Shawn Achor is a renowned lecturer at Harvard University who specialises in positive psychology. In Achor’s book ‘The Happiness Advantage’ he presents 7 principles that you should capitalise in order to use the Happiness Advantage. These principles are as followed with a short description:
#1 The Happiness Advantage
It’s important to remember that success doesn’t make you happy, but that being happy will make you successful. The more happier you are, the more you will be able to achieve. The term happiness implies that you have a positive mindset and are in a positive mood. Within this principle Achor elaborates on the positive effects of the Happiness advantage by stating that happier workers have higher levels of productivity, happier people live longer, those who are happier have a broader scope of cognition and behaviour and that positive emotions can improve vision. Achor also elaborates by saying that “happiness is not a mood – it’s a work ethic.” He then goes on to provide 7 activities you can do to elevate your mood and raise your happiness levels.
#2 The Fulcrum and The Lever
Our mind works like a seesaw. If we shift our mindset to focus on the positive aspects of our lives, we will achieve a better balance between the positive and negative aspects of our lives and be able to move forward. Within this section Achor wrote “we can use our brain to change how we process the world…[by] adjusting our brain so that we see the ways to rise above our circumstances.” He continues to elaborate by saying that the length of our lever on our seesaw is how much potential we believe we have and that the position of the fulcrum is the mindset that we use to generate change. It is through this principle that you use your positive mindset to shape reality.
#3 The Tetris Effect
Our brains have been trained to focus on the negative aspects of our lives out of habit. The idea is that we should focus on the positive aspects of our lives which will open us to more opportunities. Consistently scanning the world for the negative has many detrimental effects such as: limits creativity, increases stress, reduces motivation and causes inattentional blindness. What Achor said in this principle was to start encouraging yourself to start trying to find positives within your day so that your brain is not hardwired to all search for the negative.
#4 Falling Up
Each time we fail at something it is actually a learning curve and we are making progress to our goals. Fundamentally, you are learning and building from your mistakes and ‘falling up’. Achor talks about a mental map everyone takes after a hardship. He writes that people experience one of these three outcomes: 1. you keep circling around where you are, 2. you continue toward further negative consequences or 3. you walk away from failure, learn from your mistakes and are stronger for it. Falling up is known as the third outcome. The key point made in principle 4 is to take your failures as an opportunity to grow.
#5 The Zorro Circle
The concept is that you must be focused, disciplined and patient when working towards your manageable goals. Set small goals (draw your ‘Zorro Circle’), complete them and then set a new and slightly bigger goal. Achor elaborates by saying that by completing these small and manageable goals “we regain the feeling of control so crucial to performance… We accumulate the resources, knowledge, and confidence to expand the circle.” It is important that we feel successful and in control of our work as it have been proven that if we don’t it leads to increased stress, increased conflict and higher job turnover.
#6 The 20-second Rule
Replace a negative habit with a positive habit by making it easier to access and decrease the activation energy. Make the good habit a task that you can easily start without having to set anything up. One great quote from this section is “Common sense is not common action.” It highlights that knowledge is worthless without acting upon it. So while we know that consistently achieving 8 hours of sleep is good for us, odds are, we aren’t consistently falling asleep at 10pm and waking up at 6am. This is where Achor continues to note that building healthy habits requires daily strokes of effort to create that internalised routine.
#7 Social Investment
Do not retreat inwards in stressful situations. It is moments of stressful situations that we need support from our team and social circle the most. This is because social interactions provide us with positivity, help us feel protected from adversity and allow use to grow with the help of our supports. A nice comparison Achor presents is that our social web is like our offensive line who support the team, aka you. By investing your time into developing a good offensive line you automatically have a better support system who can help and guide you through tough times.
Pro’s of The Book:
I found the book very informative and it is obvious that Shawn Achor knows what he is talking about. Not only does he put forth these principles, but he also provides several examples with case studies to back up his writing. These case studies are also very entertaining themselves. I remember one of the studies Achor wrote about was one that he participated in himself. They were testing to see how much a person would endure, how much embarrassment they could handle and how much pain they would go through for a simple paycheck. The funny part was that it was disguised as an experiment that aimed to aid help prevent elderly from falling over. This made Achor’s writing an informative yet engaging piece for me to read.
I would also love to applaud Achor’s writing style. The flow of the writing makes this a brilliant read as I can pick it up and start reading it without having to push my mind to be in the right zone. I found that it was easy to read the book without losing interest as his writing seemed to never get boring.
Con’s of The Book:
At the start of a lot of the sections within the 7 principles, Achor tends to start with “When I worked with a big company in….” or “When I flew to …. to speak too hundreds of people…”. I did find this quite engaging at the start as it told me that Achor knew what he was talking about and that he has a lot of experience. But these openers continued throughout the book and it feels as if he is trying to say that he has trained every important person there is in the world on how to be happy. Overall, the writing does have somewhat of a cocky tone that was once intriguing at the start of the book but a little irritating towards the end.
Final Thoughts:
I did find this book a particular interesting and useful one to read. I did have a lot of key takeaways that I am most likely going to try and integrating into my own life. I plan to start with doing a daily reflection as Achor mentioned in Principle #3 and try to calibrate my mind to be more aware of positive aspects of my life and to really think about what can I control around me and what do I not have control over. I made a small booklet that I made to answer these questions and have attached it below. I hope to make this a habit by using Principle #6 and placing it right next to my bed with a pen. This way I will have no excuse not to do it as it requires 0 activation energy to grab the book and write in it for 2 minutes.
I honestly think that this is a worthwhile read for any manager, leader or anyone who is passionate about teamwork. It highlights some very strong key points that you can easily integrate into your everyday routine and will make you a better leader.
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