What exactly does The Happiness Advantage mean? Isn’t it obvious that happiness is an advantage?
Yes, but the road to happiness is not exactly a simple one.
At this point, we all know that there isn’t a “happy switch” in our brains that we can flick on.
Mood and mental well-being is more complex than that. For many, especially those struggling with depression, happiness is not an automatic choice. It is a work in progress.
While it can be challenging to choose happiness on the spot, happiness is still a choice. It is the daily choices, big and small, that we can make that nurture our mindset into a positive space.
Being happy
This is the foundation of Shawn Achor’s book The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life.
Anchor illustrates how we can actively shift our thought framework from dwelling on the negative and embracing the positive.
He challenges the tired belief that hard work inherently means success which automatically creates happiness. Rather, it is the other way around.
Cultivating happiness within ourselves is the starting point to creating a rewarding career and continued self-growth.
4 takeaways from The Happiness Advantage
1. Social Investment
Building and maintaining healthy social relationships is foundational to happiness. Many studies have shown that social relationships are key to achieving enhanced well-being and reduced stress.
Powerful social bonds help us feel psychologically safe and confident. That support is a catalyst for taking meaningful risks and harnessing our unique genius in other social settings.
2. The Tetris Effect
The Tetris Effect is when we devote an excess amount of time to a specific activity that it changes our brain’s pathways without us realizing it.
Unfortunately, we can easily fall into a pattern of stress, negativity and fear. However, we can use the Tetris Effect to our advantage by spending time and energy flipping the narrative.
By focusing on possibilities, opportunities and inspiration, we can retrain our brains to think positively and proactively.
3. Falling Up
Failure is not regressive. Viewing our failures as pure regression is.
We’re all familiar with sayings like “fail to succeed” or “failure is necessary”. There is comfort in that but it doesn’t change the fact that failure is uncomfortable.
Allow yourself to feel the discomfort of failure instead of denying, repressing or avoiding it. It will always catch up with you at some point.
Adversarial Growth means taking a positive spin on a problem and practicing acceptance.
Being honest with yourself and your feelings will allow you to take the lessons learned forward and with intention.
4. Workplace orientations
Organizational psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski of Yale University dedicates her career to understanding how people make meaning of their work.
She has conducted an abundance of research across a huge spectrum of industries and difficult contexts.
In her work, she has identified 3 workplace orientations. We either see work as a Job, a Career or a Calling.
Those who see work as a job tend to be less satisfied and are eager to get in an out as soon as possible. It is a chore and getting paid is the reward.
Those with a Career mindset see work as a necessary way to leading a successful life. They invest in their career and their skills to advance, reach new heights and gain both social and monetary capital.
Lastly, people who see work as a Calling have a profound personal attachment to what they do. Not only does it bolster their personal success but it contributes to a greater social good.
Their work is intrinsically and intrinsically rewarding, fuelling them with purpose.
Developing a Calling orientation is not simply getting a job that directly supports a good cause.
It can be in any position where you feel you are creating a difference in the quality of life for someone or something.
Whether you are a doctor, a lawyer, a barista or pet sitter, you can find your calling.
The happiness advantage
At its core, the happiness advantage is about getting to know yourself — understanding who and where makes you feel safe and secure.
And how you can apply the strengths that come with that to the world around you and your ambitions within it.
Click here for more about The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life by Shawn Anchor.
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