Marcus Buckinghams’ new book has some fascinating insights and I was fortunate to attend his Sydney event recently and hear from Marcus directly about his work in the area of understanding “what the happiest and most successful women do differently”.
As a self-professed data nerd, Marcus relies heavily on factual data gathered over long periods of time. His initial study stemmed from his unearthing of the USGSS survey which was conducted over 40 years to determine what had happened to men and women’s self reported happiness.
Interestingly even with all the gains women have made during this time it is the men’s levels of happiness that has increased yet women’s has decreased gradually during this time.
No matter which large scale study, including the International Social Survey, and the Monitoring the Future Survey, they all showed that as GDP increases, women’s comparative satisfaction and happiness goes down relative to men’s. Australia is included in some of the surveys that exist.
Marcus then went on to study those women whose ‘subjective well-being’, ( a psychology term), was highest in order to learn from them.
To qualify women had to answer “everyday” for 4 out of 5 of these questions.
How often do you:
- Do things you really like to do?
- Feel positive anticipation before starting your day?
- Get so involved in what you are doing, that you lose track of time?
- Feel invigorated ahead of a long and busy day?
- Feel an emotional high in your life?
How did you answer these questions?
From the surveys and studies Marcus then sets out to test ten Myths:
- Women’s happiness would have increased over the last 40 years.
- Women get happier as they get older.
No, the opposite happens. - Most men think men should be the primary breadwinners.
No, whatever you think, it is NOT gender related. - At work women are relegated to lower level roles.
In supervisory roles women in Australia are 50:50, however it does of course drop off significantly the higher up you go. - Women would prefer to work for women.
No, not necessarily. - More free time would make women less stressed.
While men’s subjective well-being increases by 8% for every additional hour of free time, women’s doesn’t change at all. - Having children makes people happier.
The data says subjective well-being is lower amongst people with kids. While kids add more meaning and purpose to your life, apparently they don’t make you happier than those without kids. - Kids want more time with their working mums.
No, they actually want their working mums to be less stressed. - Women are good at multi-tasking.
No, we’re all poor at it. It just divides our attention. - Women do more housework than men.
This IS true!
So where does this leave us?
Well according to Marcus:
- Women have more domains in which they’re supposed to excel.
- Women have an abundance of choice and choice is stressful. No choice is bad but too much choice is overwhelming. The need to make the right choices causes the stress.
- Men are becoming more like women in their beliefs and behaviours so they will eventually suffer the same issues.
So back to the women who answered 4 out 5 “everyday” for the 5 questions posed earlier. What metaphors do they ditch?
- They don’t multi-task
- They don’t juggle ?_ juggling keeps everything at bay, away. It doesn’t draw anything in!
- Don’t strive for Balance. Why?
- It’s difficult to strike, and only serves one thing well and leaves everything else sloshing around;
- Balance is fundamentally a stationary state. (different if inner balance).
So Marcus coined the phrase, which I particularly responded to, of Catch-and-Cradle.
To live the strongest life, he says, moments matter the most. We are all wired to draw strength from different moments in life. Find those moments that invigorate you and deliberately imbalance your life toward them.
It is about ATTENTION NOT INTENTION.
Find your strongest life by starting with an inkling. Build a passion out of your inklings, rather than trying to follow a passion, as yet discovered.
Your strongest life is what you choose to pay attention to. So amplify those moments…
Be deliberate
Be creative
Celebrate them
Catch and Cradle the invigorating moments deliberately. Include them creatively and celebrate them, hold them up and highlight them in your life.
So, that’s what sets the happiest women apart from the rest. Are you one of them?
Well now maybe you have some tips on what else to do. I know I love the concept of deliberately and pro-actively imbalancing my life toward what invigorates me, and I intend to do even more of it from now on!
