The Happiness Advantage

We’ve been taught that if we work hard, we will be successful, and then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, get a raise, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: happiness fuels success, not the other way around.

When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive. This discovery has been repeatedly supported by research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the world.

Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and at large companies like UBS and KPMG—to share strategies for how to fix this broken formula in The Happiness Advantage. Using case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in more than 50 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive, and ultimately more successful at work.

Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage at its core is about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.

Learn the seven principles of the Happiness Advantage including

  • The Tetris Effect

     How to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.

  • The Zorro Effect

    How to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.

  • Social Investment

    How to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network.

The TED Talk

Translations & Publishers

  • Brazil (Editora Saraiva)
  • Czech Republic (ANAG)
  • China -Simplified Chinese- (Cheers Press)
  • France (Belfond)
  • Holland (Servire/Kosmos)
  • Indonesia (Freedom Institute of Jakarta)
  • Italy (La Scuola di Palo Alto)
  • Japan (Tokuma Shoten)
  • Korea (Chungrim)
  • Russia (Exmo)
  • Spain (RBA)
  • Turkey (Kapital Medya Hizmetleri)

Book Club Guide

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