Who would have thought that Johnnie Walker was interested in studying the impact of joy on progress?
Yet in their clip the famous Scotch distiller illustrates to us that there is more to success than just hard work – happiness plays a big role too. As part of their Joy Will Take You Further campaign, Johnnie Walker undertook a series of Joynomics experiments, which looked at the impact that happiness had on performance.
Dr. Matt Killingsworth is a psychologist and scientist, who studies the nature and causes of human happiness, and was asked by Johnnie Walker to feature in the campaign. This particular clip shows a group of golfers at a driving range practising their swings in front of coaches. In the first part, the coaches are told to negatively prime their golfers. In the second part, the reverse was done. What Killingsworth discovered from this experiment was that verbal encouragement can be the key to helping people succeed. After receiving positive feedback from their coaches, all the golfers increased their accuracy on average by 45% compared with when they were provided neutral or negative feedback.
Many of us have been led to believe that if you work hard you will succeed, and when you succeed you will be happy. Yet we know this is not entirely true. Killingsworth believes that happiness can help you achieve your goals and makes success more likely because happy people are more productive, resilient, courageous and determined.
The Johnnie Walker clip reminds us of the importance of having people around, who provide positive encouragement to further drive our beliefs that we can succeed, and as a result we will be more likely to do so.
So how are you encouraging your family, friends and co-workers to “Keep Walking” in the pursuit of their goals?
Please note: you don’t have to be a whisky drinker or golfer to work out that happiness will take you further.