{"id":9133,"date":"2012-03-21T09:10:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T16:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=9133"},"modified":"2012-03-25T09:28:43","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T16:28:43","slug":"is-focus-the-key-to-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=9133","title":{"rendered":"Is Focus the Key to Happiness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I really didn\u2019t give much thought to the concept of happiness in the workplace until I was walking through the Phoenix airport and spotted The Harvard Business Review<\/em> (HBR) out of the corner of my eye. Why did it catch my attention? Because here was a big yellow Smiley Face on the front cover (gasp!). Intrigued, I picked up a copy and discovered that the magazine dedicated a robust thirty pages to The Value of Happiness: How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Since I am a Healing Conversationalist with a nerd\u2019s affinity for technology, I continued to ponder the implications of being able to measure the state of happiness using today\u2019s mobile technology and discerning the implications (connecting the dots) through scientific research from neuroscience, psychology, and economics. At the end of the day, the relationship between happiness, focus<\/em>, and ultimately productivity<\/em>, put a twinkle in my eye, so I decided to explore a little further.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, there is quite a bit of interest in the happiness arena with much of the buzz hovering around how we are able to use today\u2019s mobile technology, such as the iPhone<\/em>, to capture real time personal data \u2013 anywhere, anytime. The intriguing part is that these new capabilities are challenging previous assumptions about happiness on both a personal and business level.<\/p>\n

One excellent example of this is a new way of perceiving and measuring happiness is illustrated through a project called Track Your Happiness<\/a><\/em>. It is the brain child of Mathew Killingworth<\/a>, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard University<\/em> who has managed to recruit about 15,000 people in 83 countries to report their emotional states in real time, using devices that they carry with them every day.\u201d Why is this important? According to Harvard professor, Daniel Gilbert<\/a>, the advantage of this approach is that instead of asking the decades old question \u201cWhat makes people happy?\u201d they are now able to \u201cdiscern when people are happy, and what they are doing at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

What I find fascinating is that their preliminary findings indicate that \u201cno matter what people are doing, they are much less happy when their minds are wandering than when their minds are focused.\u201d (Hmm, if you are curious about the amount of time people\u2019s minds wander during the day … including work … the research-based answer is about 50% the time). So, it only stands to reason, that if we can train ourselves to focus more, we will be happier (yes!), and more productive (yes!) … because research also shows that happy employees are more productive employees.<\/p>\n

To learn how to become more focused during the work day, I turned my attention to the work of Paul Hammerness<\/a>, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School<\/em> and Margaret Moore<\/a>, co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital<\/em>, Belmont, MA.<\/p>\n

In their article Train Your Brain to Focus<\/em>, these two well-known practitioners have come up with three great techniques to help your brain learn to ignore distractions, and in turn, providing the benefit of making you more focused, creative, and productive. Here are their suggestions, for your consideration as presented in the article:<\/p>\n

#1: Tame your frenzy<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Frenzy is an emotional state, a feeling of being a little (or a lot) out of control. It is often underpinned by anxiety, sadness, anger, and related emotions. Emotions are processed by the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped brain structure. It responds powerfully to negative emotions, which are regarded as signals of threat. Functional brain imaging has shown that activation of the amygdala by negative emotions interferes with the brain’s ability to solve problems or do other cognitive work. Positive emotions and thoughts do the opposite \u2014 they improve the brain’s executive function, and so help open the door to creative and strategic thinking.<\/p>\n