Without question, happiness is a competitive advantage. Happiness and positive psychology expert Shawn Achor talked about his research of (mostly unhappy) Harvard students.

Achor’s research indicates that only ten percent of our happiness is shaped by our external world; ninety percent is influenced by our internal perspective. In studying high-achieving Harvard students, Achor realized that one common mistake we make is thinking that achieving our goals (be it losing ten pounds or getting a promotion) will make us happier. This doesn’t work because once we’ve accomplished our goal, the target moves and we find ourselves dissatisfied again. We need to flip the formula around – create happiness here and now because that is what will help us achieve our goals. Organizations are uniquely positioned to intervene on their workers’ behalf to make them happier and the result will be more productive, more resilient and, yes, happier, employees.  Here is Happiness As A Competitive Advantage:

Making Happiness a Competitive Advantage for Your Organization

Simply put, happy employees perform better. Studies show that increased employee well-being results in increased performance and productivity for employees’ companies or organizations, along with positive benefits for the individual employees. It’s a win-win, if the company knows how to unleash this powerful competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage can be achieved due to cost advantages or by differentiation of any product or service in natural resources, people, patents, brand equity and reputation, or by processes that add unique and significant value to customers’ lives—advantages that can’t easily be duplicated by competitors. And, by adding significant value to clients’ lives that helps them confront and conquer their problems, client loyalty – and the positive “word of mouth” marketing and repeat business that it engenders – is enhanced. At Zappos, for example, 75% of orders are from repeat customers. At Amazon, in a 1999 letter to shareholders, the percentage of orders placed by repeat customers was 73%.

Is Pleasure Happiness?

Now many people think of happiness as just a series of pleasures—fun, parties, peak experiences, our favorite food and drink, sex, and even drugs. But, if we are honest with ourselves, the feelings of happiness we feel during these pleasures end soon after the activity ends. When the pleasure ends, even the most ecstasy-producing pleasures, our feelings of happiness end soon after. These are really only shortcuts to happiness—easy to do—but they only last often for minutes or hours—very short-term in duration. In fact, recently, neuroscientists in their study of brain function have located our happiness center: the left pre-frontal cortex—and are working to ways to just stimulate that area directly—and skip all the pleasures—so we can feel instantly happy. But even this strategy of happiness being a left-brainer still only generates short-lasting, short-term feelings of joy.

We all need pleasures in our lives, otherwise, life would just be an unending series of Wednesdays. But this type of short-term pleasure is not what we mean when we say, “I just want to be happy.” And it is not what Aristotle meant when he said: “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”  Nor is it what the Dalai Lama meant when he said: “The very motion of our life is towards happiness.” And it is most definitely not what we wish for our children when we say “I just want them to be happy.”

Instead, all of these familiar and popular pleasures are really just appetizers—just short-term “shortcuts” to happiness that we all love—but that don’t last and that don’t fill our need to contribute—to matter.

For real, sustainable levels of happiness and fulfillment, we need to move beyond a short-term often myopic focus on only the easy pleasures—keep them in our lives, but within limits—to something more lasting and more meaningful.

Getting serious about happiness is one of those best paths that companies and organizations can choose to follow to help each employee achieve the highest levels of emotional well-being possible—and to allow their company to reap the substantial benefits from a happier employee base.

And, the last decade and more of positive psychology research into happiness and how to achieve and sustain it in our lives has illuminated some facts. First, the serious pursuit of happiness is an active, not a passive pursuit. The famous bluebird of happiness may alight on our shoulder every once in awhile and bless us with joy, but we don’t have to passively wait for this chance occurrence. Instead, we can take positive action to lastingly increase our levels of happiness and well-being. Second, since approximately 50% of our happiness potential is predetermined at birth by our genetic inheritance (this has been proven by over 100 studies involving identical twins), and another 10% is due to our current environment and our upbringing, we have the remaining 40% of our potential that we can positively affect by intentionally and consciously thinking, acting, and living our lives in certain proven ways—and by doing so more frequently both at home and at work.

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