Be Happy to Be Successful!

Psychologists have long established a link between happiness and success. Happier people tend to earn more money, perform better and are more helpful towards their coworkers. Most people yet assume that this link exists because people feel happy when they are more successful. However, it seems to be the other way round. People who are HAPPY will always find ways to make themselves SUCCESSFUL.

Of course, happiness is not the only, or even the most important, factor when it comes to achieving greatness. Muovo would like to share with you the points below where scientific evidence shows that people who rise to greatness tend to have five things in common:

1. They practice hard, in a really specific way.
If you want to be successful, you need to practice. By practice, researchers often mean those people who devote hours of work to reach their goal.

2. They practice consistently.
K. Anders Ericsson, author of a landmark study on this topic, says that 'elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends'. Knocking out a bucket of balls on the weekend isn't going to make you a great golfer but doing it every day might.

3. They gain experience over the long haul.
Researchers call it the 10-year-rule. Most successful people average ten years of practice and experience before becoming truly accomplished. Even child-prodigies generally work at it for a decade or more. Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at 16 years old, but he'd been studying since he was 7. Tiger Woods had been working on his golf game for 15 years when he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship.

4. They have had significant failures–but did not give up.
J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 publishers. Michael Jordan was cut from his high-school varsity basketball team. The great receiver Jerry Rice was judged as slow, and was passed up by 15 teams. But all three of these people became known for their perseverance and hard work. (Rowling delivered an incredibly moving commencement speech about embracing failure at Harvard; watch it here if you haven't seen it already!)

5. They have believed that their persistent effort will lead to success.
Researchers call this self-efficacy. Parents and teachers can build self-efficacy in their children by giving them effective encouragement (vs. empty praise), by helping them find effective strategies for mastering an activity, and by helping kids model their practices on the behavior of others who have succeeded.

Will stunning success bring your children true happiness? Probably not. But knowing that it is practice that makes a person successful rather than innate talent can help children take the risks they need to in order to rise to the top of their field. More than that, though, research shows that seeing effort as the key to success helps children enjoy their activities a whole lot more than they do when they are worried about proving their special talent to the world.

This article is courtesy of Greater Good

Nikita Pisani at Muovo

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