Giving, philanthropy, humanitarian & performing altruistic acts boosts our performance levels.

A long line of research including a recent study of over 2000 people showed that acts of altruism decreased stress & strongly contributed to enhanced mental health. So if you want to be healthier, happier and have less stress… give.

There was a recent study of 46 people who were all given $20. Half were asked to spend the money on themselves, yet the other half was asked to spend the money on other people, maybe give it to charity; take someone deserved out to lunch or just spend it on an experience for someone else. This study showed that the people that spent it on themselves were not as happy as the ones that gave to others.

What this study shows is that when we give, this ignites our self worth to humanity and connects our heart, which in turn allows us to feel good about the act and about ourselves.

Bob Buford, author of Half Time talks about the difference between success & significance. He talks about how most people look at success as a fatter wallet, and the possession of materialistic stuff. He then speaks about the importance of significance and how some of us have a half time in our lives where we turn our focus from success to significance, which is, to make a difference in others lives.

Doing altruistic or significant acts boosts our happiness and performance levels as we gain stimulation and a sense of achievement within the act of giving.

My wife and I started a non-for-profit Foundation recently, working with the true poorest of the poor. Most people think they know who the poorest of the poor is but the reality is that the poorest people in the world are the children living with a disability in developing worlds, as they are even outcasts from their own families.

What we have found is that even the local community in the villages where we are working, have become more driven and motivated from seeing that we are helping, thus they have been inspired to help as well.

Altruistic acts are not necessarily starting a Foundation, but it can be as simple as opening the door for someone else, shouting someone to lunch or one of my favourites is when I drive through McDonalds with my kids, we pay for the cars meal behind us, we are all so excited about doing this that it boosts our energy and happiness levels.

What are you doing right now within your teams to ignite them to think about adding value to others… thus boosting high performance within your bottom line!

We are seeing a shift towards a push of an inclusive working environment and you need to be on board!

There are three main areas of inclusion where we need to close the gap, and these are: Disability Inclusion, Social Inclusion and Cultural Inclusion. I’ve recently attended a number of conferences about people living with a disability entering inter the workforce, so we are going to focus on this.

20% of the world’s population lives with a disability. That’s 850 Million people, or 4 million people in Australia. Yet 88% of disabilities are invisible. People with a disability have a disposable income of approximately $26 billion per annum, so chances are right now your workplace your customers, your shareholders and your suppliers will have people that live with a disability.

Disability inclusion is everyone’s responsibility; and the benefits it can has in our workplaces are just huge. Research has shown that 52% of households pay more attention to advertising messages featuring people with a disability than people without

98% of employees living with a disability, rate average or better in work safety, 90% of people with a disability rated average or better on job performance and 86% of people with a disability rated average or better on attendance

I shared recently about Adversarial Growth, meaning that through our most difficult of times can ignite some of the greatest growth periods of our lives. So people that live with a disability can have more determination and clarity of purpose than others.

So are YOU tapping into a motivated, inspiring and talented pool of people that live with a disability and reaping the rewards??? Businesses today have to welcome a diverse customer and employee base and are being more appealing to investors with Corporate Social Responsibility. A culture of inclusion in your workplace leaves your organisation well placed to respond innovatively to the demands of Australia’s diverse market.

Yet still today among the OECD countries, Australia is ranked 13 out of 19 in employment rates for all people living with a disability. We CAN change this together

R.I.P Osama Bin Laden World Champion ‘Hide & Seek’ 2001-2011

I recently plastered the above statement on one of my facebook sites and got pounded for it. “What!!! R.I.P???” Your positivity has crossed the line Sam” etc etc I guess I’ve been created to see everything that happens in the world in a positive light.

Even the last 2 cartoon movies I’ve watched, with my kids of course, have been focussed around the villain being the main character. MEGAMIND and Despicable Me, both show a different side to being a villain and demonstrate that there is always a different side to every situation and everything comes down to where we focus and if our focus is negative or positive.

Positivity can cross into all levels of life, both personally and also in the workplace. Fueling Workplace Positivity will give your team the competitive advantage.

Positive workers have greater levels of productivity, produce higher sales and perform better in leadership positions. They also enjoy more job security and are less likely to take sick days, become depressed, quit, or to become burned out.

We are literally hardwired to perform at our best – not when we are negative or even neutral, but when we are positive.

Positivity is the catalyst for success. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This discovery has been repeatedly proven by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience.

Optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%.

Happy, engaged workers have been shown to receive up to 25% higher job performance ratings than their unhappy colleagues, which translates into better productivity and great profitability.

Harvard research is now showing that with every 100 happy and positive managers, the average company could save nearly $400,000 each year.

I live with a disability; I will never be able to ride a bike, run, lift my kids up with 2 hands. It’s hard for me to sit down, walk, sit in a car, a plane or theatre. But I choose to focus on the good things in life… I get disability parking spots!! It comes down to what we focus on, whatever situation, we have a choice to look at it in a positive or negative way.

We, and our organizations need to be actively working to enhance employee positivity to gain a significant competitive advantage.

Only those who have managed to fail greatly have succeeded greatly.

While many fortune 500 companies where laying off and going through massive changes at the start of the Global Financial Meltdown, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi decided to do something different. She travelled around the world boosting her employee’s morale and encouraging them to see the good in every bad situation. This action had a profound impact on the company and also her as a leader. In fact Fortune Magazine named her the most powerful woman in the world in 2009.

Financial crisis can ignite our greatest of thought leadership. There was a 34% rise of Australian Millionaires in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis.

People such as Opera, Nelson Mandela and some of the greatest ever people had significantly worst crisis then 90% of people in the world, yet they ended up being in the top 1% of the most successful people on earth. The bigger your challenge, the stronger you become!!!!

If you want growth, you HAVE to be open to adversary. Those who succeed have had more adversary than most but they are willing to go through this in order to succeed.

Many want success through innovation but they are not willing to have adversary first.

‘I will try that only if you can guarantee a success.’ I will innovate in this area, only if it is a guaranteed that I will win. Our fear of failure stops us from innovation and creativity.

The Bounce Theory will show that having adversary can ignite some of the greatest of opportunities in your life. Sometimes we need a failure to see the new opportunities that were right in front of us all along.

The fastest growing company in history was founded in the middle of the recent recession. In just 18 months from start-up, Google offered them 5.3 Billion dollars, which they declined. Today they are only 2 years old. This is the organisation known as ‘Groupon’, a group buying phenomenon.

Bouncing back from adversary will help you get back to the place you were before. Yet if you want success through innovation and creativity within your workplace, sometimes the only way that this can happen is if you fail, and then focus not on just bouncing back but bouncing forward.

Allow yourself to fail, allow yourself to get frustrated, allow yourself to hit rock bottom. All research is telling us that these adversary moments ignite our greatest creativity and innovation as it helps us see opportunities. This is called Adversarial Growth.

‘Don’t worry, be Happy’ Bobby McFerrin

We are in the technology and ideas age with so many new things created every moment yet we are growing in depression, loneliness and doubt. Scientists are calling today’s world a Progress Paradox – ‘Growing in technology and ideas yet losing our happiness & seeing an increasing depression rate’.

The mean onset age of depression 35 years ago was 29 years old. Today it’s 14 years old.

Depression rates are 10 times higher than what they were in 1960s, and 1000% higher than what they were during the 1930s GREAT Depression.

From recent studies, 45% of workers were unhappy in their current jobs.

I was reading a book recently by a Harvard Professor named Shawn Achor called ‘The Happiness Advantage’. He talks about the new discoveries in Positive Psychology. And the results are just awesome.

Most people think that happiness is achieved only when success comes. If I get that promotion, I’ll be happy, if I can get that deal I’ll be happy, if I can win that competition only then I’ll be happy. But this philosophy is incorrect. All studies are showing that it is in fact the opposite. Success is the result of happiness. Years of research have now found that in the workplace happier employees are: better at keeping jobs, have superior productivity, greater performance, more resilience, less burnout and greater sales. In the classroom it’s very similar, happier students have: better results, higher scores, stronger competitors, increased social skills, greater focus and the list goes on.

Happy students show 3 times more creativity then their unhappy counterparts.

Optimistic sales people outsell their peers by 37%.

Coal miners that are told that they are more appreciated by their bosses, increase their productivity by 30%.

Students primed to be positive, score better on maths tests.

Happy doctors perform more accurate diagnoses then unhappy doctors.

Harvard university studies show that if you are primed to be positive and happy before a test, you will perform better up to 50%. Study after study shows that if you think positively before entering into a challenge you have a 50% better chance of succeeding than your counterparts.

So if we are not priming our students or our employees in a positive and happy way we are handicapping them in terms of their productivity and successfulness rates by up to 50%.

In order to operate our brains on an optimum level, we need to be in a happiness or positive mindset.

What are you willing to do to get yourself to an optimum level?

If you are interested in case scenarios or other research done, please send me an email sam@samcawthorn.com

“The catalyst for success is how high you BOUNCE after you hit rock bottom”

The world teaches us that success is a fatter wallet, a 1^st class holiday, a second or even third car, a bigger boat, a nicer house etc. But I think that true success is similar to significance, and significance is this “Making a difference in other peoples lives”

Every business wants more profits, more business and a better bottom line. That’s a reality. But we don’t need to make it so obvious that that is our focus! If our focus was more on the customer, and making a difference in their lives, then the bottom line will get better. We need to BOUNCE Forward our thinking, and turn our focus on making a difference in the lives of others. That is TRUE Success.

I recently went to Vegas to speak at a conference there. It was such an honour to share the stage with such names as Harv Eker and Brian Tracy. Anyways, through all the glamour and richers of Vegas I went outside one evening in the cold Feburary air and filmed a quick video. Have a watch and listen to my thoughts of Vegas, Success & Significance.

WOW isn’t is great and exciting that we are already in February 2011. It’s just amazing how fast time flies and the exciting journeys we are all on in 2011.

I’ve uploaded a video here that I hope will inspire you to look at 2011 in a different light. I’m very excited about 2011 which you will see in this video, but it’s just becuse it is just the beginning. Have a watch!

Put your email address in the Box Provided on the right side and begin your downloads of FREE resources to help you and your team to BOUNCE Forward

I’ve just touchdown from an amazing family adventure to Europe (Yes I was caught in the pre Christmas shutdown due to snow) and then to India for a month to build my Foundation.  While in India I found some exciting and innovative programs happening and I was so excited about the future of developing worlds and was encouraged by the creation and thought leadership on how communities are Bouncing Forwards, so I decided to share some with you. Here are some facts and initiatives currently happening in helping developing worlds to Bounce Forwards:

There are more people learning English in India then 3x the population of Australia and the majority are Indian women.

In a recent HBR study it showed that there is a rapid rise of educated ambitious Indian women. Just a few weeks ago the Financial Times released ‘The Worlds Top Women in Business’, which included 5 Indian Women.

Women make up 42% of India’s college graduates and more than 50% of female college grads also hold a post-graduate degree, in comparison to 40% of men. Indian women are now showing signs of ambitions that are more then double of there US and Australian counter parts.

Another example of a Bouncing Forward culture in developing worlds is the innovation of providing clean water. A few examples are the ‘Hippo Water Roller’ which is a barrel water carrier which cuts down hours of traditional water carting.  This unique yet simple idea empowers women and children, saves time and energy and reduces suffering. Another idea is the ‘PlayPump’. The PlayPump is a children’s merry-go-round/roundabout attached to a water pump and water storage tank, that provides clean drinking water to children and families. The 3^rd idea is the Akash Ganga, or River from the Sky. Aakash Ganga is a domestic rainwater harvesting system. It channels rooftop rainwater from every house in a community, through gutters and pipes, to a network of multi-tier underground reservoirs.

Sustainable practices to assist developing worlds to Bounce Forwards are becoming more and more innovative and it’s exciting to see this evolve. I was just reading an article this week about how retired teachers and grandparents are now volunteering their time to teach kids in the slums of India, all via Skype. Check out this link: http://www.springwise.com/weekly/2011-01-19.htm#sugatamitra

In order to have the competitive advantage within your industry, you always need to think creatively and differently to Bounce Forward ahead of your competitors. What are you doing differently to ensure you are attracting new customers to your business, what makes you stand out???

Can you share with me some of your ideas?

CawthornFoundation.org

This month I’ve been on holidays, but not really. I travelled to Europe with my family to visit my uncle. It was brilliant but freezing. We then travelled to Kolkata, India as a family and began working in local village communities. We are building a NEW boutique charity called Cawthorn Foundation. This is an initiative started by my family to help disadvantaged youth particularly people living with a disability. I’ve put together a video of one of the projects that we are doing. Also please visit: CawthornFoundation.org