Happiness = Success?

Happiness = Success. Most people try and flip that equation around. If they're successful...then they're happy. But could success really stem from being happy, positive and upbeat?

What Other Bloggers Say...

Yesterday I ran across two different articles talking about this very thing. Harvard Business Review asked a simple yet blunt question: Are happy people dumb? The author quotes a New York stock trader saying "Happy people are the ones who don't get it," he continued. "Happy people just don't understand how the markets are working or how the company is not working..." To be fair, if he had been talking to that trader within the last year or two, he probably had a solid point from his industry perspective. However, the author goes on to point out how those who are smart and successful yet unhappy are actually not capitalizing on their full brain potential. They go on to say that how being positive or happy helps us be more likely to achieve the upper bounds of our potential than when we are feeling neutral or unhappy.

Then, in the same feed yesterday, @jeffhilimire posts his reflection on being a positive person. He doesn't pull scientific study into his thoughts but instead uses scenarios he experienced as a young entrepreneur. Jeff talks about how when he had started his first company how they lost a huge client that they had banked on. Leveraging his positive "glass half full" outlook on the situation, he says that it was the best thing that had ever happened to them. He talks about how they were able to turn a negative into a positive to re-evaluate how they designed their business. He contributes a lot of his success to that positive outlook on his day-to-day.

So What Does All That Mean?

From reading both of these articles, I would say there's a benefit of being a glass-half-full kind of individual. Stuff happens that you don't want to. It's part of life. Not everything is going to go right or as planned. It never has for me. However, those curveballs, mistakes and negatives all happen for a reason. There's a learning experience or something that you'll look back on maybe years down the road and understand the positives of that situation.

When it comes to work, I know I'll make mistakes. We all do whether we admit to them or not. However, I don't believe success is measured by how few mistakes you make but instead by how you react to them. Not just mistakes...anything negative that can throw your head into a whirlwind of negativity. When something goes wrong (especially if it's out of your control) there's no gain in pulling your hair out. My grandfather used to say "when you know you've been had, all you can do is sit back and enjoy it." Not that we should be passive. Instead, take what happened and move on to the next thing. I think smart people know better than to lose sleep over something they can't change. They know when to move on to the next challenge.

Also, I believe happiness stems from contentment. How do you define success? Is there a tangible measuring stick of how much stuff you have or is it something else? Is it more of finally arriving at a place you want to be? Is it more being able to do something you love to do no matter how much "stuff" you gain as a result? I think it's more of reaching that level of contentment. Not necessarily meaning that in a passive way of sitting back and getting too comfortable. Just being able to find a passion for something you love and having the opportunity to do that every day.

So what do you think? Does happiness lead to success?