The Reverse Gap - Growth Strategy

Picture this: You're at work, full of energy and motivation, excelling at your tasks. The secret to this peak performance? Happiness. Beyond just skill or luck, happiness significantly influences our performance in all life aspects. We'll explore systems to practically increase happiness. Your Positive Intelligence (PQ), the ratio of positive to negative thoughts, greatly affects your day. Studies reveal a higher PQ leads to better performance. For instance, happier students perform better in exams, and employees with a best friend at work are seven times more engaged, as happiness boosts productivity and goal achievement.

So many of us are trained to buy into a big lie and that lie is the if-then trap of happiness. Sri Kumar, one of the world's foremost MBA professors and a teacher online in the world Kellogg London business school Columbia. He talks about why happiness is one of the most important things that you bring to work. It's probably fair to say that in some way a vision of our entire life is a quest to be happy. The problem is we go about being happy the wrong way. We think that we will be happy if something happens or if we get something like a higher pay, a bigger house, will become married or have children or children do well then will be happy. This is what I call the if-then model.

The If-Then Trap

Many of us fall into the trap of believing happiness comes from external achievements, a misconception termed the if-then model. Sri Kumar, a renowned MBA professor, emphasizes the crucial role of happiness at work, suggesting our life's quest might be the pursuit of happiness. Yet, we often chase it mistakenly through conditions like higher pay, a bigger house, marriage, or children's success, thinking these will make us happy. However, when we achieve these desires, the joy is fleeting, and they quickly blend into our life's background. Because it's like chasing the horizon. As soon as you get there, the line extends beyond you. Rather there's a better way, so what's the solution? This cycle demonstrates the flaw in the if-then model.

Think back on your own life when confronted with the scene of a spectacular beauty that took you outside of yourself to a serene place. Perhaps the ocean or a beautiful valley or a mountain top covered in ice or a rainbow. You are content and happy. Do you remember why that happened? That happened because you accepted the world exactly as it was. You didn't say you that's a beautiful rainbow, but it's to one side. You said it is wonderful!

The solution is to embrace the idea of being happy in the now, to untangle your happiness with your wealth, with your goals, with your income? There's a brilliant exercise you can do to help you stop doing that. Most of us think about our lives in terms of a gap, in terms of where we are today and where we want to be, we tell ourselves I will be happy when I get that. When I grow my team to that size, get that man or woman we think of our future and attach happiness to that future. This breaks your flow. It removes you from moving to this state of bending reality.

The Reverse Gap Method

I want you to think of all that you've achieved. What would be the changes that happened in your health or well-being? What are the lessons that you gained? How have you improved as an individual from who you were five years ago? Pay attention to that growth. Be conscious about it because when we look at the reverse gap particularly in our careers, because our careers are always moving forward, you start to understand that you can be happy in the now. So in short, have a vision for the future. But when it comes to happiness, don't tie your happiness to your future. Tie your happiness to how far you've come from the man or woman you were in the past.

I want you to start making a list in your diary. Call this page the reverse gap and start writing down. Write all the ideas and things that have come into your life. This list is going to instantly increase your levels of happiness. Take 5 minutes to finish this exercise. This list is going to be truly important for you. I want you to hold on to this every time you feel sad, every time you feel fearful about a goal, every time you feel bored or stressed or anxious. Remember this list and feel free to add to it. Stick it on your mirror if you have to. Your reverse gap tells you just how far you've come and how much you're growing as an individual. Hold on to this piece of paper. It's going to be a big part of your life.

The key ideas that we discussed are :

• Higher your PQ the better you perform.
• Avoid the trap of if-then model of happiness. Tying happiness to your future goals breaks your flow.
• Implement Reverse Gap Growth strategy to increase your PQ.

Let the Vision for The Future and Happiness in The Now bring you to the state of existence where magic happens!

Exercise: Take 5 minutes to journal about your reverse gap list.