The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life

by Shawn Achor

If success causes happiness, then every employee who gets a promotion, every student who receives an acceptance letter, everyone who has ever accomplished a goal of any kind should be happy. But with each victory, our goalposts of success keep getting pushed further and further out, so that happiness gets pushed over the horizon.

Even more important, the formula is broken because it is backward.

“The Mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

If we study merely what is average, we will remain merely average.

If all you strive for is diminishing the bad, you’ll only attain the average and you’ll miss out entirely on the opportunity to exceed the average.

what we spend our time and mental energy focusing on can indeed become our reality.

Countless studies have found that social relationships are the best guarantee of heightened well-being and lowered stress, both an antidote for depression and a prescription for high performance.

It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive.

When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.

happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.

People who put their heads down and wait for work to bring eventual happiness put themselves at a huge disadvantage, while those who capitalize on positivity every chance they get come out ahead.

Scientists once thought happiness was almost completely hereditary (dictated by a genetically determined “set point”). But thankfully, they have since discovered that in fact we have far more control over our own emotional well-being than previously believed.