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The Happiness Advantage:
Rewiring a Student's Brain for Success
Thanks to 8 to Great Trainer Debbie Way for sending us a powerful TED video link last week. It explains with scientific research why 8 to Great has such an amazing impact on student performance and staff morale. It's a TED talk on how optimism and 3 daily gratitudes rewire the brain for success. To watch the 15-minute video,
click here . If you'd rather read a 3-minute version, see below...
Harvard Researcher Shawn Achor shares
"The Happy Secret to Better Work" 
We have long (wrongly) assumed that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels. But in fact, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness. A full 90% of your level of long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world.
It's time we reverse the old formula for happiness and success. In the past few years, I've found that most companies and schools follow this formula for success: "If I work harder, I'll be more successful, and if I'm more successful then I'll be happier." That assumption undergirds most of our parenting, educating and managing styles. The problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards.
Every time we have a success we change the goalposts of what success looks like. You got good grades, now you must get better grades to be happy. You hit your sales target, now we're going to change your sales target. If happiness is on the other side of success, your brain never gets there. We think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier. But our brains work in the opposite order. (Happiness must come first)
 When we raise a student's
level of positivity, their brain experiences what we call "A Happiness Advantage." The brain in positive mode performs significantly better than in neutral, negative, or stressed:
- their intelligence rises
- their creativity rises
- their energy levels rise
Meanwhile, when an educator's brain is in positive mode:
- They are 30% more productive
- They are more resilient
- They are less likely to experience burnout
- They are less likely to quit, lowering turnover
In short, when we find a way to become positive in the present, our brains work harder, faster, and more intelligently. Dopamine, which floods into our system when we're positive has two functions: not only does it make us happier, it turns on all the learning centers in our brain, helping us more easily adapt to the world.
The great news is that we can train our brain to become more positive. In just two minutes per day done over 21 days in a row, you can rewire your brain, allowing it to work more optimistically and more successfully.
 In every school and company we worked with in our research, we had them write down 3 new things they were grateful for for 21 days in a row. At the end of the 21 days their brains start to retain the pattern, scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.
By simply doing that, we confirmed the formula of happiness 1st and success 2nd. With a focus on gratitude and hope comes happiness, and from those, we can create a real revolution.
How to Know if Your Students are Losing Hope
(and How to Give It Back to Them)
According to recent Gallup polls, the percentage of students losing hope has increased over the past decade. According to a 2009 poll, only half of American students today are hopeful. The rest do not have the hope they need to succeed. How do we know a student is losing hope? There are 6 statements Gallup used to measure their hope levels:
1) I know I will graduate from high school
2) There is an adult in my life who cares about my future
3) I can think of many ways to get good grades
4) I energetically pursue my goals
5) I can find lots of way around any problem
6) I know I will find a good job after I graduate
Gallup found that as students lose hope they...
- are more likely to stop attending school and eventually drop out
- are more likely to give up when things get hard
- are less engaged and creative
- get lower grades and flunk out more often
- are less likely to eat well or exercise
- are less likely to practice safe sex
- are less likely to live happy lives
- have less compassion for others
Principal Brian Hoover at Nebraska City HS has a beautiful answer for item #2. He has a wall in his faculty lounge with a sheet with every student's name in a box. If there's a yellow dot with initials on it, that means there's a teacher who feels close to that student. Some students have multiple dots. The team focuses at the beginning of the year on finding people who can relate to the students who have none.
Our motto is 8 to Great: Now hope has a process. We teach that hope happens when you have a process. Whether it's for losing weight, improving your golf score, or coaching your marching band, having a process makes all the difference in your mental attitude. 8 to Great gives students a process for feeling good by choosing thoughts like Gratitude for the present and Hope for the future.
The 8 to Great principles have been called "soft skills" for years. It's time to look at the hard facts: When you feel good, good things happen. It's one of the most powerful insights of this millennium. Gratitude, Hope, Happiness. Who'd have thought that helping our students feel good could be so instrumental to their success in the world? Why, the optimists of course!
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Trainings begin at 8:00 a.m. and end at 5:30 p.m. each day. All attendees receive 65 activities for use in the classroom or at work, meet phenomenal people, and upon completion, will be certified to train this program anywhere in the world! 
