Happiness and Success

Shawn Achor’s recent book ‘Before Happiness’ argues the ‘success first, happiness second’ formula is out dated and goes against neuro science and positive psychology. Instead Achor believes that ‘happiness is the precursor to success, not the other way around”. Apparently if parents / teachers can increase levels of happiness in young people, teaching them how to be more optimistic and manage stress in a positive way, then it is a faster route to success than the ‘grit and dedication’ method so often promoted. ‘Raising happiness increases success, but increasing success does not always have an impact upon happiness’.

This seems to be in direct contrast to Duckworths arguments on grit (see my previous blog), and Syed’s firm belief in the 10,000 hours of dedicated practice – these two firmly believe the ends justify the means. The ‘means’ being hours of dedicated practice of things that are hard, things that are sometimes boring, things that you cannot do in order to improve; the ends being Olympic champion (in the case of Syed), or some other high level success. Duckworth and Syed are both advocates of the boring, the difficult and the mental struggle to over come these in order to realize the long term good.

So which is better? The ‘happiness first and everything else will follow’ ethos certainly seems to be more preferable; and yet there is something that appeals to ones common sense with the mantra of ‘hard work will get you places’.

In my mind Virtue ethics seems to embody both, offering a middle ground – it asks that you simply practice being good and then you will naturally veer towards eudaimonia (happiness or flourishing). This will lead you to having to choose far less often, as the correct moral choices will become natural to you. This in turn makes you happier / more eudaimonic, thus making it easier to chose, therefore requiring less ‘practice’ at being moral… and so on and so forth. In virtue ethics the means and the ends seem to become enmeshed with one another and flourishing/ happiness is as much a part of the means as it is the ends once you have embarked upon the practice of Virtue.

Rebecca Mace

For more about virtue ethics
http://www.iep.utm.edu/virtue/

Image: the lottery winner © Peter Baron