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Author:  Shawn Achor

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Self-Improvement, Happiness

Info:   256 pages, published 2010

Format:  Book

Summary 

Most people believe that if they work hard, they will be successful and that once they are successful, they will be happy.  In The Happiness Advantage, human potential consultant and former Harvard professor Shawn Achor argues that the conventional wisdom is backwards, i.e. people who start off happy are more likely to succeed while people who start off unhappy are more likely to fail.  This conclusion comes from Achor’s own research which included an empirical survey of 1,600 high achieving undergraduates at Harvard as well as more than 200 scientific studies on nearly 275,000 people. Achor is a proponent of positive psychology, which draws lessons from successful people rather than the failures.  College freshmen who were shown to be happy had a higher income 19 years later than their unhappy classmates.  Other experiments showed that happiness led to more creativity and greater vision.

Quotes

“Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it’s the realization that we can.”

“When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.  Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups.”

“..the more you believe in your own ability to success the more likely it is that you will.”

“The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.”

“Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.”

“Each one of us is like that butterfly the Butterfly Effect . And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations our families and our communities.”

“the key to daily practice is to put your desired actions as close to the path of least resistance as humanly possible. Identify the activation energy—the time, the choices, the mental and physical effort they require—and then reduce it. If you can cut the activation energy for those habits that lead to success, even by as little as 20 seconds at a time, it won’t be long before you start reaping their benefits.”

“For me, happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.”

“Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full. It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective, and successful at work and in life.”

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