High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 109: How to Find Happiness

Episode Date: May 20, 2017

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” William James, psychologist High performers understand that happiness is a choice. They realize happiness doesn’t come from what they do or accomplish, it comes from a decision. High performers choose to focus on the 3 Ps of Happiness – pleasure, passion and their higher purpose. Affirmation this Week: I choose happiness. I focus on what I love to, my passion, and my higher purpose.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Dr. Sindra Kampoff today for High Performance Mindset on The Country Club. Good morning, Sindra. Good morning. It's great to be here. Let's talk today about our topic, which is a sound guy's nightmare right here. The P's. P's.

The T's are tough too, but the poppin' P's on a microphone are always a little bit tough. The three P's of happiness is where we're starting, and we're going to start with a quote. By William James. He said, the greatest discovery of any generation is that we can change our life by changing our attitude. Nice. All right. So I love that quote just because it really does say it all right there. Just how many times you have to be beaten over the head with it before you start believing it is the issue. So you have a good example to share with us.

I have a good example. So a few years ago, I heard the CEO of Zappos.com, Tony Heash, speak a few years ago. And if you don't know what Zappos is, it's an online realtor that does over a billion dollars in sales. But they weren't always successful and it didn't come without growing pains. For example, when they first started Zappos, they were using a company to fulfill kind of their inventory and delivering their inventory to customers. But their customers weren't happy. They were really struggling.

And so Tony realized that he was really outsourcing what was their key competency, their customer service. And in his book called Delivering Happiness, it was a New York Times bestselling book, he described kind of the aha moment where he decided to make happiness his business model. And as a result, he opened up his own warehouse, started policies that customers loved, like free shipping, free returns, a 365 day return policy. And he actually started running his company with the idea of happiness in mind. And what he did is he used three types of happiness to like guide his company and guide the culture. The three P's were this, pleasure, passion, and a higher purpose. And so he saw how companies with a higher sense of purpose outperformed those who didn't have a purpose. And he believed that by increasing the happiness of those around him,

that he would also increase the happiness of his customers. And it worked. So Zappos was named by Fortune magazine as the best company to work for. And then about seven years later was acquired by Amazon and valued at over $1.2 billion. Nice. I love that we're relating today's topic to business and companies and large groups of people that need to work together, which is a good way to look at a topic like this, and finding the three Ps of happiness. What do you mean by all of this?

So I think Tony was onto something. He knew that happiness was a powerful model for really achieving success. And so he incorporated these three types of happiness, pleasure, passion, and higher purpose into Zappos. All right. So you say happiness is a choice. And I've said this to my kids before, too. And of course, I'm like, hey, pot, I'm calling the kettle black. You know, you got to catch yourself on this step once in a while, right? But happiness is a choice. What do you mean by that? So this is what I mean. It's really a choice that we make every day, regardless of the circumstances or regardless of the company we work for, the team that we play for.

It's really a result of not what we do or accomplish, right? So you might have heard that story and heard the $1.2 billion. That really wasn't my point. My point was that companies and leaders and teams and even families and people who work together, they perform higher. So happiness comes from our perspective by recognizing and appreciating really what we have. And today what we're talking about is focusing on these three Ps to be more happy. And so what kind of benefits come out of choosing happiness?

You know, there's a lot and I could talk for many, many minutes on them. But kind of in general, we know that happier people are more energetic, they're more creative, they're more gritty. So they're more committed to their goals and their dreams and they make better teammates. And we also know that happier people live longer and they stay more resilient in the face of adversity. So some of the reasons why, you know, for the next couple minutes, it's important that you listen because it's kind of like, okay, here's all the things that could happen for me if I work to be more happy. All right, let's talk about the first P. Okay, so the first P is pleasure.

And this is kind of what I mean. So I'm going to take it kind of at an individual level, and then we're going to talk about how it might mean, what it might mean for you as a leader or a manager. And so the first P is to really follow what you love and to follow what gives you joy or pleasure. And what we can do is we can find kind of everyday joys, things that we're grateful for. Because what's always wrong is always there. And so is what's right. It's really what we decide to focus on. And sometimes we just have to remind ourselves what we love to do and remind ourselves why we do it and what comes, what pleasure comes from that.

Okay. Second P. The second P is passion, because what you focus on grows. So if you focus on all the difficulties at work or practice or your family, the negativity is going to grow. And so if you focus on kind of living and following your passion every day, then you show up differently. So consider what kind of what you can do daily to follow your passion or to kind of cultivate that passion. How can you follow what you're more passionate about? Now, the third P is like higher purpose. Yes. Yeah, higher purpose. And a few weeks ago, we were actually talking quite a bit about purpose.

But, you know, our purpose gives us a meaning, deeper meaning into our lives and why we're here. And one of the things that Tony did was he realized that people work harder and they perform better when they're committed to something bigger than themselves. And so when our purpose is larger than ourselves, that's when we really become the best kind of version of ourselves. So in other words, we all want to contribute to the world to make it a better place. And your purpose is unique to you. So thinking about what do you do and how does that connect to a higher purpose? Or how do you help others? How do you serve others just by what you do and how you do it? And there's a lot of individuality in those three Ps that we just talked about. But we also mentioned that we can apply this to leaders, business leaders, managers, teams, larger groups of people.

How does this actually apply and how do you make it work? So if I would apply it to a team or a business, I'd say, okay, first is the pleasure. How is your team having fun? How are they enjoying what they're doing? And how can you either point that out or how can you make it more fun? How can you help them focus on their passions and what do they love to do? And what is it about their job that they love? And then the P, higher purpose. How

can you all work together towards something bigger, come together so that you kind of see the bigger reason why you're doing what you're doing? So if anybody has any questions about that, I'd love for people to reach out to me and I can give you some more specific details. If you're a manager or a business owner and you're thinking, I think this might be something that obviously is going to be positive for me and my employees or my teams, get in touch with Sindra. We like to kind of take that whole topic today, and I know it's a lot to wrap your brain around at one time,

but kind of condense it into a summarized version for today, and what is that? So high performers, those who are working to reach their greater potential, they understand that happiness is a choice, and they realize happiness doesn't come from what they do or accomplish. It comes from a decision. And they choose to focus on the three Ps, pleasure, passion, and a higher purpose. Awesome.

And an affirmation to wrap up with this week. I choose happiness. I follow my pleasure, my passion, and my higher purpose. Excellent. That's a good one. Now, contact info. You mentioned if you have any questions, we can get in touch. I know there are several ways to do

that via social media and the website. How do we do it? You can head over to DrCindra.com and there's a contact form there. You can fill that out or I'm also always on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. All right. The podcasts are out there. I've been listening to those. I'm letting a couple

more build up. My long runs are so much longer now that I can't just listen to one because it's not long enough. So I need to let two or three of them build up so I can listen for the whole entire run. But I've been doing that. They're also very helpful. And I learned some things while I'm out there I interviewed Brett Bartholomew. He's just launched a book called Conscious Coaching, and it's really for leaders who want to be better at what they do. It's really good. All right. The podcast, by the way, is called the same thing, High Performance Mindset, as it is here on The Country Club every Monday. Dr. Cindra Kampoff with us today. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We'll see you next week.

Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.