of “business etiquette.”  Merging selling tactics and the practice of better human relations through business etiquette will help you learn to listen with intent and empathy, express and demonstrate respect for others with appropriate protocols and manners, better manage and present your ideas, work efficiently to achieve goals and objectives, communicate effectively, and ultimately create mutually-valuable and appreciated transactions of exchange between people.

I was recently enlisted to edit Brakhage’s ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, and I felt so strongly about the value of the book that when I was invited to do so, I enthusiastically contributed the foreword to the book.  Most people find it difficult to sell their ideas.  Even more people struggle when trying to sell products or services.  People everywhere want to succeed in business and need to know how to be persuasive and behave appropriately.  Everyone should learn how to sell!  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette can help you communicate more effectively, persuade others to accept your ideas and agree with you, and get more of what you want out of life.  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette reinvigorates our focus on the fundamentals of communication, persuasiveness, and sales principles and tactics.

Buy "ABC's of Selling with Etiquette" now!

~   ~   ~
Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
Providing a 360° Perspective for
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Extraordinary Achievement 

Contribute your opinion to the poll and see the answers so far...

To experience your greatest fulfillment and to achieve your best, you must set "peace of mind" as your first priority, and then create your personal life (and your worklife and workplace) to support it.  This is true at an individual's level of responsibility for self.  As well, this should be an on-going personnel-maintenance/support issue for management and executive leaders within companies and organizations.  It's not default human nature to achieve and thrive with this approach, so it requires extraordinary intention, commitment, and efforts to apply this methodology:  First priority, peace of mind...  All other priorities follow that priority.  It is amazing how individual performance becomes extraordinary and organizations become authentically powerful and successful when this commitment is adopted within the organization's mission and is honored by the individuals embracing it.

Get a 360° perspective, and take action now!

GREG L. KILGORE, Achievement Coach
360° Achievement Coaching:
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Achievement 

We all have our weak suits.  And some of them may be moving into the area of mission-critical or values-critical.  And there are things we all need to learn to give us the edge we want or to unlock the potential we strive to fulfill.  One of the two greatest values of a coach has always been the consultant's role:  to give us new and useful points of view.  Perspective is the slipperiest and most valuable commodity on this planet.  No matter where you are, no matter how low you go, your viewing point about where you are and where you want to go and how you could get there will be a priceless commodity.  We need to see "outside the box." We need to hear non-invested opinions about what we're doing and how we're doing it.  This is, and always will be, the value of consultants.

But if we want it to happen now, and we want it to stick, we need to put ourselves in the hands of a coach who coaxes and coaches us through the new behaviors in real time in the real world.  We often need professional help in real time to install new behaviors and to get and keep us at the enhanced levels we want to function.  It's about consistently applied high-leverage responses and activities that happen on cruise control.  It's about what we can be trusted to be doing, by others and (most importantly) by ourselves, when the pressure of the real world is at hand.  To rapidly make those kinds of permanent changes and enhancements to our life-styles and work-styles, we need models, mentors, and most importantly, personal coaches, whom we spend real time with, getting us to do the real things we really need to be doing, from now on.

We need to groove new grooves in our patterns. The fastest way is to commit to a coach whose job and contract is to hold a focus and a format that helps us retread.  It could be a new way to think, a new way to feel, and/or a new way to act and respond.  But if it's a "new way" at all, it's unfamiliar territory to the unconscious part of us, and it needs to be made much more friendly to our basic nervous system.  We want to become "unconsciously competent."  We know that ultimately we need to be just doing it ourselves as a way of life and work. But we have to acknowledge that the path to that freedom is not free.

This conventional behavioral model identifies four stages of moving to permanently changed conduct:

(1) Unconscious incompetence

"I don't even know that I don't know what I don't know."

(2) Conscious incompetence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly."

(3) Conscious competence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, (but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly.)"

(4) Unconscious competence

"I just do it.  I only think about it when I don't do it, and I then just go do it."

Coaching is a high-leveraged way to get from stage (2) or stage (3) to stage (4).

Professionals must master critical personal behaviors that are required in the new world of knowledge work:  how to collect, process and organize all the inputs, ideas, information and commitments that are potentially relevant to their life and work.

The challenge is to frame and address the more subtle behaviors, the ones that limit or expand our effectiveness in the world. We need to do this in the same way many of us have identified physical exercise as a strategic behavior to install in our lives, for which we have found the coach we needed and wanted to have, to make it happen at a new cruising level.  To commit to a hands-on, real time coach is not a sign of weakness.  It is rather the indication of a sophisticated awareness of the effectiveness of leveraging the best tools to restructure our automatic response systems in ways that create ever greater opportunities.

Adapted from The David Allen Company 2002. All rights reserved.

Get a 360° perspective, and take action now!

GREG L. KILGORE, Achievement Coach
360° Achievement Coaching:
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Achievement