Hacking Happiness

How to Intentionally Adapt and Shape the Future You Want

Penny Locaso

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780730384991
• eBook ISBN:
  9780730385004
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Small Business

Learn to love uncertainty—and shape the future you want 

You have a successful life; a professional career, nice home, maybe kids or even a dog, so why are you so damn unhappy? Spread so thin at work, nothing gets the attention it needs; tasked with leading others through rapid change, you're not sure where you're heading yourself. Disruptive technology, catastrophic global events and increasing mental health problems means your secure and linear pathway to happiness no longer exists. 

Success today is not about the perfect plan to achieve more, manage change and mitigate risk. Our brave new world is calling us to throw out any rulebook and leap into what we fear most—the unknown. 

That's exactly what Penny Locaso did when she turned her life upside-down to tackle our happiness-deficit problem. She emerged as the world's first Happiness Hacker and the inventor of the Intentional Adaptability Quotient®: a quantifiable method for individuals and organisations to become more skillful at, and even relish, adapting to rapid change.  

Welcomed by business leaders worldwide, IAQ® catapulted Penny to prominence as a TedX Talk star and faculty member at the acclaimed Singularity University by showing that in our highly disruptive present we must embrace instability and complexity to achieve clarity, purpose, and the sense of meaning that brings real joy.    

• Learn how experimentation, danger, and even failure are crucial to happiness and success 
• Take courage and focus on what you're avoiding, not what you're missing 
• Reskill yourself and others to accept—and even enjoy–uncertainty  
• Explore your IAQ®: focus, courage, curiosity, accountability, connection, experimentation and reflection 

This book is an opportunity to look at work and the world through a new lens and see that by surfing on the edges of our comfort zone we—professionals, leaders, everyone—can intentionally adapt to create a successful and fulfilling future. 

 

PART I
The Happiness Poverty Problem

Brace yourself, because in this section we will explore:

• why our definition of success is flawed and how it's affecting our ability to thrive
• how happiness is not found in what we want, but in what we are avoiding
• how our brains are being pushed into survival mode and why we need to stop reacting and start intentionally adapting.

CHAPTER 1
Why success is a shit sandwich

Grab a pen and some paper, find a quiet spot with no distractions and sit for a moment. Get comfortable in your chair and close your eyes.

Now think about the word ‘success’. What does it mean to you? What comes to mind? How does it make you feel? What images do you picture? Is it a beautiful home, an exotic beach house, a fast car, world travel … being a tech entrepreneur who's made billions, or a face on the cover of Time magazine? Whatever it is, draw it or write it down. Keep it unfiltered and keep it close by, as you will want to revisit this later in the chapter.

But first, I want you to have a look at what is there. How does it make you feel? Is it really your definition of success, or is it one you've been sold? How much of what you pictured lights you up inside, gives you meaning, energises you? Most importantly, how much of it matters in the context of bringing you greater happiness?

Let's consider an example. Sam is a senior executive in finance. Her image of success was centred around climbing the corporate ladder, leading large teams in even larger organisations, and having a big salary to buy the things she wanted: designer handbags, an expensive car, family holidays overseas … the list went on.

Yet when Sam looked back on this list — like I want you to do now — this is how she summed up what she saw:

I have it all … yet I constantly feel like I want more. Nothing fulfils me. It's like I'm accumulating the want and shortly after my level of success just goes back to baseline. I feel like I'm back where I started … wanting more. I've fallen into the trap of status and prestige and I'm not sure those things even matter.

What Sam is referring to is backed up by a theory, developed by psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell, termed ‘hedonic adaptation’ (and later called the ‘hedonic treadmill’, figure 1.1), which basically describes how we as human beings get used to any positive external events in our lives. We assume that when we have that thing, win the lottery, buy the big house, get the job, we will be happier … but it's a trap that places us on a treadmill to nowhere. Studies have shown that our circumstances don't account for our happiness. When we achieve a desired thing, it spikes our happiness in the short term. But quite quickly we go back to our genetic happiness baseline. (In chapter 2 we explore in more detail the work of Sonja Lyubomirsky and our genetic happiness baseline.)

Figure 1.1: hedonic adaptation

Source: Positive Psychology https://positivepsychology.com/hedonic-treadmill/

According to the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman,

Even if you could alter all of the external circumstances, it would not do much for you, since together they probably account for not more than between 8 and 15 percent of the variance in happiness. The very good news is that there are quite a number of internal circumstances that will likely work for you … If you decide to change them (and be warned that none of these changes come without real effort), your level of happiness is likely to increase lastingly.

Does Sam's story ring true for you? How attached is your definition of success to the work that you do? Have you ever considered what success would look like if you focused on who you are as a human being rather than what you do?

What if happiness and success are intertwined and only possible if we focus more on being and less on doing?

THE PATH TO POWER

The desire for success certainly provides aspiration and motivation in the game of life. Most of us start to form our definition of success at an early age, shaped by our environment, the people we look up to, the advertising we are exposed to and the influence of our friends.

We are raised to believe that if we do well in school and in university, we'll get a good job, which then leads to a career that delivers good money, potentially more societal influence and a higher standard of living, which is more likely to make us more socially attractive, which is more likely to increase our happiness. This is the linear view of success and its most basic linkage to our pursuit of happiness.

But does that actually make us happy?

Have we prioritised our ego over our happiness? Are we spending more time polishing our personal brand online and running on the busy hamster wheel than connecting to what truly brings us joy?

Take Steve, for example, a very successful senior executive in a global consulting firm. We sat down for a coffee after a workshop and he was on the brink of tears. He confessed:

I've followed the path I was led to believe would make me successful. I work really hard … often at the expense of time with my family. I have all the trimmings in life, but I'm burnt out, miserable, and it's impacting my mental health. I drive past building sites and look at the bricklayers, the tradies, with envy. It's not usually a job we associate with success, but I think to myself that's the kind of work I want. Work where there is mateship, connection, hours that are set, where at the end of the day your work is literally finished and your time with family is sacred. I'm starting to wonder whether this is what success should look like.

Herein lies the problem.

Our societal definition of success is firmly anchored in the accumulation of money and power.

Why? Capitalism, for one.

In a capitalist society we value money and power, which orients our behaviour towards doing in order to accumulate more of it. The more you do the more you have; and the more you have, the more influential you become, and the more likely you are to shape the future for the rest of us.

We have been led to believe that money and power equals success and this type of success leads to greater happiness. I'm calling bullshit!

The research shows that, once we can comfortably meet our basic human needs, the more money we earn, the more our happiness actually declines.

A GROWING CONCERN

Money doesn't make us happy. Full stop.

Look around you and consider the people you know, or observe in the media, who are earning good or even crazy money. Are they truly happy? Money may have afforded them a particular lifestyle, but has it delivered the holy grail of happiness?

Let's take the United States as a case in point. Their income per capita has increased markedly during the past half century, and yet their happiness is in decline. This drop is attributed to John Helliwell's five major variables th...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• GRATITUDE
• INTRODUCTION
• HOW TO MAXIMISE YOUR JOURNEY
• PART I: The Happiness Poverty Problem
• PART II: Hack Your Happiness
• PERFECTION DOESN'T LIVE HERE, PRACTICE DOES
• CONTINUE YOUR HACKING HAPPINESS JOURNEY
• RESOURCES
• INDEX
• END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT