(If you want to hear Lori read the story click)here

 

What happens when you tie a crunchy carrot on the end of a string lashed to a stick suspended ten inches in front of a donkey's mouth?

 

The donkey keeps going. But he is always hungry.

 

Shawn Achor gave a Ted Talk about the confusion between success as a prerequisite to happiness, and happiness as a catalyst to success. He tells a story about his five year old sister Amy falling off the top of a bunk bed. In a flash of big brotherly genius Shawn informs her that she must be a unicorn, since she landed on all fours. For a moment she holds in the balance the choice between screaming in pain and indignation, vs redefining herself as a mythical animal. She chose the latter and pranced back up on the bed. 

 

Our culture often places happiness on the far side of success, much like an ever retreating carrot. If we get into an elite college, then we will be happy. But when we are admitted we substitute a new goal of graduation. After we achieve that we trade happiness for dissatisfaction, until we achieve the next goal of a good job. Then we get the job but we are unhappy until we get a promotion. 

 

The speaker identifies five strategies that are based in research that grab happiness from the distant horizon and plunk it within reach: gratitude, reflection, exercise, meditation and kindness. Each of them enrich marriage as well.

 

Maybe we would all be less hungry. 

 

Ted Talk