The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work Author: Shawn Achor | Language: English | ISBN:
B003F3PMYI | Format: PDF
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work Description
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful,
then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, 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 at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
In
The Happiness Advantage, 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 others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge 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. Among the principles he outlines:
• 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 Circle: 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
A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity,
The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s 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.
From the Hardcover edition.- File Size: 1411 KB
- Print Length: 258 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0307591549
- Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (September 14, 2010)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003F3PMYI
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,958 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Business Life > Motivation & Self-Improvement - #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Motivational - #23
in Books > Business & Money > Business Life > Motivation & Self-Improvement
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Business Life > Motivation & Self-Improvement - #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Motivational - #23
in Books > Business & Money > Business Life > Motivation & Self-Improvement
Having already read Tal Ben-Shahar's The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life as well as Jessica Pryce-Jones' Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success, and having absorbed and digested what their authors share, I was curious to know what (if anything) new Shawn Achor could contribute to the on-going multi-logue and how well the material is organized and presented. My rating correctly indicates what I think he has accomplished. Others have their own reasons for admiring this book. Here are two of mine.
First, Achor introduces seven principles that serve as the foundation of what he characterizes as "the happiness advantage": positive brains have a significant biological advantage over brains that are neutral and an even more substantial biological advantage over brains that are negative. In fact, The Happiness Advantage" also serves as the first principle, followed by
2. The Fulcrum and the Lever: How a positive mindset (fulcrum) can leverage power to achieve success (however defined)
3. The Tetris Effect: How that same positive mindset can recognize can recognize patterns of possibility that leads to possibilities that would otherwise be missed
4. Falling Up: When experiencing a major crisis or encountering a major threat, how selecting the right mental "path" will reveal the best course of action to take
5. The Zorro Circle: When coping with crisis or threat, how to control emotions "by focusing first on small, manageable goals, and then gradually expanding our circle to achieve progressively bigger ones"
6.
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