As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us. So... we make decisions ("I'm going to hang out with happy people!"); we give ourselves lectures ("If you'd just stop feeling guilty, you'd able to do what you want); and we strive for markers of that accomplishment ("Just go to the completely intimidating party and meet one person!").

Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, author of The Gifts of Imperfection and research professor at the University of Houston, has spent the last 12 years figuring out what keeps us from living -- despite our best efforts -- the kind of wholehearted, fully involved existences that we're trying to lead. It turns out that a lot of the assumptions we hold so dear and we believe will turn around everything are... well... just plain wrong.

1. Fitting In Is Not Belonging

There are so many terms we use every day whose meanings are gauzy, if not downright imprecise -- which makes it hard to get your head around what's really going on in your life. For example, contrary to what most of us think: Belonging is not fitting in. In fact, fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. Fitting in, I've discovered during the past decade of research, is assessing situations and groups of people, then twisting yourself into a human pretzel in order to get them to let you hang out with them. Belonging is something else entirely -- it's showing up and letting yourself be seen and known as you really are -- love of gourd painting, intense fear of public speaking and all.

Many us suffer from this split between who we are and who we present to the world in order to be accepted, (Take it from me: I'm an expert fitter-inner!) But we're not letting ourselves be known, and this kind of incongruent living is soul-sucking.

In my research, I've interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call "different": scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance. Some of them have to scrap for it, like the rest of us, but most are like this neurophysicist I met who, essentially, told me, "My parents didn't care that I wasn't on the football team, and my parents didn't care that I was awkward and geeky. I was in a group of kids at school who translated books into the Klingon language. And my parents were like, 'Awesome!' They took me to the 'Star Trek' convention!" He got his sense of belonging from his parents' sense of belonging, and even if we don't get that from Mom and Dad, we have to create it for ourselves as adults -- or we will always feel as if we're standing outside of the big human party.

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess.

2. Guilt Is Not Bad For You

I'm just going to say it: I'm pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it's about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we've done -- or failed to do -- with our personal values. The discomfort that results often motivates real change, amends and self-reflection.

I interview people of just about every faith you can imagine, and a lot of them will say, "Oh, I've got major Catholic guilt" or "I've got major Jewish guilt." And I'll say, "Tell me about it." And they'll say, "Well, if I don't show up for Shabbat every Friday, I'm a bad son. My brother always goes."

Clinically speaking, that's not guilt. That's shame, and one of the worst things about shame is that we often don't know when we're feeling it. When I'm interviewing subjects, I hear, "I'm worthless. I'm a piece of crap. I don't blame my parents for hating me -- who wouldn't?" And this is shame. We may not know how to name it. But we know how to feel it -- and it is a totally separate emotion from guilt.

A clear way to see the difference is to think about this question: If you made a mistake that really hurt someone's feelings, would you be willing to say, "I'm sorry. I made a mistake"? If you're experiencing guilt, the answer is yes: "I made a mistake." Shame, on the other hand, is "I'm sorry. I am a mistake." Shame doesn't just sound different than guilt; it feels different. Once we understand this distinction, guilt can even make us feel more positively about ourselves, because it points to the gap between what we did and who we are -- and, thankfully, we can change what we do.

3. Perfectionism Is Not About Striving For Excellence

For some of us (including me), what I'm about to say is horrifying: Perfectionism is not about achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfectly, look perfectly and act perfectly, we can avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame.

Most perfectionists (also including me) grew up being praised for achievement and performance in our grades, manners and appearance. Somewhere along the way, we adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. A ticker tape began to stream through our heads: Please. Perform. Perfect.

Healthy striving, meanwhile, focuses on you. It occurs when you ask yourself, "How can I improve?" Perfectionism keeps the focus on others. It occurs when you ask, "What will they think?" Research, unfortunately, shows that perfectionism hampers success and often leads to depression, anxiety, addiction and missed opportunities, due to fears of putting anything out in the world that could be imperfect or disappoint others. It's a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from taking flight. Another way to think about it? Consider Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem," which says, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

4. Vulnerability Is An Act Of Courage

There are a few myths about vulnerability that I think keep us from being wholehearted people who can fully give and receive love. The first is that vulnerability is weakness. The second is that it's optional.

First of all, vulnerability is not weakness. It's probably the most accurate measure of our individual courage. When I ask research subjects to give me an example of being in situations where they feel vulnerable, they say, "Taking responsibility for something that went wrong at work" or "Telling my boyfriend that I love him" or "Calling my friend whose child just died" or "Sending my kid to school knowing she is struggling but knowing she has to figure it out" or "Meeting with the hospice person who is going to be taking care of my mother."

Sometimes I hear people say "I don't do vulnerability." But you do it, everyday. We all do it. We all have those moments. The only choice you have is how you handle those feelings of being terrifyingly, painfully exposed. Maybe you turn them into rage; maybe you turn them into disconnection; maybe you numb them; maybe you turn them into perfectionism (which, by the way, is what I do with them). But you do something with them.

The key to transforming them into courage instead is learning how recognize them, feel them and ultimately make the choice to simply be there, with that horrible tangle of uncertainty and risk. When you know what you're feeling and why, you can slow down, breathe, pray, ask for support -- and make choices that reflect who you are and what you believe.

This article was published originally on The Huffington Post.

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Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher, writer, and a unique speaker whose reputation is built on her ability to explore vulnerable topics with tremendous honesty, warmth, and humor. She is a leading expert on Authenticity, Vulnerability and Courage; and the author of #1 New York Times Bestseller Daring Greatly. She is also the author of The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and I Thought It Was Just Me (But it Isn't) (2007). Brené Brown's 2010 TEDx Houston talk on the power of vulnerability is one of the most watched talks on TED.com, with over 9 million views.

 

We learn by doing.

Think about the basic skills you've acquired in life. You learned to walk by pulling yourself up, turning loose and taking a step. You fell the first time, but you got up and tried again. Each time you did it a little better than the time before. You were learning by doing.

You learned to drive a car by taking one out on the highway with an experienced teacher who could give you instructions and point out your mistakes as you drove.

With each endeavor, you started as a novice, and you learned proficiency from the mistakes you made.

It's that way in any undertaking. When you take action toward your goals, you will make mistakes. Don't worry about it. Everybody makes them. Successful people learn from theirs. They know the difference between a productive failure and a non-productive success.

In a productive failure, you don't achieve your objective, but you come away with new knowledge and understanding that will increase your chances of success on the next try. A non-productive success occurs when you achieve your objective, but you're not sure what it was you did right. You can build on productive failures. You can't build on a non-productive success.

The more actions you take, the more productive failures you'll experience. The more productive failures you experience, the more you'll learn. Thomas Edison experienced 1,100 productive failures before he found the right filament for his incandescent lamp.

To turn your mistakes into learning opportunities, follow these suggestions:

Have measurable goals. You won't know whether you're moving toward your goals unless you have some way of measuring the motion. That's why your goals should be specific.

Acquire a learning mentality. You must become better tomorrow than you are today just to stay even. Develop an attitude towards life-long learning.

Seek positive and negative feedback. Encourage those you trust to give you both legitimate criticism and earned recognition.

The greatest enemy of your creative powers is smug complacency -- being satisfied with less than what you are capable of doing.

Make a strong and permanent commitment to invest your life and talents only in those pursuits that deserve your best efforts.

Then, act on your ideas, because we learn by doing.

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Dr. Nido Qubein is an international speaker and accomplished author on sales, communication, and leadership. He is president of High Point University which has an enrollment of more than 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students. He is also chairman of Great Harvest Bread Company with 220 stores in 43 states.

Until I began researching happiness at Harvard, I thought that if you just worked harder, you’d be more successful, which of course would make you happier. But my research showed that formula doesn’t work. Every time our brain records a success, we change our goalpost for success.

Get good grades? Then you need to get into a better school so you can get a better job. Hit your sales target? They raise your sales target. Maybe once we retire rich, we can be happy. Thus, happiness remains elusive. We teach our kids the same broken formula.

Our brains work the opposite way. A positive brain has a unique advantage over a negative or stressed one. Intelligence improves, sales rise 37 percent and productivity increases 31 percent. In fact, a happy brain improves every business and educational outcome, and many of our health outcomes like longevity and fatigue.

But embedded within this research is this revelation: You can train your brain to raise your level of happiness. Even one quick, daily positive exercise for as little as three weeks can make an impact on your happiness. Start this way: Every day, until you get next month’s magazine, take two minutes to log and describe in detail the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours. Research shows this doubles the impact of the experience on your brain and increases your happiness.

This simple habit will rewire your brain and improve its ability to create the happiness advantage.

This article originally published on success.com.

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Shawn Achor is the founder of Good Think, Inc. and the author of The Happiness Advantage. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for "Positive Psychology," the most popular course at Harvard at the time. He holds a Masters from Harvard Divinity School and has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences, including bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, and CEOs in Zimbabwe. Watch Shawn Achor’s TEDxBloomington video on TED.com, The Happy Secret to Better Work

Successful salespeople learn to recognize and overcome barriers to communication. There are two types of such barriers: those arising from the environment and those stemming from the hearer's resistance.

Environmental Barriers

Those arising from the environment include:

- Distractions
- Disturbances
- Diversions
- Discomfort


If you've ever tried to talk with a friend at a crowded and noisy business party, you can readily understand how the environment can present major barriers. If you've ever tried to carry on a conversation in a room where a rock band was going full blast, you can appreciate the noise barrier.

A good general tries not to commit his troops on terrain that presents inherent disadvantages. Good communicators follow similar strategies. They try not to set up conversations in settings that will compete for attention.

When you are communicating with an individual, that individual deserves your full attention. Choose a time and a place that will minimize interruptions. If you're meeting in your office during business hours, have your secretary hold telephone calls, or use your telephone answering device for the duration of the conversation. Many executives set aside certain times of day during which they will receive telephone calls and unscheduled visitors. The rest of the time, they reserve for creative thinking, strategic planning, decision-making and other duties of leadership.

When disturbances do occur, try not to talk over them. If the disturbance is obviously temporary, suspend the conversation until the interruption is past. If it's obviously going to be prolonged, try to reschedule the conversation for a more favorable time.

I often teach salespeople where to sit on sales calls or when they're conducting business over a meal. My advice: Put the other person's back to any distractions, so your listener's attention won't be constantly diverted by what's happening in the background.

Finally, pay attention to comfort. I've given more than 5,000 speeches and seminars, and I've battled all kinds of odds. I can tell you that audience discomfort is one barrier you can't overcome: your only winnable strategy is to avoid it. So stay away from settings that are too hot, too cold or otherwise uncomfortable. Nobody can concentrate while in a state of discomfort. And if the person you need to communicate with is ill, injured or going through some emotional trauma, it's best to reschedule the conversation. Otherwise, you're going up against impossible barriers to communication.

Monitoring the environment is the task of any person who wishes to communicate, whether as a company leader, a salesperson, a manager, or a letter writer. You just can't ignore such barriers. To do so is to give up and let the competing voices have your audience. If people are distracted or interrupted, or they feel uncomfortable, they're not likely to tune you in completely, understand your message thoroughly, or respond to you positively.

Audience Resistance

Barriers resulting from audience resistance fall into two categories: external factors that cause people to tune you out, and internal factors that prevent them from giving you their complete attention.

People often form first impressions on the basis of external factors. If the first impression is negative, you won't get the person's attention. Look for characteristics of dress, speech and actions that may be turning people off. If your dress is too casual, frivolous or distracting, you may be losing listeners. If your voice is strident, shrill or guttural, people may find you unpleasant to listen to. In certain areas, regional accents may turn people off. If you speak with a pronounced regional accent and are doing business in a region where that accent is not commonly heard, you may have to look for ways to overcome this barrier. You may want to work on acquiring a more generic accent. Or you may want to spend some time cultivating the person's confidence.

It goes without saying that good grooming and good personal hygiene are essential to good communication. Body odor, halitosis, or a disheveled appearance will cause people to turn away from you.

Internal Barriers

Internal barriers to communication may stem from a lack of interest in what you're saying or a lack of understanding.

If you discern a lack of interest, then your task is to find some way to lead your listener to identify with your message. How does it concern your listener personally? What bearing does it have on the listener's job, income, health, family, or security? Once you establish that point of identity, you'll have attention.

People have a way of erecting defense mechanisms and emotional barriers when they feel threatened by what you are saying or by the way you are saying it. Studies have repeatedly shown that people, like other creatures, feel protective of their territories. Invade those turfs, or act in a threatening manner, and you will be sure to turn off their attention. When your task is to deliver an unpleasant message or to persuade your listener to take some unpleasant action, look for ways to neutralize the negatives and to reassure the person who feels threatened.

Bonds of Misunderstanding

Sometimes, it's just a question of not understanding what you're talking about. During World War II, the United States raised money for defense by selling war bonds. In some remote parts of the country, where newspapers, radios and public schools had not yet penetrated, people were a little slow to learn about the heroic leadership of Winston Churchill, the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the determined response of Franklin Roosevelt.

So when a bond salesperson approached a farmer who was out in the barnyard slopping his hogs, the salesperson was frustrated at the lack of interest in his patriotic mission.

"Wouldn't you like to help out by buying some war bonds?" he asked.

"Reckon not," replied the farmer.

"Wouldn't you like to join the defense effort with Mr. Roosevelt?

"Nope, reckon not."

"Aren't you upset over what they did to Pearl Harbor?

"Reckon not."

"Don't you want to be on the side of Churchill?"

"Nope."

"So you don't want any bonds?

"Nope."

Frustrated, the salesperson moved on.

The farmer's wife came over and asked who the stranger had been.

"Some fellow had a story about a guy named Roosevelt who got a woman named Pearl Harbor in trouble over on the side of Church Hill and wanted me to get his bond."

Sometimes, you have to explain very carefully.

Keep It Simple

The most important thing you can do to make sure that you're understood is to keep your communication simple. People don't like to be led through a maze of words and mental meanderings before they reach the main point of your message.

Once while evangelist Billy Graham was flying into Dallas to address the student body of a large seminary, a storm moved in. Visibility at the airport became so low that his plane couldn't land. So it had to circle over the city for several hours -- long beyond the time of his scheduled appearance. But no one on the ground knew that his plane couldn't land.

"It occurred to me while I was up there circling around," he later told a group, "that as preachers, we spend most of our time circling around in a fog, while people are wondering where in the world we are."

It's a condition that plagues people in any business. The high art of plain talk is simply saying something so that it can be understood.

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Dr. Nido Qubein is an international speaker and accomplished author on sales, communication, and leadership. He is president of High Point University which has an enrollment of more than 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students. He is also chairman of Great Harvest Bread Company with 220 stores in 43 states.

It's interesting at the beginning of a new year to look back at what articles resonated most with our readers. With 14 speakers on our roster, we've covered quite a variety of subjects. The most popular articles covered such topics as positive psychology, customer service, branding, authentic leadership, adaptability, and franchising. We hope that you find our speakers' posts helpful, enlightening and inspiring.

Here are the ten most read articles on blog.speakersoffice.com/ in 2012:

1) 3 Ways Positive Intelligence Leads to Success - by Shawn Achor
Best-Selling author Shawn Achor shares his research on the "happiness advantage" and how it can boost your personal and professional success.

2) 5 Questions to Ensure Happy Customers - by Dr. Nido Qubein
International speaker and businessman Dr. Nido Qubein suggests 5 questions every organization should ask themselves to ensure happy customers.

3) The First 9 Seconds - by Sally Hogshead
We have been reduced to a 9-second attention span, says Sally Hogshead, which is why the most fascinating messages always triumph. Always.

4) 3 Ways to Strategically Leverage your Book & Platform - by Peter Winick
Guest blogger and thought leader, Peter Winick offers strategies for speakers and authors to leverage their book and platform.

5) Brené Brown: On Leadership, Love and Vulnerability
Dr. Brené Brown says, "As a vulnerability researcher, I’ve noticed a pattern in my conversations and interviews with leaders and entrepreneurs."

6) Lisa Ford's 12 Fundamentals of Exceptional Customer Service
According to Lisa Ford, there are 12 fundamentals of customer service every organization should follow.

7) Grow Your Franchise: An Unconventional Approach - by Desi Williamson
Desi Williamson’s successful Dickey's BBQ franchise is proof opportunities still exist. In this article, he explains his unconventional approach.

8) Howard Putnam: What Makes Southwest Airlines Different?
Howard Putnam, former CEO of Southwest Airlines recently chatted with Brian Lord of Premiere Speakers, about what makes a company like Southwest Airlines consistently great.

9) Are you Adaptable? by Dr. Tony Alessandra
Tony Alessandra says, being willing and able to adapt your behavior increases your ability to communicate and build relationships with other people.

10) New Book! Daring Greatly - by Dr. Brené Brown
Dr. Brené Brown recently announced the title of her new book, Daring Greatly which came out September 2012 and quickly became a New York Times' Best Seller.

Were there other articles that you enjoyed? If so, please let us know in the comments below.

In July 2010 Burt’s Bees, a personal-care products company, was undergoing enormous change as it began a global expansion into 19 new countries. In this kind of high-pressure situation, many leaders pester their deputies with frequent meetings or flood their in-boxes with urgent demands. In doing so, managers jack up everyone’s anxiety level, which activates the portion of the brain that processes threats—the amygdala—and steals resources from the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for effective problem solving.

Burt’s Bees’s then-CEO, John Replogle, took a different tack. Each day, he’d send out an e-mail praising a team member for work related to the global rollout. He’d interrupt his own presentations on the launch to remind his managers to talk with their teams about the company’s values. He asked me to facilitate a three-hour session with employees on happiness in the midst of the expansion effort. As one member of the senior team told me a year later, Replogle’s emphasis on fostering positive leadership kept his managers engaged and cohesive as they successfully made the transition to a global company.

That outcome shouldn’t surprise us. Research shows that when people work with a positive mind-set, performance on nearly every level—productivity, creativity, engagement—improves. Yet happiness is perhaps the most misunderstood driver of performance. For one, most people believe that success precedes happiness. "Once I get a promotion, I’ll be happy," they think. Or, "Once I hit my sales target, I’ll feel great." But because success is a moving target—as soon as you hit your target, you raise it again—the happiness that results from success is fleeting.

In fact, it works the other way around: People who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge. I call this the "happiness advantage"—every business outcome shows improvement when the brain is positive. I’ve observed this effect in my role as a researcher and lecturer in 48 countries on the connection between employee happiness and success. And I’m not alone: In a meta-analysis of 225 academic studies, researchers Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener found strong evidence of directional causality between life satisfaction and successful business outcomes.

Another common misconception is that our genetics, our environment, or a combination of the two determines how happy we are. To be sure, both factors have an impact. But one’s general sense of well-being is surprisingly malleable. The habits you cultivate, the way you interact with coworkers, how you think about stress—all these can be managed to increase your happiness and your chances of success.

Develop New Habits

Training your brain to be positive is not so different from training your muscles at the gym. Recent research on neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change even in adulthood—reveals that as you develop new habits, you rewire the brain.

Engaging in one brief positive exercise every day for as little as three weeks can have a lasting impact, my research suggests. For instance, in December 2008, just before the worst tax season in decades, I worked with tax managers at KPMG in New York and New Jersey to see if I could help them become happier. (I am an optimistic person, clearly.) I asked them to choose one of five activities that correlate with positive change:

1. Jot down three things they were grateful for.
2. Write a positive message to someone in their social support network.
3. Meditate at their desk for two minutes.
4. Exercise for 10 minutes.
5. Take two minutes to describe in a journal the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours.

The participants performed their activity every day for three weeks. Several days after the training concluded, we evaluated both the participants and a control group to determine their general sense of well-being. How engaged were they? Were they depressed? On every metric, the experimental group’s scores were significantly higher than the control group’s. When we tested both groups again, four months later, the experimental group still showed significantly higher scores in optimism and life satisfaction. In fact, participants’ mean score on the life satisfaction scale—a metric widely accepted to be one of the greatest predictors of productivity and happiness at work—moved from 22.96 on a 35-point scale before the training to 27.23 four months later, a significant increase. Just one quick exercise a day kept these tax managers happier for months after the training program had ended. Happiness had become habitual.

Help Your Coworkers

Of the five activities described above, the most effective may be engaging positively with people in your social support network. Strong social support correlates with an astonishing number of desirable outcomes. For instance, research by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith, and Bradley Layton shows that high levels of social support predict longevity as reliably as regular exercise does, and low social support is as damaging as high blood pressure.

The benefits of social support are not just physical. In a study of 1,648 students at Harvard that I conducted with Phil Stone and Tal Ben-Shahar, we found that social support was the greatest predictor of happiness during periods of high stress. In fact, the correlation between happiness and Zimet’s social support scale (the academic measure we used to assess students’ positive engagement with their social networks) was a whopping .71—for comparison, the correlation between smoking and cancer is .37.

That study focused on how much social support the students received. But in follow-on research I conducted in March 2011, I found that even more important to sustained happiness and engagement was the amount of social support the students provided. For example, how often does a student help others when they are overwhelmed with work? How often does he initiate social interactions on the job? Social support providers—people who picked up slack for others, invited coworkers to lunch, and organized office activities—were not only 10 times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept to themselves; they were 40% more likely to get a promotion.

How does social support work in practice as a tool for employee happiness? Ochsner Health System, a large health care provider that I work with, uses an approach it calls the "10/5 Way" to increase social support among employees and patients. We educated 11,000 employees, leaders, and physicians about the impact of social support on the patient experience, and asked them to modify their behavior. When employees walk within 10 feet of another person in the hospital, they must make eye contact and smile. When they walk within 5 feet, they must say hello. Since the introduction of 10/5, Ochsner has experienced an increase in unique patient visits, a 5% increase in patients’ likelihood to recommend the organization, and a significant improvement in medical-practice provider scores. Social support appears to lead to not only happier employees but also more-satisfied clients.

Change Your Relationship with Stress

Stress is another central factor contributing to people’s happiness at work. Many companies offer training on how to mitigate stress, focusing on its negative health effects. The problem is, people then get stressed-out about being stressed-out.

It’s important to remember that stress has an upside. When I was working with Pfizer in February 2011, I asked senior managers to list the five experiences that most shaped who they are today. Nearly all the experiences they wrote down involved great stress—after all, few people grow on vacation. Pick any biography and you’ll see the same thing: Stress is not just an obstacle to growth; it can be the fuel for it.

Your attitude toward stress can dramatically change how it affects you. In a study Alia Crum, Peter Salovey, and I conducted at UBS in the midst of the banking crisis and massive restructuring, we asked managers to watch one of two videos, the first depicting stress as debilitating to performance and the second detailing the ways in which stress enhances the human brain and body. When we evaluated the employees six weeks later, we found that the individuals who had viewed the "enhancing" video scored higher on the Stress Mindset Scale—that is, they saw stress as enhancing, rather than diminishing, their performance. And those participants experienced a significant drop in health problems and a significant increase in happiness at work.

Stress is an inevitable part of work. The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try this exercise: Make a list of the stresses you’re under. Place them into two groups—the ones you can control (like a project or your in-box) and those you can’t (the stock market, housing prices). Choose one stress that you can control and come up with a small, concrete step you can take to reduce it. In this way you can nudge your brain back to a positive—and productive—mind-set.

It's clear that increasing your happiness improves your chances of success. Developing new habits, nurturing your coworkers, and thinking positively about stress are good ways to start.

This article was originally published in the January-February 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review. 

Subscribe to Harvard Business Review 

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Shawn Achor is the founder of Good Think, Inc. and the author of The Happiness Advantage. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for "Positive Psychology," the most popular course at Harvard at the time. He holds a Masters from Harvard Divinity School and has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences, including bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, and CEOs in Zimbabwe. Watch Shawn Achor’s TEDxBloomington video on TED.com, The Happy Secret to Better Work

There’s an old saying: "Most people aim at nothing in life . . . and hit it with amazing accuracy." It’s a sad commentary about people, but it’s true. It is the striving for and the attainment of goals that makes life meaningful. Lewis Carroll stated this point beautifully in Alice in Wonderland:

ALICE: Mr. Cat, which of these paths shall I take?
CHESHlRE CAT: Well, my dear, where do you want to go?
ALICE: I don’t suppose it really matters.
CHESHlRE CAT: Then, my dear, any path will do!

No matter what kind of traveling you’re doing, whether it’s through life or across the country by car, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived. Taking just any road will leave your fulfillment to chance. That’s not good enough.

People who have no goals feel emotionally, socially, spiritually, physically, and professionally unbalanced. This can only cause anxiety. People who have goals are respected by their peers; they are taken seriously. Making decisions that affect the direction of your life positively is a sign of strength. Goals create drive and positively affect your personality.

The 3-Percent Solution

Time magazine reported on a national survey several years ago that only 3 percent of those surveyed had written personal goals; 97 percent of the people had no goals at all or had only thought about them. They had not committed their goals to writing. Interestingly the 3 percent who had written goals were found to have accomplished much more than any of the 97 percent.

Stepping-stones to Greatness

Achievements come from awareness, which starts with evaluating your strengths and weaknesses in the light of your current situation. You then expand your beliefs (assumptions) to accept more goals for yourself. This leads you to set plans and expand your actions to eventually achieve your goals. The model for this process is:

AWARENESS > BELIEFS > GOALS > PLANS > ACTIONS > ACHIEVEMENTS

One step leads to another. After an achievement, you reevaluate yourself and find that each new feather in your cap makes you feel capable of accomplishing more and more. Your beliefs (assumptions) then expand, making more goals possible. The effect gains momentum and grows like a snowball rolling downhill. In this way, greatness is achieved through small steppingstones.

Rules Of Goal Setting

Most people, when asked, "What are your goals in life?" say something like, "To be happy, healthy, and have plenty of money." On the surface this may seem fine. As goals leading to actions, however, they just don’t make it. They don’t have the key ingredients necessary to make them effective, workable goals.

Your goal must be personal. This means your goals must be uttered with sincerity. It must be something you want to do rather than something you think you should do. Know your reasons for having the goal. Whether you want to achieve something for status, money, or good health is secondary as long as you want it badly enough to work hard for it.

Your goal must be positive. Try not to think of green elephants! You can’t do it. It’s an automatic response to think of the thing you’re told not to think about. This is because the mind cannot not think of something when told to. We tend to focus on ideas and actions from a positive framework. When you think a negative thought such as, " I will not smoke today," your mind perceives it as "I will smoke today." You end up thinking more about smoking than if you phrased it differently. "I will breathe only clean air today" is a statement that serves the same purpose and is more effective.

Your goal must be written. Writing a goal down causes effects that are a bit difficult to explain. It does, nonetheless, prove effective. Written goals take a jump in status from being nebulous thoughts (which you didn’t care enough about to bona fide entities on paper. Perhaps their being written serves as a visual reminder and thus continually reconfirms their importance. Another possibility is that they can be seen in the statement from the movie, "The Ten Commandments": "So let it be written, so let it be done." When things are "put in writing" they become official in our minds. A written goal strengthens our commitment to accomplish it.

Your goal must be specific. If you set your goal by saying "I will increase my sales next year," chances are you won’t do it. You need to be specific to avoid the lack of commitment that comes with being vague. A more workable and motivating goal would be, "I will increase my sales next year by 10 to 15 percent. This revised statement has several advantages. It defines the increase that you are striving for as well as the range of the desired increase. Giving yourself some leeway is more realistic than expecting to hit your goal at exactly 15 percent.

Your goal must be a challenge.

A goal must motivate you to work harder than you have in the past. It must move you forward. Set your goals just beyond your reach so that you’ll have to stretch a bit. The more you stretch, the more limber your goal achieving abilities will become.

Your goal must be realistic.

Everything is relative to time and space. What is unrealistic today may be totally within reason five years from now. For years it was believed that the fastest a man could run a mile was in four minutes. It was unrealistic to aspire to running any faster until Dr. Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. Since then hundreds of runners have done the same. In any field, we never really know what the upper limits are. How, then, do we define realistic?

For our purposes, the best definition must come from you and your values. You must ask yourself, "What price am I willing to pay to accomplish this goal?" You should always weigh the payoffs and the sacrifices involved before coming to a conclusion. Realistic is ultimately your decision.

Working Toward Your Goals

Now that you know the rules for setting goals, you can apply them to the goals you set for yourself. Next week I'll provide an explanation of each of the areas you need to complete while Working Toward Your Goals…

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Dr. Tony Alessandra is a behavioral and communication expert, and author of 17 books including The Platinum Rule, Collaborative Selling and The Art of Managing People. Today he is a leading business motivational speaker on communication, customer loyalty and sales.

"Put your head down and get to work!"

Wow. That’s not something we really want to hear from anyone. But that’s what I shouted at myself, while riding 5 miles per hour, up a hill, into a 30 mile per hour headwind, only 35 miles into the bike segment of my first Ironman triathlon.

Let me rewind a bit, and hopefully give you a blueprint for the next time you take on a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal).

First, Find Something you Love

Since my success at the 1984 Olympic Games, I have worked very hard to take care of myself, stay in shape, and discover new hobbies. Beyond gymnastics, the only sport I engaged in before the Olympics was surfing. I have never been very good at it, but I love spending time with my sons and daughters in the water. After the Games, I fell in love with cycling, and started competing in various mountain bike races including the Leadville 100 and the 24 Hours of Moab. When my daughter Kathryn started running cross country in high school, I started running with her to keep her motivated (she now runs in college and I can’t keep up with her). I ran a couple of marathons, both with mediocre results.

But about a year ago, my oldest son Tim read Christopher McDougall’s bestselling book, Born to Run, the account of the legendary runners of the Taraumara tribe in Mexico. He found "running religion" and was soon completing many miles per week.

After a few months (although he is in his final year of graduate business school), Tim somehow got the silly idea he wanted to compete in an Ironman triathlon. The race consists of a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by 112 miles on the bike, and finishing with a 26.2 mile marathon. Although I tried to explain to him the amount of time and effort it would take to train for it, he insisted on doing it…so I decided to join him in the quest (an interesting way to celebrate turning 50).

Next, Don’t Go it Alone!

The first thing I did was contact a friend, James Lawrence, who is currently in the middle of a quest to set the world record for the most Ironman distance races completed in one year (he’s going for 30!). James has a big heart in many ways. Through his quest, he is raising awareness and money for the Quiet Way Foundation, which builds water retention systems (dams) to assist the people of Kenya. James is also a triathlon coach and he set me up with a six month training plan.

I also picked the brains of friends who have completed Ironman races, including financial planning guru Bill Bachrach, fitness executive and life coach Jim McPartland, and even ran into 6 time Ironman World Champion, the world’s fittest man, Mark Allen.

Read the entire article... 

View Photos from Peter's IronMan

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Peter Vidmar, Olympic Gymnastics Champion, is a speaker on personal achievement, risk taking, and innovation. He is also the author of Risk, Originality, and Virtuosity: The Keys to a Perfect 10.

Recently, Peter Vidmar, the highest scoring American gymnast in Olympic history, was interviewed on "Brainstormin’ with Billy the Brain" on KKZZ Radio.

Using his Olympic preparation and experiences, Peter explained the principles of Risk, Originality and Virtuosity (ROV), and how we can apply them for success in business and life.

Listen to the Podcast interview with Peter Vidmar: How Risk, Originality and Virtuosity Impact Our Success

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Peter Vidmar, Olympic Gymnastics Champion, is a speaker on personal achievement, risk taking, and innovation. He is also the author of Risk, Originality, and Virtuosity: The Keys to a Perfect 10.

Nearly every company in the world gives lip service to the idea that "our people are our greatest asset." Yet when the Conference Board Survey came out earlier this year, employees were the unhappiest they have been in their 22 years of tracking job satisfaction rates. Around the same time, CNNMoney reported a survey that indicated 84% of Americans are unhappy with their current job. And in June of this year, Mercer's "What's Working" survey found that one in three US employees are serious about leaving their current jobs.

Why is this lack of happiness at work important? Job satisfaction is not only the key predictor of turnover rates, in The Happiness Advantage, I make the research case for the fact that the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce. A decade of research proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a myriad of health and quality of life improvements. Yet even those companies that do take leadership training seriously still ignore the role that happiness plays in leadership effectiveness.

Given the unprecedented level of unhappiness at companies and the direct link between the employees' happiness and business outcomes, the question is NOT whether happiness should matter to companies. Given this research, it clearly should. The real question is: Can a company do anything to raise the happiness level of an employee?

To test the ROI of investing in happiness, I wanted to find a company in the midst of high challenge. In 2009, I chose the auditing and tax accounting firm KPMG, as they were about to be hit with perhaps the most stressful tax season in decades after the banking crisis in 2008.

January to April is the most stressful time for the managers at KPMG, so in December, half of the managers in the study at the New Jersey and New York offices were provided a three-hour introduction to positive psychology research and how to apply those principles at work. The employees were then evaluated three times — before the training, a week after the training, and four months later in April — using a battery of standard metrics including life satisfaction measures, perceived stress, social support, perceived effectiveness at work and work optimism.

Every single positive metric improved significantly for the trained group between Time 1 (before the training) and Time 2 (a week after the training). This indicated that the training was an initial success, but the real question is whether the training would hold. There is often a "honeymoon effect" after trainings in which respondents feel totally changed, then immediately return back to their previous state as soon as they see their inbox.

Yet in this case, the effect held for the entire four months. Most significantly, the life satisfaction scores, which indicate personal and professional happiness, were significantly higher four months later as compared to how the managers were before the training, and also as compared to the managers in the control group. A brief three-hour training and a non-mandatory invitation to create a positive habit for 21 days created a high ROI not only in the short-term, but in the longer term as well.

Individuals can begin to do two things on their own. First, recognize that happiness is an advantage at work. This will encourage you to seek happiness in the present instead of waiting for a future success. As a result, your brain will have more resources necessary to accomplish your work. Second, you can literally train your brain for higher levels of happiness at work by creating habits shown to increase job satisfaction. In the training with KPMG, we suggested five:

1. Write down three new things you are grateful for each day;
2. Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours;
3. Exercise for 10 minutes a day;
4. Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out;
5. Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team.

Gratitude, focusing on positive experiences, exercise, meditating, and random acts of kindness are all ways to change the pattern through which your brain views work. And if you have other tips you've tried on your job, please share them in the comments! This research is only the beginning of understanding how to create and sustain a positive and engaged workforce. These findings clearly indicate that not only can a company influence the happiness of its employees with a short intervention and low investment of resources, but the effects are sustained even in times of great challenge.

In other words, investing in happiness pays great dividends. For a copy of the study, please contact me or visit goodthinkinc.com.

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Shawn Achor is the founder of Good Think, Inc. and the author of The Happiness Advantage. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for "Positive Psychology," the most popular course at Harvard at the time. He holds a Masters from Harvard Divinity School and has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences, including bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, and CEOs in Zimbabwe.