Micro Class: Success: 3 = 75%

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on success. The three variables that lead to 75% of success. It's inspired by broadcasting happiness. By Michelle Guiwen. Michelle Guiwen is a former CBS News anchor turned positive psychology researcher who happens to be married to Sean Acor, another leading positive psychologist. And together they've worked with basically a third of the Fortune 100 big businesses. And what they've learned is, among other things, that There are essentially three variables that lead to 75% of success. That's a lot. Here they are. The first one is optimism. Second one is engagement. And the third one is basically social support. Let's talk about them each briefly. Optimism. Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania, who wrote Learned Optimism, check out the note on that. Is one of Michel's mentors. He basically walked us through the science of how to develop our optimism. But the basic aspects of optimism we want to pay attention to right now are we think our future is going to be better and we think we can do something about it. Our behavior is going to drive it. The pessimist thinks the future is going to be negative, going to be worse, and there's nothing they can do. Yep, sad face, right? Nothing I do is going to make life better. The optimist believes future will be better and believes their behavior will be the reason their future will be better. And of course, we know that optimism predicts all the things you want in your life. It's very important to have a rational optimism, which we're going to talk about soon. The second facet is engagement. Basic idea here is that when this person experiences stress. Yikes. Something negative, Right. That's challenging. They don't see it as negative. They see it as a fueling opportunity to get a little bit better. They tell a better story about stress than people who are disengaged and get burned out. Third facet is support. And the basic idea here is really cool. When we think of support, we often think of, well, how much support did the person get? The office? That's what's going to lead to success. They need to get a lot of support. But what's interesting is the research shows that it's the amount of support you give. Are you a work altruist? Do you give support to people? That is more important than getting support. Not that getting support is bad, but you want to focus on giving support, be engaged. Right. Tell good stories around the stress, see it as fuel rather than some unnecessary bad thing in your life. And then know that your future is going to be better because you are going to do what needs to get done. Those are the three variables that Michelle and Sean tell us lead to 75% of success. So if you are hiring people, we all look at, you know, grades and GPAs and scores and technical skills, which are obviously relevant to a degree, but this is way more relevant. Do your candidates, do your team members demonstrate this? As a leader in an organization, it's our responsibility to cultivate this and to create a culture of positivity and optimism, engagement, support, etc. What can you do to dial in and what are you doing really well? Celebrate that. Michelle talks about progress, how important it is to constantly celebrate progress. What are you doing really, really well right now in these areas and what can you use? A little work. Get on that. Have fun. Let's create some more success. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me two basic things. One our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.