Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

1. Most people think if they become successful, then they will be happy. Research suggests it's the other way around.
2. Happiness is not a mood. It's a work ethic.
3. We can train ourselves to be happier.

‍Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage

• Positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative. You can capitalize on happiness to improve productivity and performance.
• Happiness leads to success in nearly every domain: work, health, friendship, sociability, and creativity
• Happiness advantage starts by asking us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. It’s about learning how to cultivate mindset and behaviors that have been empirically proven to fuel greater success and fulfillment.
• Examples of cited research: Physicians in a happy state show 3x the creativity & intelligence of those in a neutral state. Optimistic sales people outsell by 56%. Loads and loads of research that suggests being a happy cunt is great for every part of your life and career. Live longer, less likely to get sick. Happiness causes success.

• Happiness is not a mood. It is a work ethic.
• We each have a baseline. With concerted effort we can raise that baseline permanently. So even when we are going up and down, it’s at a higher level.
• It is not the belief that we don’t need to change. It is the realization that we can.

• How we train ourselves to think can literally change the physical structures in our brain. We can rewire them to be more positive, creative, resilient and productive - to see more possibilities wherever we look. This is a fact. The question is not “if” but “how much” is possible.
• Plasticity examples: cab drivers in London, blind people + reading fingers, many more

So what is happiness?

• Happiness can be broken down into 3 parts: PLEASURE, ENGAGEMENT and MEANING.
• Need all 3. Think the drug user just seeking pleasure. Is he happy?

• Aristotle: “eudaimonia” meaning human flourishing - Jeff’s favorite definition
• Happiness is not smiley faces and rainbows. It is the joy we feel striving after our potential (to author). The chief engine of happiness is positive emotions because happiness is above all else, positive feelings.
• Ten most common positive emotions (Fredrickson): Joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, love

• Negative emotions narrow our thoughts and range of actions as a survival mechanism (see a saber toothed tiger? not a good time to be creative). This narrowing still occurs today, the result of a survival instinct not evolved for modern civilization.

• Positive emotions do the opposite. They help you broaden and build: broaden the amount of possibilities we process, making us more thoughtful, creative and open to new ideas.
• People primed with positive emotions have been found in studies to be more creative, able to think of, store, and retrieve thoughts faster. This is biological, chemical.
• Docs primed with happiness don’t anchor a bad diagnosis (holding an initial position in the face of new evidence). Showed more creativity in their diagnosis, solved at 2x the speed and anchored 2.5x less. The priming? Candy. Even small shots of positivity can drive serious results.
• Now think about what this could mean for your employees. This is why Google and Apple have foosball tables. Richard Branson: “More than any other element, fun is the secret to Virgin’s success.” Fund leads to bottom line results.

So, how to boost your mood with positive emotions:

• Each person is different. Personal activity fit is really important. Some ideas with lots of science behind them:
• Meditate for 5 minutes
• Find something to look forward to
• Commit 5 acts of kindness each day (no post hoc)
• Infuse positivity into your physical surroundings
• Exercise
• Spend money on experiences
• Exercise a signature strength (can discover these via linked survey)

Principle #2: The Fulcrum & The Lever

• How we experience the world and our ability to succeed within it changes constantly based on mindset. The F&L principle teaches us how we can change our mindset (fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (lever) to be more successful.

• The brain has finite resources with which to experience the world. We can see the negative or the positive. This principle is about adjusting our brains with a lens so we can see the ways to rise above our circumstances - changing how we process the world, which in turn changes how we react to it.
• Archimedes: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world”
• Example: Big kid and little kid on a seesaw. Move the fulcrum, create outsized impact:

• Length of “lever” side: how much power and possibility we believe we have
• Position of the fulcrum: our mindset
• We can position the fulcrum (our mindset), which affects the length of the “lever”. The more we adjust our mindset (fulcrum), the longer our lever of possibility becomes. We change what is possible by changing the fulcrum. Move the fulcrum, change reality.
• Reality is our brains relative understanding of the world based on where and how we are observing it. We can change this perspective at any moment & by doing so change our experience of the world. Our mindset & experience is never set in stone.

• “The mental construction of our daily activities, more than the activity itself, defines our reality.”
• “When we reconnect ourselves with the pleasure of the ‘means,’ as opposed to only focusing on the ‘ends,’ we adopt a mindset more conducive not only to enjoyment but to better results.”
• Reading psychology for fun vs. work example. Changed fulcrum, had fun, did more.
• Think of things as drudgery? They will definitely become just that.
• Try to learn new things.
• Create meaning by asking “why is this important?” Until you get to a core belief
• Studies on before and after Obama elected with black kids and IQ tests
• Carol dweck: fixed mindset vs. growth

• “When faced with a difficult task or challenge, give yourself an immediate competitive advantage by focusing on all the reasons you will succeed, rather than fail. Remind yourself of the relevant skills you have, rather than those you lack. Think of a time you have been in a similar circumstance in the past and performed well.”

• “We view our work as a Job, a Career, or a Calling. People with a ‘job’ see work as a chore and their paycheck as the reward. They work because they have to and constantly look forward to the time they can spend away from their job. By contrast, people who view their work as a career work not only out of necessity but also to advance and succeed. They are invested in their work and want to do well. Finally, people with a calling view work as an end in itself; their work is fulfilling not because of external rewards but because they feel it contributes to the greater good, draws on their personal strengths, and gives them meaning and purpose.”
• Janitor who thinks “I clean up messes” vs “I contribute to a cleaner and healthier environment for students” - impacts their satisfaction, sense of fulfillment, and how well they do the job.

Principle #3: The Tetris Effect

• Focusing on stress, negativity and failure results in a cognitive afterimage (like light patterns) of the same. Name derived from study where kids played Tetris all the time and started seeing the world in Tetris terms. Consistent “play” creates new neural pathways that change how you see real life situations. This is a metaphor for how our brains see the world around us.
• You’ve already seen people stuck with chronic negative cognitive afterimages / stuck with a negative Tetris effect. Friends that complains about everything. Boss that focuses only on what you do wrong. They aren’t trying to do it - their brains are just really good at finding that shit.

• Studies have shown that we see what we look for and miss the rest. The better we get at scanning for the negative, the more we miss out of the positive. But you can train to scan for the positive.
• E.g. Practicing gratitude is scientifically proven to make you happier because it trains you to look for positives

• Stuck in a negative Tetris loop? Per principle #1, your brain is literally incapable of seeing opportunities.
• In a positive Tetris loop, you can see opportunities - scientific term is predictive encoding. Priming yourself to expect a favorable outcome prepares your brain to recognize it when it does arise.
• Best way to train your brain to notice more opportunities is to start making a daily list of the good things of your job, career, life. Write down a list of 3 good things that happened that day (small or big laughs, feelings of accomplishment at work, strengthened connection with family, a glimmer of hope for the future). Takes only 5 minutes/day and also helps push out the negatives because we can’t focus on much at once.

Principle #4: Falling Up

• We are constantly making mental maps about possible next moves. In the face of defeat, stress and crisis our brains map different pathways to help us cope. This is about finding the mental path that leads us not only up out of our failure or suffering, but teaches us to be more happy/successful because of it.
• There are 3 mental paths during crisis: one where the negative event creates no change, one where you dwell on further negative consequences, and one where you move from failure/setback to a place where you are stronger or more capable than before the fall. The Third Path is hard to find though because we form incomplete mental maps when stressed.
• Company that leaned out during recession and “wouldn’t go back to old ways even if we had a choice”

• Concept: post traumatic growth or adversarial growth. The most successful people see early failure and adversity not as a stumbling block but as a stepping stone: Disney, Jordan, Beatles - many winning mantras describe falling up, “I’ve failed over and over and that is why I succeed.”
• Kennedy: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”
• By living through it, the earlier we face difficulties and drawbacks the better we are enabled to deal with them and succeed later on

• The Third Path (falling up) can be hard to find, the other two are much easier. As a result, we can grow into learned helplessness or risk “over learning” and translating learned helplessness to other areas that aren’t even necessarily related. Think you suck at one thing, less motivated to try something else. Not good!

• We create counterfacts when reflecting on adversity - an alternate scenario in our minds about what could have happened to help us position/make sense of what did happen. We can choose a counterfact that makes us feel fortunate rather than helpless.
• If we choose one that makes us feel better, it provides a whole host of benefits to motivation and performance we know is associated with positive feelings
• If we choose one that makes us feel worse, our now altered perspective of reality allows the adversity to have greater influence over us than it otherwise should

• Explanatory style - how we choose to explain the nature of past events. This has been shown to make large differences in success or failure (ex: MetLife)
• People with an optimistic explanatory style interpret adversity as being local and temporary (“it’s not that bad and it will get better”) while pessimistic explanatory styles see the same events as global and permanent (It’s really bad and it’s never going to change”)
• ABCD acronym to help you to see the path from adversity to opportunity from other notes that I’m not totally in love with (confusing).
• Have a negative belief? Externalize the voice and argue with it.

• Decatastrophizing
• Adversity is real, but things are never as bad as they seem. Thousands of years of evolution have made us remarkably good at adapting to even the most extreme life circumstances, so adversity never hits us quite as hard or for as long as we think it might. The human psyche is incredibly resilient.
• “Immune neglect” = term coined to describe phenomena of people consistently forgetting how good our psychological immune system is at helping us overcome.
• People with paralysis return to same levels of happiness pre-injury
• People overestimate how unhappy they will be if they lost a job or a relationship ended

Principle #5: The Zorro Circle

• When we get overwhelmed, our rational brains are hijacked by emotions (we are emotional AF) and hijacking causes our performance to crumble. This principle teaches us to regain control by first focusing on small, manageable goals then gradually expanding our circle.
• A big driver of success is the belief that our behavior matters and that we have control over our future. Lots of research behind this. But when the world lays it on thick, feelings of control slip.
• When we focus on and achieve small, manageable goals, we regain the feelings of control so crucial to performance. Also marginal gains, Kaizen.
• A good first circle is one for self awareness. Identify how you’re feeling and put them into words (studies show this alone diminishes power of negative emotions, improves decision making skills etc). Next, write out what you have control over and what you don’t (to identify what to let go of and to focus efforts on things that you can impact)

Principle #6: The 20 Second Rule

• Willpower is limited. We fall back on habits. This principle shows us that by making small adjustments we can reroute the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones.
• Science shows that willpower is finite. If you are trying to do something and it is requiring a tap of your willpower resource, that reservoir gets depleted and you will suck ass at other unrelated tasks because it all draws on the same. Studies have shown this. The pull towards path of least resistance is a huge unseen influencer in our lives.
• Inactivity may be the path of least resistance but in reality studies have shown we don’t enjoy it nearly as much as we think we will. Passive leisure for more than 30m? Psychic entropy. Not so with active leisure.
• Study of students showed 2.5x elevated enjoyment when engaged in hobby and 3x as elevated when sport. But they spend 4x watching TV. Why?We’re drawn powerfully to options that are easy (less activation energy), convenient and habitual.
• I don’t need to write anything else down here because I am a Habit God

Principle #7: Social Investment

• Countless studies have found that quality social relationships are the best guarantee of heightened wellbeing and lowered stress. For happiness, relationships matter more than anything else. Don’t hunker down and retreat, invest in friends, family and peers when faced with tough times.

• We are wired for social interaction and support. Multiple citations of evidence that your body literally gets fucked up with out it.
• Social support has as much affect on life expectancy as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity and regular exercise.

• Our attitudes are contagious. Smiling test, mirror mirror example
• Studies have shown that with 3 strangers in a room, the most emotionally expressive person transmits their mood within 2 minutes
• So, overt negativity hits instantly
• Emotions are so shared that researchers coined phenomena “group affective tone” which over time create shared “emotion norms”
• Study where guy secretly instructed to be overtly positive in group setting: group mood goes up and group performed better. Incredible!
• Just one happy camper can change both moods and performance outcomes

Specific to work:

• What we expect from people manifests in the words we use & has a powerful effect on end results. The best managers view each interaction as an opportunity to prime their employees for excellence.
• Called the Pygmalion Effect, derived from landmark Rosenthal study where elementary kids were tested and teachers were informed that some students were geniuses. Teachers warned no special treatment to these kids. In reality, kids were not geniuses. But in tests at end of the year, “genius” kids tested off the charts because their potential had been unwittingly and nonverbally communicated to them by the teachers. Our belief in a person’s potential brings that potential to life.

• Every Monday, ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. Do I believe that the intelligence and skills of my employees are not fixed but can be improved with effort
2. Do I believe that my employees want to make that effort just as they want to find meaning and fulfillment in their jobs
3. How am I conveying these beliefs in my daily words and actions?

• Creating a social connection with employees makes them happen and drives them to perform better.
• A passive bid (“that’s nice” without looking up) is as bad as a negative one (“that’s dumb”) vs a positive one (“that’s fantastic! You totally deserved that promotion”)
• Employees are happier and perform better when they have meaningful connections and relationships.
• Eye contact, smile, ask interest questions, non work conversations
• Consider learning things about employees and referencing in later conversations to build social capital

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