Is being a leader and being happy mutually exclusive? I don’t think so. While we hear more and more about working context meaning that we have to manage in ever changing, complex and ambiguous environments, this does not have to mean that our lives as leaders become necessarily difficult and unhappy.
As Dr Wayne Dyer said, “Many people mistakenly believe that circumstances make a person. They don’t. Instead they reveal him or her. Our circumstances don’t define us.”
If that’s the case, as a leader, how can you maintain your happiness whatever the circumstances?
It starts with recognising that our psychological experience of life is created by our thinking .. and thinking is a voluntary function. Every negative, or positive feeling, is a direct result of a thought but often we don’t recognise this. We have learned to interpret our thoughts as if they were reality. We too readily have a negative thought, see it as reality and then act accordingly rather than recognising it is just a thought, we can pick and choose which thoughts we react to and so choose not ‘running with it’ or letting it upset us. Our thinking is not reality but an attempt to interpret a given situation which in turn creates an emotional response.
How does this impact our happiness? Our level of happiness seems to go up or down with our circumstances but it is not the circumstances themselves that affect our happiness but our interpretation of them. When we recognise this, we can ask ourselves what other interpretations might be possible to provide greater perspective.
Another impact on our happiness is the people that we spend our time with. A British Medical Journal study in 2008 found that a person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and even their friends’ friends’ friends! Each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%. While I am not proposing that you shake up your friend network drastically, it may be worth considering who you spend time with at work and how you talk together. Do you have a trusted colleague that you take coffee breaks with and reinforce each other’s views on how terrible things are and how others should do something about it or do you have a relationship with someone who helps put things in perspective, seems naturally optimistic, and enables you to somehow feel better about your lot after you’ve spent time with them?
A third impact on our happiness is our ability to live in the present moment. While what happened in your past (whether yesterday, a year ago, or ten years ago) contributes to the way you see life today, it is just memory – thoughts running through your mind which you can choose not to give significance to. Similarly, while planning for the future can give hope, direction and purpose, unnecessarily worrying about what may or may not be takes you away from making the best of the present moment. After all, life is nothing more than a series of present moments to experience one after the other. Right now is where life is truly lived. As Omar Khayyam, an influential thinker from the middle ages is believed to have said “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
A study conducted at the University of Rochester found that people who are able to be attentive to the here and now are more likely, relative to the average person, to be happy, optimistic, self-confident, to experience frequent and intense positive emotions, and to feel self-sufficient and competent.
So, the next time you feel yourself getting frustrated or anxious or less happy than usual, what can you do to get back to being happy?
- Invest in a small amount of quiet reflection to consider what thoughts have led you to these feelings. Ask yourself what other interpretations of circumstances could there be. Consider how you might act differently if a more neutral or positive interpretation was given more weight. If you are struggling to see a different perspective, use someone you trust as a sounding board.
- Consider who you have been spending time with. How optimistic and solution focused are they? If you have to work with people who have a negative perspective, how can you challenge their thinking to encourage more possibility? How might you schedule time with other people who tend to be happier while supporting your leadership responsibilities?
- Ask yourself if you have been dwelling unnecessarily in the past or worrying about the future. Remind yourself that you are creating the future by how you choose to spend your time right now. Consider what would be the best use of your time right now to make a positive step in the right direction. Pat yourself on the back for catching yourself being less present focused and doing something about it.
Finally, I’ve taken the liberty of adapting a quote from Marcus Aurelius (my add in italics) to sum up these 3 tips:
“The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, and your friends, therefore guard both accordingly.”
SOURCES:
Carlson, R. “You can be happy no matter what”, 1999, Hodder & Stoughton
Fredrickson, B. L. (2013, July 15). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0033584
Hills, J. “Brain-Savvy Business”, 2016, Head Heart + Brain
Lyubomirsky, S. “The How of Happiness”, 2013, Piatkus.
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