How to challenge your self-limiting beliefs with Shawn Achor | ReThinking

1. 0:00 – 0:49

   Why AI can’t supply belief: the human willpower factor

   1. SAShawn Achor0:00

      I think AI is amazing at helping us with tasks. It can predict the odds of whether or not you'll survive cancer or predict the odds of whether or not you'll successfully land a job, but it can never believe that you can overcome those odds. Belief requires, uh, an essence of, of willpower. It changes whether or not we try to make friends or to date or to, to get jobs. Beliefs change not only the math about what's possible and probable, but it changes our path, too. [upbeat music]

   2. AGAdam Grant0:30

      Shawn, it's been forever.

   3. SAShawn Achor0:32

      It's been way too long. I'm so grateful to get to see you again.

   4. AGAdam Grant0:35

      What I really wanna know is, how's Amy?

   5. SAShawn Achor0:37

      [laughs] Amy the unicorn's doing great. She still requires some royalties for me using her unicorn story for the TED Talk, but she's doing wonderful. She has three kids, one who just went off to college, so she's thriving.

2. 0:49 – 2:12

   Success without happiness: why cynics may be underperforming

   1. AGAdam Grant0:49

      When most people think of Shawn Achor, that's the first thing they think of, that, you know, success may not bring happiness, but happiness can breed success. How do you square that view with the fact that so many successful people are unhappy?

   2. SAShawn Achor1:00

      So I think that people can be extraordinarily successful or wealthy and perform well in sports and still be negative and grumpy and cynical and pessimistic, and you and I both met a lot of those people. But when you look at the role that optimism plays in improving performance across the board, everything from performance on tests to performance in sports to longevity to social relationships, it's improved. So what my assumption would be is that yes, there are those people, but they're actually underperforming their ability. At the same time, the other thing that I would say is that factors into that question about success. We know great biographies of people who are extraordinarily mean or negative or hard on themselves who have been prolific performers and musicians and, uh, CEOs, but then they also have substance abuse or commit suicide at a young age or their relationships break down. And so when you look at success in its entirety, not just through a single lens of their performance on a court or how much money that they have on paper, what we start to see is that when we are optimistic, when we see meaning and purpose, when we have social connection, it leads to greater levels of success across the board.

3. 2:12 – 4:05

   Can you be too happy? The “sweet spot” and redefining happiness as joy in growth

   1. AGAdam Grant2:12

      The, I also have to wonder about the upper bound on that. So Barry Schwartz and I wrote a paper years ago on the too much of a good thing effect and how across pretty much every domain of positive psychology we could find, you could overdo it. And the work that comes to mind right here is, uh, is Shigeo Ishii's on quote unquote being too happy, where he finds that I, I, I think if you, you probably know this research better than I do, but my recollection of it is on a zero to 10 scale, people who score an eight on happiness on average are more successful even financially than people who score a six, but that the eights are [laughs] actually better off than the tens. And I think about a 10 on happiness, and I think about complacency. I think about, I love my life so much that I'm just enjoying the present, and I'm not setting goals for the future. Do you think there's such a thing as being too happy? Do you think there's a, a sweet spot of happiness?

   2. SAShawn Achor3:05

      I think it's a brilliant critique. I agree in terms of happiness and beliefs. What I'm interested in is how do we realistically view the present but maintain the belief that eventually my behavior will matter if linked to other people? What we're looking for is behavior that allows us to feel emotions that cause us to thrive. But if it's, if happiness is about pleasure, it leads to complacency if you get up to a nine or a 10 because we don't wanna keep moving forward. And that's part of what I was arguing for why I wanted to use a different definition of happiness because if you redefine happiness as the joy you feel moving towards your potential, joy is something you can experience even when life is not pleasurable. But the other side of it is that it propels us towards more of our potential, that it doesn't allow us to rest on our laurels. It's the fuel for what we're experiencing. The only middle path is the one I think you're describing, that I think that the eights in those studies would describe, which is I'm not happy all the time, but I find that I function better at a positive state than a negative state.

4. 4:05 – 7:06

   Rational vs. irrational optimism: seatbelts, cholesterol, and agency

   1. SAShawn Achor4:05

      And I can realistically look at some of the negatives we see in the world, but maintain that belief that in the midst of the good and the bad that we're experiencing, that eventually my behavior will matter. Uh, so one of the stories that I share is I got to give a talk to a group of these CEOs of these top tech companies, and afterwards one of the CEOs offered to drive me to the airport to talk about how we could cascade this research through his company. So I was so excited. I really wanted to do this research. I got into this guy's really nice sports car. I, I don't know what it was. The doors went up instead of out, and it was yellow. And I got in and, um, I figured out how to close the door, put on my seatbelt, and he immediately started telling me how his company had been growing so quickly, his stress levels had been skyrocketing. And as he was speeding towards the airport and weaving all over the road and I was holding on for dear life, wondering why I got in the car [laughs] with this guy, that little bell at the beginning was going off, the seatbelt bell. And I turned to him, we were joking around already, and I can't remember exactly what led to it, but I was like, I was like, "Yeah, and you don't wear seatbelts." And he said, "No, Shawn, I listened to your talk. I love your research. I'm an optimist too," and kept driving and talking. [laughs] And what I realized was this is not the type of optimism that we're looking for. That's irrational optimism, which gives happiness a bad name. The reason that I don't study people that are happy all the time is because that they're not experiencing the realities of the negative that they have within their life, which also means that they're cutting themselves off from the learning moments of the negative that we're experiencing within our world. Irrational optimists Don't put on seat belts 'cause they don't think that they're gonna be in a car accident. And optimism, I will argue, is great for a lot of things, but it doesn't stop cars from hitting us. It doesn't stop reality from impinging upon us. But on the other side of the spectrum is pessimism, and pessimists believe that at core the permanent, uh, the problems that they see are permanent and pervasive but also that their behavior doesn't matter. And at the far end of pessimism, you don't wear a seatbelt 'cause it doesn't matter. If you get in a car accident, you're gonna die anyway. Uh, one other example of that happened with the longevity studies. There was a study that came out that found that pessimists live longer, and I, I think that some of the pessimists around the world were very excited about the study 'cause-

   2. AGAdam Grant6:05

      Temporarily very happy about that.

   3. SAShawn Achor6:06

      Yes, temp- exactly.

   4. AGAdam Grant6:07

      But it didn't last.

   5. SAShawn Achor6:08

      Right. Well, because I think that they got it wrong because what they described as the pessimists were the people who were worried that they were gonna die from heart disease, so they went and got chles- cholesterol testing. They went and got preventative measures. And what I would argue is that that's not pessimism. If they believe their behavior matters, that's the rational optimist. What I'm interested in is the people that can recognize, "Yes, my cholesterol might be high, and because of this, I believe my behavior matter, and I believe that if I diet and exercise, it'll have a positive function." And those people stick with diet regimens. They stick with their drug routines. And those people are the ones that trend in a positive direction.

   6. AGAdam Grant6:45

      So for you, the difference between rational and irrational optimism really boils down to at some level the difference between, "I know good things are gonna happen no matter what," and, "I believe that I'm capable of making good things more likely to happen."

   7. SAShawn Achor6:59

      Yes. And so if you don't believe that change is possible, it stops a lot of those changes from even starting in the first place.

5. 7:06 – 9:30

   The Great Drift: declining shared institutions and a crisis of belief

   1. AGAdam Grant7:06

      Well, this is what The Power of Beliefs is all about. So let's talk a little bit about The Great Drift. I don't think anybody who listens to our show has not heard about the rise of anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout, and I think you've highlighted that underlying all of these so-called crises is actually a crisis of belief. Talk to me about that.

   2. SAShawn Achor7:28

      So a- as you might know, Adam, I, I started back at Harvard Di- uh, Divinity School, so I was studying Christian ethics and comparing it to Buddhist ethics 'cause I was fascinated about how our beliefs about the world change the way we act in it. Why do we give? Why do we forgive? Why do we wake up in the morning? And you see very different answers based upon the mental narratives, uh, that people have about the world and those beliefs that they hold. One of the things that I found fascinating is that in, over the past several years, you see religious faith, for example, on a dramatic decline in a short period of time with no new brand-new information that proved that God didn't exist. And in the same world, we're living in, in a space in which there's, uh, this rise of AI and people wondering about what it is to be human. And in the midst of that world we start to think, "All right, so what role does human belief play?" For all of human history, all of our collective beliefs came from four places. They came from our job, our village, our social or, like, our, our religious structure, and our political structure. But we've become, uh, untethered from all four of those over the past several years. So we don't have those sources of collective belief, but we're hungry for them. And we're hungry for them, so we latch on to belief in other ways. We grab on to influencers who might be just as angry or frustrated with the world or they are clinging to other ideas of, like, about what it is to be masculine or, or the lack of comfort that we need in the world, or if we could just exercise enough or get down to a certain weight, then we could find that happiness and meaning and purpose that we had been pursuing all along. There was a study that, uh, I highlighted that 32% of Americans claim that they believe that we're living in the end times, and that was cross politics and cross religion. If one out of three people believe we're on this, this immediate decline into entropy and to a zombie apocalypse, like, why would you bring children into this world with those beliefs? Why would you keep doing your English poetry study? Why would you, uh, write a book or, or date or invest in other people? So those beliefs, I think because we've eroded some of those collective belief sources,

6. 9:30 – 10:55

   Placebo effect and belief hunger: why belief hasn’t disappeared

   1. SAShawn Achor9:30

      have left us hungry. And you can see it in a, uh, in one really cool way which, uh, I, I just find fascinating that the placebo effect, which most your audience knows, it doesn't work all the time. There's lots of, uh, qualms about it. But the placebo effect is rising in the US. So I think that's an indication that it's not that beliefs went away. I think that the beliefs are still there even in a world in which we feel like the power of belief is on the decline.

   2. AGAdam Grant9:54

      Okay, so if I'm-- This is fascinating. If I'm following you correctly, you're saying that the placebo effect is getting stronger, and what that suggests to you is that people are operating more in a belief vacuum than they were in the p- in the past, that they're basically, in the absence of a placebo, they're lacking some foundation of confidence or faith or optimism. Sort of with that backdrop, all of a sudden, like, telling somebody, "Hey, this is a treatment," gets a bigger boost psychologically or behaviorally or even physiologically than it would've otherwise.

   3. SAShawn Achor10:27

      I think that that's true, and I think that there might be multiple explanations for it. I think that as science and technology improve, we just believe that it's gonna work better. But I think that there is a desire to believe in something. And in the absence of knowing what to do, um, you could see it in the midst of COVID where any treatment that was suggested by someone on Instagram, people were like, "Yeah, I gotta try it out. This is what's gonna do it," and I don't understand why no one else believes-

   4. AGAdam Grant10:53

      Except the valid ones.

   5. SAShawn Achor10:54

      Right. Exactly.

   6. AGAdam Grant10:55

      [laughs]

7. 10:55 – 13:05

   Home-field advantage without fans: social belief as performance fuel

   1. SAShawn Achor10:55

      Except for the valid ones. But you could see all these invalid responses. But we couldn't test them, so we didn't know if they were invalid at that point. But you could see this hunger for, "Okay, so what do we believe in?" And it's not just in the medical space. You know, a fascinating one is that, you know, we have the home field advantage that we've known about for years, um, that when you play in your home field, you play better, and it's a statistical advantage. That's when you aggregate, so that's regardless of opponent. And so I got to talk, uh, briefly to Pete Carroll, um, when he was back with the Seattle Seahawks and I asked him, you know, "Why is, why is there this advantage?" And he was like, "Well, you know, you don't have to travel. You're, you're not tired. You know right where the uprights are in the stadium and you're at th- your preferred elevation that you practice in and preferred weather." And that was the consensus view. And then we had COVID, and we got to watch the athletes but without fans in the stands. And the home field advantage in those games statistically disappeared. It was just completely gone, which is amazing

   2. AGAdam Grant11:52

      You don't have people cheering for you, building your confidence

   3. SAShawn Achor11:55

      Right? That's exactly it

   4. AGAdam Grant11:56

      You don't have people also that you're worried about letting down

   5. SAShawn Achor11:59

      Yes. Right? It turns out that the home field advantage was about all the things you just mentioned, Adam. It was about the beliefs that I'm not alone, that people are for me instead of against me, and that creates a performance advantage

   6. AGAdam Grant12:11

      And, you know, it's also, I think there's a direct piece and an indirect piece of that, right? So when we think about the home field advantage, there's the, of course, I get a little spring in my step from my fans rooting for me. But there's also [laughs] the, like, the refs feel more pressure to not make a call that goes against the home team when the whole crowd is there

   7. SAShawn Achor12:28

      Exactly. Right? So, and that disappears when you don't have that immediate response from the, uh, the fans in the stands cheering for you. And I think the problem is that the more lonely that we feel with this world, and it leads into the work that you're doing and your book coming out, uh, later this year, is that that loneliness, that las- s- lack of social connection, what we've done is we've stripped out some of the collective beliefs that we share with one another. I think the original w- research I was doing with The Happiness Advantage is that when we feel these positive beliefs, that I matter, that I'm not alone, that my behavior matters, that I have something to give, that I have something to be grateful for, those, I believe, propel us towards an upward spiral of success

8. 13:05 – 16:50

   Can beliefs be changed? Kahneman’s skepticism and broadening what ‘belief’ means

   1. AGAdam Grant13:05

      One of the things I thought was powerful about your book is you give us techniques to change our own beliefs. And I have to say, I don't know that you won an argument for me, but you at least added an argument. So, uh, let me, let me just give you a quick backstory, and then you can walk us through some techniques for, for building on this. But I think it was 2018, I was having lunch with, with Danny Kahneman, and he was asking me what I was working on, and I, I told him I was really excited to write a book called Think Again, which was gonna be about the power and importance of questioning and rethinking our beliefs. And Danny told me not to write the book.

   2. SAShawn Achor13:41

      Hmm.

   3. AGAdam Grant13:41

      He said, "Nobody ever changes their beliefs."

   4. SAShawn Achor13:44

      Huh.

   5. AGAdam Grant13:44

      And at first I was crushed. I was like, "No, no, no, this is-- Like Danny, this is what your work has done for all of us. You, you identified all these decision-making heuristics and biases that led us to realize how often we were wrong, and then reevaluate our assumptions and convictions and, and then have a better shot at getting it right." And as I, as I grilled him about why he thought this was a terrible book idea, I realized his sticking point was the word belief.

   6. SAShawn Achor14:08

      Hmm.

   7. AGAdam Grant14:08

      That he saw beliefs as fundamentally ingrained, as so deep-seated that nobody would ever really change them. When I reframed the conversation a little bit and said, "Actually, what I really wanna do is I wanna help people get faster and better and more comfortable at changing their opinions, at changing their minds," he said, "Oh, you should absolutely write this book. I change my mind on a dime. I change my mind so quickly that it drives all my collaborators and my family members crazy."

   8. SAShawn Achor14:33

      Right.

   9. AGAdam Grant14:34

      "This is probably my most important skill in life." I came away from that conversation realizing that it might be a completely different animal to change your opinions than to change your beliefs. So make the case, first of all, that this is something we have control over, and tell me why Danny was wrong

   10. SAShawn Achor14:48

       [laughs] Well, the first thing that I would say to that is that, um, when I ask somebody about what their beliefs are, they'll usually tell me whether or not they're a conservative or a liberal. And if I'm like, "Okay, give me some more beliefs," and then they'll tell you maybe if they're religious or not. And if I'm like, "Okay, give me some more beliefs," then they just peter out, and then they might just make a joke like, uh, "I, I believe my Jets are gonna win the Super Bowl," which we b- both know is not gonna happen, right? But we actually have beliefs about everything. We have beliefs about whether or not crypto is a valid currency. We have beliefs about, uh, whether or not it's safe to get into a Waymo. We have political beliefs, we have religious beliefs, we have beliefs about what, what pants, uh, we sh- are supposed to wear, or whether I should have worn a collar for this. Like all, all these different types of beliefs. And some of those beliefs don't move us very much. Um, but some of those beliefs have an incredibly predictive value in terms of what happens next in your life, that those certain beliefs change the math about what's possible and probable in someone's life, like the belief that people like me are bad at math, or that people like me will never be successful. And I think the, the problem is that when we separate out beliefs and opinions, we've put belief, the word, into a category that only can possibly include religion a- and, uh, philosophy and, and politics, which is such a limited version of it. And what I would argue is that most of psychology argues against that. I mean, I think that mice were changing their beliefs about where they were gonna find cheese in a maze, and they get faster and faster being able to do that. And I think the same thing happens to us, is that if I believe that my behavior matters, but then I keep getting cut from every team that I try and get on basketball, eventually I'm gonna start learning that I'm not as good at basketball as I thought I was, or that I need to have just an incredible amount of grit, and that might change in, in the future. But I think in each of those moments as we're pursuing dating or as we're pursuing getting onto a basketball team or to be successful, each one of those requires a testing of the theories that your brain has about the world. So in the book, I define beliefs as the lens through which you view the world, which is, I went the opposite direction. So I went, it's basically

9. 16:50 – 18:13

   Seven productive beliefs (plus one): agency, connection, meaning, gratitude, and transcendence

   1. SAShawn Achor16:50

      everything, right? Which became, for me, hard to write the book because it's so unwieldy now. It's now all of psychology, philosophy, and politics. So that was too much to take on. But I think that the middle ground there is that we need to open up our willingness to understand what belief is. Um, so in the book, I highlight these seven beliefs that are some of the most productive. I think there's ones that I missed, honestly, um, and that you just couldn't fit into a book. One of those is change is possible. That didn't get into the book. I felt like I wrote about that in, uh, in Before Happiness, which was a previous book I had, and so I didn't write about that. But that's a big one. But the beliefs I think are universal are the beliefs that my behavior matters, that I'm not alone, I matter, this work is meaningful, I have something to give, I have something to be grateful for, and that there's something greater than me. And I think that those beliefs are much wider than the net of just, it's just politics or religion. If change isn't possible, then what are we doing? Right? Why would we listen to a podcast? Why would I read a book? Why would I write a book if I didn't believe that change is possible? And that's all the arguments you were making in your book, right?

   2. AGAdam Grant17:51

      I think your, your list of, you know, seven plus some additional beliefs is, is a great place to start. I think, you know, I was immediately curious when you went through this list about- What do I do if I discover that I'm struggling with one of those beliefs? How do I change it? I don't believe my behavior matters. I'm struggling to find something to be grateful for. Like, I don't think I have anything to give. What do I do now?

10. 18:13 – 21:01

    Techniques to challenge limiting beliefs: changing inputs and revisiting memory evidence

    1. SAShawn Achor18:13

       So when we look at not only psychology, but when you look at history and politics, when we're trying to get people to change their beliefs, there's a couple things that they do. They try to change the sources that are around them. You change the common text that you have. You change the memories a- and how you're priming those memories in someone's life. Uh, so that's a, that's a, a great place to start. That's one of my favorite ones that I hadn't even thought about. If you talk to memory, uh, researchers, they say oftentimes a lot of our memories is you're remembering the previous memory of it, not the actual experience of it. I talked to one of my friends who said he started, you know, trying this out. This is while I was writing the book. I was playing with different ideas, and he said, "I thought I was-- that no one liked me as a kid. I've always not been good with making friends. You know, I've always been kind of a loner." And his parents had given them this box of all these photos and, and he looked back at them, and he had all these pictures of him in Scouts and going to camp and being part of these teams and all these kids at his, his birthday party. So what it started to do was to break down that original belief that I'm a loner, I've never had friends, and change it to a belief that actually I, I've had social connection. I might be able to do this in some parts of my life. I did this in my own life, uh, to make this more practical. I was stepping back out from taking time to be with my kids to, to write this book, and I had to work so hard on it, I felt like I missed the entire fall. And my belief was I just screwed up. Like, I messed up this whole fall. I was all about work. This is not what I wanted to do, and I missed this valuable finite time with my kids, and I can never get it back. And one of the things I did is I went on... I don't know what prompted this, but I went on, um, Shu- Shutterfly, and we've made some photo books, and I started pulling out some of the favorites that I had from the fall and just putting it into this book. And I'd forgotten about all these Harry Potter parties and, like, the dressing up for multiple Halloweens and the kids at school and the hiking trips and all of this. And what I realized was by the time that I finished that photo book, the story that I had been telling myself, and we can call it a story or the belief that I had, the opinion that I had about myself, was not only erroneous, but it wasn't serving me, right? If I felt like I was a bad dad because of the decisions I made, I might have pivoted and not finished the book, right? Or I would've felt bad when I'm with my kids, or it changed the way I interact with my wife. But because I took that step of going back to those previous positive memories, it changed not only that current belief, but what I'm arguing in the book is the beliefs change not only the math about what's possible and probable, but it changes our path, too.

    2. AGAdam Grant20:35

       Those are such interesting examples because you are finding evidence to challenge a false belief and say, "Hey, actually, like, I, I feel like I missed the fall. I have data proving me wrong. I have photos with my kids. They activate memories of activities we did together and conversations we had. Maybe I wasn't as present as I am used to being or as present as I wanted to be, but I wasn't at a zero. I was somewhere in the middle of that spectrum."

11. 21:01 – 24:09

    Avoiding toxic positivity: building beliefs that serve you without denying reality

    1. SAShawn Achor21:01

       That's right. I think that goes back to your original critique is we don't wanna be like, "Hey, my whole life has been great. My parents were perfect. I've been perfect," 'cause then I won't pivot, and that course correction doesn't happen when we only see the positive. But to be honest, I don't think we're on that side of the spectrum. I mean, I think given the burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression we see in the world, we're not on the side of, of being irrationally optimistic or positive about our present. I feel like people are terrified of AI, and they're feeling alone in that people are believing that their behavior doesn't matter at work as much and that they f- they feel like that there's nothing greater than them, so there's not something to pursue or awe or wonder. And I think that those things are limiting us. So what I'm intentionally trying to do is to fill in the gaps to create beliefs that actually serve us, and I think that that goes back to the critique that has to be happening at the same time, which is, one, are these rational? And two, are these leading to greater levels of happiness and performance in my life so that my life is actually improving instead of I'm living divorced from reality?

    2. AGAdam Grant22:00

       Yeah. I think you're right. We need, we need exactly this view right now because it does seem like we see growing numbers of people amplifying problems. I think we, we see this in the dialogue about capitalism, for example. There are tons of people describing capitalism as the root of all evil. I don't know about you, I, I sorta like modern medicine. Would not exist without capitalism. I like the fact that I can pick up a phone and call somebody who doesn't live in the same town as me. I think, you know, most of human progress in the last couple centuries would not have happened without capitalism. That doesn't mean it's all good. [chuckles] Like, there are lots of externalities. There are lots of negative side effects. We can see something as, you know, as useful and a net positive without turning, you know, our back on the fact that it has a lot of flaws that need to be addressed.

    3. SAShawn Achor22:47

       Right. Uh, I mean, I think that those same capitalist articles and books are being written and sold, and then they have advertising at the same time, right? Just all-

    4. AGAdam Grant22:54

       Ironically

    5. SAShawn Achor22:55

       ... part of the same system. But I, I think you're pointing out something so important is that it's easy to create a straw man out of, especially about positive psychology, right? That you're gaslighting people or that... You know, I've seen, uh, lots of books that have been, like, about how I don't believe in this, this idea that people like, that people like me that would be like, "You have to be happy all the time," right? And I've never heard a positive psychologist say that you should be happy all the time, right? I think that that actually leads to some detrimental, you know, effects within your life. Not only that, but you're also, you know, not in connection with reality. But I think what's important in the midst of that is that we then slot rattle back to the other side, which is when you feel like, "Oh, I can't pursue to happiness directly, then there's nothing I can do." But that's like saying you don't pursue math directly, right? Like, you have to pick up a pencil, and you have to practice, and you have to, you know, learn making lines and angles at the same time. Like, there's lots of things that go into some of these skillsets. And what I would say is maybe skillset is just another word for belief here about if I take this action repeatedly, then I believe eventually it might create a positive effect. Or in the midst of a world-

    6. AGAdam Grant24:03

       Yeah

    7. SAShawn Achor24:03

       ... in which I feel alone- ... that there might be weak ties that are here that are meaningful.

12. 24:09 – 28:15

    Office hours: getting organizations to measure well-being beyond the bottom line

    1. AGAdam Grant24:09

       Okay, let's, let's go to the office hours segment of this conversation. I'm gonna give you the mic, and I will let you choose what question you wanna ask.

    2. SAShawn Achor24:18

       Welcome to my office hours.

    3. AGAdam Grant24:19

       [laughs]

    4. SAShawn Achor24:19

       So one of the questions I had for you is that one of the biggest challenges we have with this work is getting businesses to measure something beyond just their business outcomes. Um, for example, they tell me, "Don't use the H word. We don't wanna hear about happiness," you know, relate back to engagement, right? But people were very engaged when the Titanic was going down. That's not necessarily our model for how we want everything. There's some other things we need to be asking. And you've done such a great work getting organizations to ask these larger questions. How do you convince organizations that you work with to ask questions beyond just the business outcomes?

    5. AGAdam Grant24:54

       I think it's, it's always, it's always tricky. Like, all of us in the, the applied social science world, and especially all of us doing applied psychology, have confronted the, wait a minute. Like, if, first of all, like, if it doesn't affect my bottom line, I don't wanna measure it. And then secondly, if I have to measure something else, give me a buzzword that I can... Like, I don't have to argue with anyone, is clearly related to performance. And I think I used to fight a lot of uphill battles, and I've increasingly found myself looking for tailwinds. And the clearest tailwind on this one is, you know, at the end of the day, like, I wanna understand what outcomes you care about. And usually, what I'll hear is, you know, first and foremost, we wanna have, you know, productive people in teams, um, you know, who are d- delivering high both quality and quantity of work. Like, great. So what do you think people's experiences need to be like in order to produce those outcomes? And then whatever comes back to me, I'll say, "Okay, look, we have a bunch of measures for that, and we have terms for them, but I don't care what you call them. I don't care whether you call it quality of life at work. I don't care whether you describe it, you know, old school as job satisfaction. I don't care whether you, you know, you refer to it as thriving or well-being or flourishing or happiness. At the end of the day, we're interested in the same things, and I wanna make sure we measure those critical ingredients. So let's, let's talk about what framing is gonna work best for your organization, and we'll make it work." And then the other part of it that often comes in is, as I'm pushing on that a little bit, I, I usually get some pushback, and people say, "But w- wait a minute. We don't just care about productivity." I'm like, "Oh, interesting. You're telling me this. [laughs] Tell me more. I've-- I would love to hear, what else do you care about?" And they'll say, "Well, like, we wanna keep our best talent, and we want to attract, like, the most capable people." I'll say, "Okay. Well, what, what do you think drives whether somebody stays at a job or leaves?" And, like, [laughs] when you look at the meta-analyses of the turnover literature, there's not a lot that matters more than liking the work you do and liking the people you work with.

    6. SAShawn Achor26:50

       Right.

    7. AGAdam Grant26:50

       And so that, that becomes sort of added ammunition for saying, okay, again, you know, whether you put it in the engagement bucket or the flourishing bucket or the well-being bucket, it's not just gonna affect whether people are, you know, are bringing creative ideas and persisting in the face of obstacles and giving their best effort at work. It's also, in the long run, gonna drive whether they stick around in your workplace or whether they jump ship to find somewhere else. And as you know well, the most talented people have the most options, and it's the hardest to retain them. And so if you're not doing something to make sure that they are energized at work, then you are basically disincentivizing them to stay, and you're asking them, "Go find a job that cares more about you." That, that's been what the conversation has looked like for me. How is that different from what you end up doing?

    8. SAShawn Achor27:34

       I have the same type of approach. Like, when we go into organizations... You know, just with the Harvard students, when we wanted to get them to be interested in happiness research, we had to tell them how it'd improve their grades, right?

    9. AGAdam Grant27:44

       [laughs]

    10. SAShawn Achor27:44

        So [laughs] they'd be like, "Great." 'Cause otherwise, it's like, "Well, I'll be happy when I'm an investment banker, or when I get this PhD, or when I have something else." We had to relate it to what they cared about in the first place. And then once we've opened that door, then it allows us to, to, to start that process o- of evaluating what, what actually leads to the outcomes that we want within our lives. And some of those, I think, are the ones you described. It's like, do you have a best friend at work? Do you feel optimistic? Do you feel like your work is meaningful? Do you feel like there's something greater than you? But a few years ago, you and I were both speaking at a, a, a conference together, and,

13. 28:15 – 30:52

    Fear vs. optimism in motivation: a time-based cycle for peak performance

    1. SAShawn Achor28:15

       um, we got to do a dialogue with one another, and it was great. And we turned it into a debate, and I think I lost it at the end. And I'm curious if you've doubled down or if you've changed over time at all. Um, but we were talking about the happiness advantage, and one of the things you said that you didn't buy, and I'm putting it stronger than you said it. You said it much nicer. But what you feel like motivates you to perform well is this fear that I am not gonna be able to get this project done in time, or the fear of, what if I let these people down if I don't get this book in? Or the feel, uh, the fear of, of failing causes you to drive to make sure you get that work actually done, and it butts up against that optimism or positivity moves you in that direction. And if it's true, how do we... Like, I don't want my kids to fear failure, but also, when I look at these incredible athletes, the best ones always say, "I hate losing." So-

    2. AGAdam Grant29:05

       [laughs]

    3. SAShawn Achor29:05

       ... I'm really curious how you synthesize it now.

    4. AGAdam Grant29:08

       Oh, yeah. This has been in the back of my mind, I think since we had that debate, and I've been trying to reconcile the views. And I think the easy way to do it is just say, look, there are individual differences, there are contingencies always, and for some people, we may need anxiety first and then optimism once they are prepared, and that, you know, the optimism too soon can, uh, can be counterproductive. But then the point that you made was very persuasive, that if you don't have any optimism to begin with, you're not gonna bother to study at all or to prepare at all. And so I think where I am right now, and, and tell me if, if you think this is right or wrong, is I think there's a temporal cycle where if the goal is optimal performance and also not being a miserable jerk, what we want is we wanna start optimistic at the very beginning of a project or a goal so that you don't aim too low, and you actually are motivated to try. And then as it comes time to put in the hard work of preparation, we want a little bit of worrying that things might not go well, so that if there's a possibility of complacency, it's thwarted off. And then once you're prepared, we wanna replace any worry with optimism and confidence. And that, that would be sort of the, for me, the optimal cycle. What do you think?

    5. SAShawn Achor30:20

       I think that you're right. And you know what? I, oftentimes what I tell people is that I would never give my talk on the happiness advantage at a funeral, right? Yes.

    6. AGAdam Grant30:27

       [laughs]

    7. SAShawn Achor30:28

       I do think-

    8. AGAdam Grant30:29

       I hope not

    9. SAShawn Achor30:29

       ... I do think-- Right? I, I do think being positive leads to better outcomes. It's not the right time for it. And I think at some point in that temporal cycle that you're talking about, there has to be an intervention that shows that you're not alone, that there's outliers that have proven that even with those difficult circumstances, a positive change is possible, and that we can interrupt that cycle by changing those beliefs, like my behavior matters.

14. 30:52 – 35:35

    Lightning round and evidence the interventions work without the ‘Shawn effect’

    1. AGAdam Grant30:52

       That's a great segue to our lightning round. Rapid-fire questions. Goal is, uh, one sentence max answer. Are you ready?

    2. SAShawn Achor30:59

       [laughs] I'll try.

    3. AGAdam Grant31:00

       Okay, first question. What do you think is the worst advice people get about becoming happier?

    4. SAShawn Achor31:06

       I think the worst advice people get about becoming happier is that they have to ignore all the negative that's going on around them instead of reframing and looking for the positive amidst a world that doesn't look like it should.

    5. AGAdam Grant31:17

       Nice. Okay, so you've, you've spent the last few decades really internalizing a lot of interesting research. What's been the most surprising thing you've learned about how to raise happiness?

    6. SAShawn Achor31:28

       The most surprising thing I've learned about happiness is that I thought a lot of the things that would prevent happiness in life were not preventers of it. Refugee displacement, poverty, bereavement of a child, that while it causes a loss of hope and optimism at some points, that the recovery of humans is incredible, allowing happiness to be possible, even in environments I never thought it could happen.

    7. AGAdam Grant31:50

       What is an unpopular belief you hold?

    8. SAShawn Achor31:53

       I'm finding one of the most unpopular beliefs I hold is the inclusion of that final belief in my book, which is the, that there's something greater than you. And I included it in the book because it, for me, it means that there's a loving God, but for someone else it could be that there's nature, or that there's justice, or that there's a sense of humanity or a universe that makes this more than just a collision of random atoms, which provides meaning and purpose, and that our behavior matters and that we're not alone.

    9. AGAdam Grant32:23

       Okay, you're organizing a dinner party of anyone alive or dead to try to figure out the secret to a life well-lived. Who are you inviting?

    10. SAShawn Achor32:32

        I would invite my favorite author, C.S. Lewis, um, because I have pulled so much of my own beliefs from his ability to synthesize, you know, his intellectual beliefs with his religious beliefs. Adam, actually, honestly, I would have invited you because I think that you, you wouldn't let us just, uh, rest on our laurels. You would question it and allow us to go to deeper areas, and I've always loved your style, honestly. The last person is, uh, this guy who, uh, writes me all the time from a homeless shelter, and he spent his whole life working in a homeless shelter, and he could've done so much. He was a CEO, and then he stopped doing it to help people. And he's written me because he's been writing down his gratitudes every single day for, like, five years now, and he's gotten his team to do it. And I'm like, "You're better at this than I am, and I wanna figure out how to love in the midst of pursuing happiness as w- as well."

    11. AGAdam Grant33:21

        Wow, incredible. I, I still want someone to run the experiment that I think at that, that conference we were at that might have been dreamed up by me.

    12. SAShawn Achor33:29

        [laughs]

    13. AGAdam Grant33:30

        Which is... I, I, I'll just, I'll just tell our listeners briefly. I remember, Shawn, you had done some amazing trials of interventions where you were able to change people's beliefs and behaviors, um, with relatively quick training. And my immediate question coming out of some of those experiments was, "How much of this is the training, and how much of it is a Shawn effect?" Just that-

    14. SAShawn Achor33:51

        I remember this

    15. AGAdam Grant33:51

        ... being around you is infectious, and it's, it's almost impossible not to be upbeat and optimistic, you know, after interacting with you. Have you figured out whether, whether you're a placebo yet?

    16. SAShawn Achor34:02

        [laughs]

    17. AGAdam Grant34:02

        Or is that still an experiment waiting to happen?

    18. SAShawn Achor34:04

        We've cut myself out of the interventions. Um, so-

    19. AGAdam Grant34:07

        Really?

    20. SAShawn Achor34:07

        ... we're able to pull-- Yeah, so I don't, I don't lead any of the interventions now. But, um, we still see that it, it, that it-- We were, we were able to work with all the public schools in Flint, Michigan, and improve the optimism levels of teachers in the midst of inequality, discrimination, and racism. And we were able to raise the test scores at these schools where they thought it was a failure factory, and we were able to work on how you can raise optimism, not alone, but with other people. And I wasn't there for any of those. I was just looking at the research on the backside of it, and it's extraordinarily exciting. We did it with hospital systems in the midst of COVID, where I wasn't the, the person providing the intervention. And what we looked at, and we looked at multiple interventions, but basically, when people did try to create a work routine together that was positive and realized that they weren't alone, that that attempt to do it together dramatically lowered burnout rates in the midst of, of COVID in the same hospital system where burnout rates were skyrocketing, 'cause we did it department by department. So we could see how beliefs could change even in places where we thought the story couldn't change, that the only narrative was that stress is tearing us apart and that we're alone.

    21. AGAdam Grant35:14

        Love it. I still believe there's a Shawn effect, but I'm glad to see that there is an effect of your training independent of you.

    22. SAShawn Achor35:20

        Thank you.

    23. AGAdam Grant35:20

        All right. Thanks, Shawn. This was, this was a delight. I look forward to many more conversations to come.

    24. SAShawn Achor35:25

        Me too, Adam. Thank you. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 35:46