Business Book Review: The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
You’re taught if you work hard you’ll be happy. Achor gives you permission to be happy first. And watch your happiness fuel your success.
My Rating: ★★★★★
Length: 256
Publisher: Virgin
Released: 2011
Key Takeaways for Personal Branding
Shawn Achor was trained by the pioneers in positive psychology. He demonstrates his expertise in the The Happiness Advantage.
He helped design and teach positive psychology at Harvard, dubbed the “happiness” course. At the time, it was one of the college’s most popular programs.
The Happiness Advantage
‘The Happiness Advantage' challenges the established cultural narrative:
“If you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy.”
But, Achor proposes the formula is all wrong. Because, waiting for happiness limits your brain’s potential success. Whereas, positively cultivating your brain makes you more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive. This in turn drives your performance upward.
Happiness is not the result, but the rule for performance and achievement. This competitive edge is coined the “happiness advantage”.
Both psychology and neuroscience have demonstrated that happiness precedes success. Your brain is hardwired to perform best, not in a negative or neutral state, but in a positive one. Broadening the narrow view of fight or flight to more thoughtful, creative and new ideas.
A study famously analysed and coded the diaries of 180 Catholic nuns written more than five decades earlier. By age 85, 90 percent of the happiest quartile were still alive. This was compared to only 34 percent of the least happy.
Achor proposed happiness can come from the smallest of actions. Research shows that meditating increases happiness, lowers stress and improves the immune system. It can also come from what’s limited. Psychologists found those who watch less television are better judges of life’s risks and reward. This is because they avoid sensationalised one-sided sources.
Exercising your strengths
Achor reccommends the Via Institute of Character strengths survey. Then, ensure you’re doing at least one of your top five strengths every single day.
The Un-doing Effect
Positive emotions strengthen your intellectual and creative capabilities. But, they also provide the antidote to physical stress and anxiety. This is what psychologists dub the “un-doing effect”.
The Seven Principles
From Achor's research, he presents seven principles to predict success and achievement:
The happiness advantage
The fulcrum and the lever
The Tetris effect
Falling up
The Zorro Circle
The 20-second rule
Social investment
I’ll explore a few more in further detail:
#Principle Three: The Tetris Effect
A study found that participants subjected to a prolonged period of playing Tetris began to see the game in everything they did.
With these findings in mind, Achor proposes that by simply writing down three things you're grateful for or regularly journaling a positive experience, you’ll begin to ongoingly scan the world of the positives.
#Principle Five: The Zorro Circle
As the legend is depicted doing in the movie, create your own Zorro Circle. This recommends limiting your focus to small manageable goals that can expand your sphere of power over time.
#Principle Six: The 20-second Rule
Roy Baumeister’s studies on willpower self-control showed that self-control is a limited resource that is weakened with overuse. Instead, aim to create the path of least resistance. One that limits your choices and helps you overcome the inertia of engaging in valuable “active leisure” as opposed to “passive leisure”. And more easily creating the “activation energy” required to kick-start a positive habit.
Favourite Quotes
Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can.
Instead of narrowing our actions down to fight or flight as negative emotions do, positive ones broaden the amount of possibilities we process, making us more thoughtful, creative, and open to new ideas.
Study after study shows that if we are able to conceive of a failure as an opportunity for growth, we are all the more likely to experience that growth…The problem is that when we are stressed or in crisis, many people miss the most important path of all: the path up.
Smiling, for instance, tricks your brain into thinking you’re happy, so it starts producing the neurochemicals that actually do make you happy.
It has been said that a single butterfly flapping its wings can create a hurricane halfway around the world. As this theory, known as the Butterfly Effect, goes, the flap of a butterfly’s wings may be one tiny motion, but it creates a slight gust of wind that eventually picks up greater and greater speed and power. In other words, one very small change can trigger a cascade of bigger ones.
Achor’s pragmatic principles are underpinned by a plethora of fascinating research cases. The Happiness Advantage is your secret weapon to a competitive edge. One that makes your life more enjoyable, successful and maybe even longer.
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor: Available on Amazon.
