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

by Shawn Achor

So how do the scientists define happiness? Essentially, as the experience of positive emotions—pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose.

Perhaps the most accurate term for happiness, then, is the one Aristotle used: eudaimonia, which translates not directly to “happiness” but to “human flourishing.”

individuals who are “primed”—meaning scientists help evoke a certain mindset or emotion before doing an experiment—to feel either amusement or contentment can think of a larger and wider array of thoughts and ideas than individuals who have been primed to feel either anxiety or anger.

all it took was a small gift of candy right before they started the task.

Everyone has one or two quick activities they know will make them smile, and however trivial they may feel, their benefits are worth it.

things scientists have found to be most crucial to human happiness, like pursuing meaningful life goals, scanning the world for opportunities, cultivating an optimistic and grateful mindset, and holding on to rich social relationships.

Studies have shown that the more you use your signature strengths in daily life, the happier you become.

In short, sacrificing positivity in the name of time management and efficiency actually slows us down.

The data couldn’t be clearer that these policies—as well as more conventional happiness boosters like gym memberships, health benefits, and on-site day care—consistently deliver big dividends.

One way to do this is simply to provide frequent recognition and encouragement.

one study found that project teams with encouraging managers performed 31 percent better than teams whose managers were less positive and less open with praise.

I wonder if recognition from teammates has the same impact?

41 In fact, when recognition is specific and deliberately delivered, it is even more motivating than money.42

As Kjerulf explains, “other employees stopping by immediately notice the elephant and go, ‘Hey, you got the elephant. What’d you do?’, which of course means that the good

stories and best practices get told and re-told many times.”

the best leaders know that delivering instructions in an angry, negative tone handicaps their employees before the task is even underway.

So the next time you interact with a colleague or direct report, make an effort to adopt a more positive tone and facial expression.

the more you make a genuine effort to avoid slipping into an apathetic or irritable tone, the more your team’s performance will benefit.

the squadrons receiving the lowest marks in performance are generally led by commanders with a negative, controlling, and aloof demeanor.

Based on Losada’s extensive mathematical modeling, 2.9013 is the ratio of positive to negative interactions necessary to make a corporate team successful.

Dip below this tipping point, now known as the Losada Line, and workplace performance quickly suffers. Rise above it—ideally, the research shows, to a ratio of 6 to 1—and teams produce their very best work.

“You untied knots that imprisoned us: Today we look at each other differently, we trust each other more, we learned to disagree without being disagreeable. We care not only about our personal

success, but also about the success of others. Most important, we obtain tangible results.”

Our power to maximize our potential is based on two important things: (1) the length of our lever—how much potential power and possibility we believe we have, and (2) the position of our fulcrum—the mindset with which we generate the power to change.

Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, a neuroscientist at the New School for Social Research in New York, explains that our expectations create brain patterns that can be just as real as those created by events in the real world.

If our mindset conceives of free time, hobby time, or family time as non-productive, then we will, in fact, make it a waste of time.

When your brain conceives of family dinner or Sudoku or fantasy football or a phone call with a friend as a “waste of time,” it won’t be able to reap its inherent benefits. But if you change the fulcrum so that you conceive of such free time as a chance to learn and practice new things, to recharge your batteries and connect with others, you’ll be able to leverage the power of that rest time and return stronger than before.

Years of research have shown that a specific and concerted focus on your strengths during a difficult task produces the best results.

it just means to focus on what you are actually good at as you walk down the hallway.

Dweck found that people can be split into two categories: Those with a “fixed mindset” believe that their capabilities are already set, while those with a “growth mindset” believe that they can enhance their basic qualities through effort.

When we believe there will be a positive payoff for our effort, we work harder instead of succumbing to helplessness.

We view our work as a Job, a Career, or a Calling.

Organizational psychologists call this “job crafting,” but in essence, it involves simply adjusting one’s mindset.15 As Wrzesniewski says, “new possibilities open for the meaning of work” simply by the way “it is constructed by the individual.”16

think about how the same tasks might be written in a way that would entice others to apply for the job. The goal is not to misrepresent the work they do, but to highlight the meaning that can be derived from it.

Try this exercise: Turn a piece of paper horizontally, and on the left hand side write down a task you’re forced to perform at work that feels devoid of meaning. Then ask yourself: What is the purpose of this task? What will it accomplish? Draw an arrow to the right and write this answer down. If what you wrote still seems unimportant, ask yourself again: What does this result lead to? Draw another arrow and write this down. Keep going until you get to a result that is meaningful to you. In this way, you can connect every small thing you do to the larger picture, to a goal that keeps you motivated and energized.

“Forget about your current job title. What would our customers call your job title if they described it by the impact you have on their lives?”17 When you make these larger connections, your mundane tasks not only become more palatable, but you perform them with far greater dedication, and see greater returns in performance as a result.

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

You improved your skill set.

You learned from a mistake.

You can have the best job in the world, but if you can’t find the meaning in it, you won’t enjoy it, whether you are a movie maker or an NFL playmaker.

What we expect from people (and from ourselves) manifests itself in the words we use, and those words can have a powerful effect on end results.

This phenomenon is called the Pygmalion Effect: when our belief in another person’s potential brings that potential to life.

Every Monday, ask yourself these three 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?; and (3) How am I conveying these beliefs in my daily words and actions?

The heart of the challenge is to stop thinking of the world as fixed when reality is, in truth, relative.

This is no small thing. 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.

In performance reviews, they noticed only the faults of their team members, never the strengths.

This might seem a relatively surprising finding given that lawyers have high levels of education, pay, and status, but in fact, given what they are required to do all day long, it’s not that surprising at all.

“Law schools teach students to look for flaws in arguments, and they train them to be critical rather than accepting.”

The problem comes when individuals cannot “compartmentalize” their abilities. And when that happens, not only do they miss out on the Happiness Advantage, but their pessimistic, fault-finding mindset makes them far more susceptible to depression, stress, poor physical health, and even substance abuse.

Negative Tetris Effect: a cognitive pattern that decreases our overall success rates.

we see what we look for, and we miss the rest.