I heard that quote when discussing with friends about one of my favourite topics, happiness. It was a reaction to me saying that everyone on earth wants to be happy, a statement I truly believe.

This reply made me understand that happiness is an umbrella term and that people define it very differently.

My definition of happiness

Happiness is for me a state of mind, it cannot be correlated to the immediate feel good moments that you have when being tipsy, when buying a new car or when receiving money.

And that’s the main difficulty. We as humans are mainly focused on immediate satisfaction instead of on the long-term effect. Why? Because long-term benefits are almost impossible to measure. Buying a new car is something tangible, making it therefore easy to think that it could make you happy. Studies, like the 1978 study by the psychologist Philip Brickman, have shown, however, that tangibles things don’t have any influence on your long-term happiness level.

Of course you can have a big failure at work, you can lose something or someone very important, and that’ll make you angry, sad or you will feel hurt. But that’s a temporary feeling, at the end, your happiness level should not be affected.

Be positive

Reaching happiness is for everyone different. There’s no perfect recipe that one can follow to be happy.

In my case, the most important aspect is to have a positive mindset.

Happiness is a state of mind, therefore, if your mind is focused on the positive aspects of every situation you encounter, you will not be distracted by negative thoughts that could bring you down.

This is a difficult mental exercise. We tend to victimise easily, think negatively, blame others, because as a matter of fact, this is the most easy path for your brain.

But you need to build a new path in your brain, and make of this path a highway.

I’m practising “positive thinking” for more than 5 years now and the results are great. Like every exercise, the more you practice, the easier it becomes. You begin to see the world in a more positive way, you are more optimistic about your life and the world, you dare to deal with every difficult situations, etc.

One of the best result I had with being positive is that I now see every problem in my professional and personal life as a challenge to learn and to grow. So I don’t say “I’ve a problem”, I say “I’ve an exciting challenge”.

But that’s not all

Being positive is the first step but not the only one. I also feel the need to work on the following aspects in order to be truly happy, and being positive helps in maintaining these aspects alive and kicking.

• Love of family and friends. You need people that are close to you. People with whom you can be yourself, with whom you can share your funniest and saddest moments, your ambitions and your fears, your successes and your failures. Friends that “can look right through you and still enjoy the view” (quote derived from the book QBQ by John Miller).
• Fulfilment. At work and at home, you need fulfilment. Every person can define fulfilment in his own way, but you need to think about it and work towards? it. In my case, I define fulfilment by being able to work on challenging projects where I can constantly learn and help others. In other words, I define it by my current personal growth potential and the way I can inspire others.
• You need to feel safe, on health and financial issues. If you are strongly suffering on these issues, it will absorb all your energy. Of course, you will struggle with these aspects in your life, but it’s important to work on them with a positive mindset.
• Helping others. The feeling of helping others is one of the best feelings you can have. It doesn’t necessary mean that you need to give money to people in need, it can be helping the old ladies with the groceries, keeping the door of the tram open for someone who wants to catch it, sharing your knowledge with newbies, etc. When your focus is not on yourself but on others, you will reach a very high level of satisfaction (more in one of my future articles).

Is happiness overrated? Well it depends on how you define it. If you define it as a pursuit of “constant feel good moments with no life troubles at all”, then yes. Overrated, impossible and frustrating.

If it’s defined as a state of mind based on a positive attitude, then it’s feasible and satisfying. If fact, you can call it like you want, it doesn’t matter. What matters the most is the understanding that these exercises could improve your wellbeing and your life satisfaction, and therefore, the life of the people around you.

So, I feared that I wouldn’t find my place in the business world. I feared that I would have to put my values – which are based on helping others, empathy and happiness – aside to fit in this corporate world. But I was wrong…

The new adventure

Until last year, I combined working in the academic world (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) with volunteering for my own non-profit organisation (Edukado). Both of those worlds aren’t focused on profit:

• At the Vrije Universiteit Brussel knowledge is being shared with the world for free, as a way to help science.
• At Edukado we are helping locals of developing countries and Belgian students to build their own educational project and have a blast.

So, when I started with Transformactive, my biggest fear was that I wouldn’t be able to do what motivates me: inspiring and helping others.

The corporate world is changing

I realised, however, that the corporate world is changing, that it doesn’t only focus on profit anymore.

Whereas in the beginning, our ancestors’ main job was to hunt to survive, many of us now have the luxury to work without constantly feeling the survival pressure.

Like always, evolution is playing a role. The management model of most of the big corporates comes from a model derived from the industrial revolution. And after the different world wars, our countries had suffered a lot and a very stiff and hierarchical corporate management model was necessary to build wealth as fast as possible.

But this model is collapsing. With the fourth industrial revolution going on, we now have the luxury to think about wellbeing, happiness, fulfilment, grow, etc. The companies that don’t take that into account, suffer from a high turnover. And that changes everything.

A positive change

More and more companies are focussing on their employees’ well-being in order to decrease the high level of turnover that many of them are facing. Google is a perfect example, with a different corporate culture where they have staff working on keeping all employees happy to maintain productivity.

New companies are even rising without vertical management anymore. A lot of small companies or start-ups, but also a specific department of 400 staff members at Engie-Electrabel to name one, are opting for the “TEAL-model”.

This TEAL-model was introduced by Frederic Laloux in his book Reinventing Organizations. His model focuses on self-management and on bringing “all of who we are” at work, instead of just our “professional” self.

In my future articles, I will go more deeply into the TEAL-model and on the powerful idea of “giving to others” as one of the best way to have a healthy company.

The idea that I had about the corporate world is therefore old-fashioned. With the new types of companies that are rising everywhere, I’m very optimistic about the changes that will take place in our world, switching from the old stiff corporate culture to a much more agile structure, with the employees’ wellbeing as one of the main goals. Off course, it’ll be challenging to apply these changes to big companies with lot of employees, but I’m very curious as I’m convinced that this is the future. To be followed…

Norman Vincent Peale

I’m sure you know the feeling when someone criticises your work: your ego is hurt, you get defensive — or even aggressive — and try to prove by all means that you were right.

Most of the time, you are even angry at that person and conclude that he did not understand what you meant.

I will not deny that accepting criticism is difficult. It is, however, one of the best way to grow. Indeed, even if compliments and praises provide you feel-good sensations and boost your ego, they are not really instructive.

Criticism, on the other hand, if constructive and truthful, provides you with very accurate feedback on mistakes you made. As commonly known, you learn the most from your mistakes, and facing criticism is the best way to understand those mistakes.

It takes guts to give constructive criticism

You should realise that if your good friends or acquaintances criticise your work, it is for your own good, as they don’t win anything by risking upsetting you.

These honest people are willing to tell you the truth, allowing you to grow, instead of merely praising you so that you will like them in return. Such people are rare, so if you find them, keep them close, as they will be very important for your personal growth.

Be aware that you will also meet people that may want to harm you, so it’s important that you filter the constructive criticism — even if given in a disagreeable way — and just don’t pay too much attention to the rest.

How to handle criticisms in 6 steps

1. In my case, I always start from the mindset that the one who is criticising me is doing it with the best intentions.
2. That’s an important attitude that will allow you to listen to the criticism, which is the second step. In order words, don’t react! Don’t start to argue. Just listen.
3. The third step is to avoid taking everything that is told personally. This is a very difficult step, as it requires that you look at your work from an external point of view. This will help you to understand that the criticism is in fact not aimed at you, but at your work. Remember: your past work is done, you cannot change it anymore. However, you can improve it for the future, and as a matter of consequence improve yourself. The only way to do that is by accepting the added value of the criticism to your work.
4. Next, understand this added value by asking questions about the criticism. This will show your critic that you value her opinion, which is important for future collaboration. Furthermore, it helps you to dig deeper and uncover ways to improve even further.
5. The fifth step is a very important one: express your gratitude. The person providing you feedback is spending his time on you. You can learn and grow thanks to her, so thank her and mean it. She will appreciate it and feel at ease to do it more often.
6. Finally, learn from it. You don’t have to accept all criticism, everyone has his or her own opinion and it’s up to you to decide what are the take-aways. However, by applying the previous steps, you will be able to drop your ego low enough to be (almost) objective about the criticism on your work.

The next time someone criticises your work, apply these 6 steps and pay attention to your feelings. You will notice that you will feel better once you deal with criticism in a calm and objective way. This will help you to reach the stage where you will gladly ask to be criticised without beating around the bush. Believe me, you will grow faster than you can ever imagine!