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Transcript

SPEAKER A

Hello and welcome to Ivy League Prep Academy podcasts, where we explore ideas for living a better life and preparing for the university of your choice. We're your hosts, Nathaniel and Steve.

SPEAKER B

Today we're excited to talk about the happiness advantage. It's a book by Sean Acre, who applied to Harvard University on a dare. Never expecting to be accepted, he excelled at Harvard and continued to study success and happiness in Harvard students for twelve years. Steve, you've just finished reading his book. What do you think so far?

SPEAKER A

I absolutely love it. First of all, if you don't know yet, sean Acre has a Ted Talk, probably one of my top three all time Ted Talks. Favorite Ted Talk. Fantastic. Also called the happiness advantage. And that Ted Talk summarizes the book. So if you only have 15 minutes and you want to get 90% of the content, that's a great way to do it. But I loved reading the book as well. The extra 10% was so good and so well written, so easy to read. I highly, highly recommend it really quickly. Let me just explain what the happiness advantage is. Sean Acre talks about how, generally speaking, most humans have this idea about what it means to be successful, right? Most people think that if you work hard enough, long enough, then you can be successful. And then when you're successful, you'll be happy. And so you think about your own life and maybe others around you. This is what many of us do. We work hard towards a goal, hoping that we can become successful and then happy. And Sean Acre points out that this formula is broken and backwards. So, first of all, it's broken because our minds just constantly move the goalposts of what success means, right? So, all right, you got the job you wanted very quickly, you're going to want a better job and then a better job, and so on. And so we constantly move the goalposts for what success means. And that means we're not happy as a result of our success. At the very most, we're happy for a very short period of time. But what I think is even more significant, more important to remember, is that success does not lead to lasting happiness. Happiness leads to success. So the formula is backwards. And he goes through talks about not just one or two instances where this is true virtually everything. If you're a student who is happy, you perform, you learn faster and more completely, more effectively if you're happy, versus if your psychological state, if your mental state is neutral or negative. If you're a doctor, you diagnose faster and more accurately when you're happy than when you're sad or when you're just neutral. When you do sales, your sales improve significantly as a result of being happy instead of neutral or sad. So not only is this idea that working hard leads to success, which leads to happiness, it just doesn't work. And we've probably all experienced that. But it's backwards in that if we were happy now as we're completing things, then we're able to function at a higher level and it leads to success. So that formula is backwards. I think that's just absolutely critical.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. And I can tell you, look at some of the high performers out there and they're impressive and certainly people that you aspire to be like. But nowhere is it more evident than when you're talking to end of life, end of care, terminal patients or people in their older age, no one ever looks back and says, oh, I wish I had improved revenue or had gotten a few more A's in school. They all talk about their happiness and the things that brought them joy. So how powerful that's an awesome takeaway from the book.

SPEAKER A

Those relationships right on the deathbed regrets is always, I didn't build relationships well enough.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. This reminds me of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where he says, begin with the end in mind because you're going to get to whatever ultimate destination that you're currently moving toward, and you may be moving toward the wrong destination. And so setting your intention to be happy and to seek happiness, things that bring you joy, that's powerful. So how have you seen this play out in your life? How is the message from the book becoming a more integral part of how you're operating?

SPEAKER A

Yeah, so first of all, I think you're spot on with this idea of combining Covey and you climb the ladder only to find out that the ladder is up against the wrong wall after a lifetime of striving for success. Right. I think that's actually a really good idea to bring out here. And that supports what Sean Acre says. You're constantly working so hard to become successful, hoping that it leads to happiness, and you finally get to the top of the ladder and realize that's not the wall that happiness is found on. And so if the goal is to be happy, which when we pass on, we will have hoped that we lived a life of meaning and we've shared happiness and created happiness for ourselves and for others. And so I think that's a fantastic insight to kind of tie those two. Obviously, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a legend in the history of great books. And I think you're right. I think that's a great place to apply it. So I also like your question, how have I applied it in life? One of the best parts of the happiness advantage is how practical it is. There are easy to do steps that lead to happiness. And what is significant is some people are naturally more positive. Or maybe it's not natural. Maybe they've just, over time, cultivated positivity and it's easier for them. But for those who feel like, yeah, this is great news, happy people are more successful, happy people learn faster, learn better and perform at a higher level. That's great news for all those optimists out there. What about those of us who don't see the world that way? It's harder to be positive and it's harder to be optimistic. Well, the good news, according to Mr. Acre, after pretty extensive research, is that we can rewire our brains to see the world differently. And so there are very simple things we can do. I'll let you listen to the Ted Talk to get the full story or read the book, but some of those things that stick out for me, one is gratitude, right? If we write down three things that we're sincerely grateful for every day for about 21 days, we can rewire our brains to start seeking out things to be grateful for. And that's so simple, right? That takes 1015 seconds to sit down, be present, think about something I'm genuinely grateful for, write it down. And I'm already in a state of mind that I'm ready to succeed in. For doctors, the study that was done just blew me away. So this study, these are doctors who they do a control group and a test group where they make one set of the doctors happier than the other two sets of doctors. So they run them through this, something that's very common in medical school. You get a list of symptoms and you have to diagnose the patient. And many of the symptoms would be consistent with multiple diseases. But then there are some symptoms that show that it's not this set of diseases. It must be that set, and so you treat it differently. Anyway, it's a common exercise that is done in medical school and just in hospital trainings. And the doctors who were happy as they did this actually performed. They achieved the correct diagnosis, 19% faster than the other two groups. And guess what they used to make these doctors happy?

SPEAKER B

Gratitude.

SPEAKER A

It's even simpler than that. I love it. They promised them a lollipop at the end of the exercise, so they didn't even let the doctors eat the lollipop because they didn't want blood sugar levels to impact the effectiveness, right? What if one group was more effective because they had sugar in the brain? So they just promised them, when you finish, we're going to give you a lollipop. And it made the doctor smile and they were more effective. So there are so many things that we can take from this. The simple things find the pleasure in the day. So one of the things that I try to do, I have two young boys, and when we go anywhere right now, they're interested in ants, they're interested in any kind of bug, lots of different plants. They're starting to learn what bamboo looks like compared to other plants. And they're constantly stopping if they see an ant or if they see a flower. That's interesting. And instead of getting frustrated, if at all possible, if I'm not in a big hurry. If I'm in a big hurry, I talk to them and say, we've got to go fast and this is the deal. And sometimes they understand that and respect that. But if I'm not in that huge hurry, then I have resolved to when they stop and see an ant, I'm going to get excited with them and I'm going to be just as amazed at nature as they are. And I find that instead of getting frustrated, it elevates my spirits as well. So anyway, there are a number of simple things we can do. Ultimately, it's a decision that we decide we're going to rewire our brains. We're going to choose to find things to be grateful for, find things to be amazed by in this amazing world and get excited for a lollipop at the end of a research session or at the end of a major task. Those are simple things that we can all do.

SPEAKER B

I love that. Love it. Yeah. This is, I guess where the gratitude journal or the prayer or meditation or little reminders in your mirror or wherever they are to help you feel gratitude and to help you feel joy, to help you feel happiness. That's where these become so effective is that they're tools to help you feel that joy and happiness that helps you have a better day. What do you think with a lot of the listeners of this podcast attending one of our Ivy League elite camps and wanting to become the best students possible, but also the best human beings possible, what do you think the major takeaways are for them and especially high school aged people listening to this podcast?

SPEAKER A

Yeah, right. So people who attend our Ivy League elite camps are high school students, usually non native English speakers. So congratulations on listening this far through the podcast. And there's a couple of things here. First of all, we talk about in our Ivy League elite camp setting triggers, right? Deciding ahead of time when you walk through the door of your school, that's a trigger to reset your mind, to say, okay, I am ready to function at a high level today. Right? These are things that you and I saw classmates at Harvard do. You and I developed triggers like this just to elevate our performance. And those triggers, some of those triggers can be reminders to be grateful or reminders to put a smile on your face, reminders to look for something exciting, amazing, to be curious. Whatever it is that you find kind of helps your mind become more engaged in the world around it. So we talked about triggers in the camp. I would say find one or two of those triggers, something that happens regularly, and turn it into a gratitude trigger. So one for me, I live in a high rise apartment. I go in an elevator at least two or three times a day. And that's the very, very minimum. So for me, anytime I press the up or the down button on any elevator, that is a cue to think of at least one thing I am genuinely grateful for, that's an effective trigger for me. Another one that I think is really, really helpful if you're a high school student working on elevating your performance. A test was done with high school students as well, to see how they performed on an examination at happy compared to neutral or sad. And actually, now that I think about it, I don't think this test was high school students, I think it was younger kids. But the result is the same if medical doctors of all ages and young children are all seeing the same results. I think we've got, we're onto something here, right? So these children that did the test, they were able to outperform on these puzzles and other tests, right? They do this test, they outperformed the group that did not get themselves in a happy state significantly. I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but it was like 30, 40% range, just massive, massive improvement. And what these students did, what these children did before they started the puzzle is they took 10 seconds and thought about someone who made them happy. They pictured that person in their mind and they thought about it for long enough, for about 10 seconds that their brain chemistry changed, that the brain started to flood the body with serotonin and just all of the things that make us feel happy. And once they were in that state, they were able to outperform people who didn't do that exercise substantially on these mental tasks. So before you take a test, before you do something really challenging, I would say take 10 seconds, right? Take 30 seconds and picture something, an event that makes you really grateful. So at our Ivy League elite camps, we have the three words that describe us at our best and the story that accompanies those words. That might be a great exercise right before you take a test is go ahead and visualize yourself as your best self, like we've done in the camps, and allow your brain to flood the body with all the happiness chemicals and watch yourself perform at a higher level.

SPEAKER B

I love it. Okay, is there any other advice or anything else you want to share with our listeners about Sean Acre's book? Any other takeaways or anything they ought to look forward to in the years to come?

SPEAKER A

I would just say 15 minutes, well spent. If you get the watch, the podcast, or the Ted Talk. And the book is fantastic as well. It's well written, it's perfect for a non native speaker. You'll be able to understand the vast majority of it without needing to stop to look up grammar structures and things like that. It's well written, easy to digest. I can't recommend it enough that's all.