Every time your brain has a success, you change the goalpost of what success looked like. You got 50 followers, now you want 100. You got 100, now you want 200. So, if success is a prerequisite to happiness and the goalpost of success keeps moving, then your brain will never get there.

The Science-Backed Proof That More Success Won't Lead to Greater Levels of Happiness

What we found is that only 25% of job successes are predicted by IQ, 75% of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support, and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

You can rewire your brain with just 2 minutes a day by writing down 3 new things that you're grateful for every day for 21 days. Doing so reprograms your brain, allowing it to work more optimistically and more successfully. After 21 days, the brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Train Your Brain to be Happier

Dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

Most people think that if they simply work harder, then they'll be more successful. And if they're more successful, then they'll also be happier.  The problem is that this logic is scientifically broken and backward.

Most People Get The Path to Happiness Backwards

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The happy secret to greater success and fulfillment in work and life—a must-read for everyone trying to flourish in a world of increasing stress and negativity “Thoughtfully lays out the steps to increasing workplace positivity.”—Forbes In the book that inspired one of the most popular TED Talks of all time, New York Times bestselling author Shawn Achor reveals how rewiring our brain for happiness helps us achieve more in our careers and our relationships and as students, leaders, and parents. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But the science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. Research shows that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and better problem solvers than their unhappy peers. And positive people are significantly healthier and less stressed and enjoy deeper social interaction than the less positive people around them. Drawing on his original research—including one of the largest studies of happiness ever conducted—and work in boardrooms and classrooms across forty-two countries, Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health. His strategies include: • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility so we can see and seize opportunities all around us • Social Investment: how to earn the dividends of a strong social support network • The Ripple Effect: how to spread positive change within our teams, companies, and families By turns fascinating, hopeful, and timely, The Happiness Advantage reveals how small shifts in our mind-set and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An engaging, deeply researched guide to flourishing in a world of increasing stress and negativity—the inspiration for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time “Powerful [and] charming . . . A book for just about anyone . . . The philosophies in this book are easily the best wire frames to build a happy and successful life.”—Medium Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can. Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But the science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.   Research shows that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and better problem solvers than their unhappy peers. And positive people are significantly healthier and less stressed and enjoy deeper social interaction than the less positive people around them.   Drawing on original research—including one of the largest studies of happiness ever conducted—and work in boardrooms and classrooms across forty-two countries, Shawn Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health. His strategies include:   • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility so we can see and seize opportunities all around us • Social Investment: how to earn the dividends of a strong social support network • The Ripple Effect: how to spread positive change within our teams, companies, and families   By turns fascinating, hopeful, and timely, The Happiness Advantage reveals how small shifts in our mind-set and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere.

Shawn Achor is an American educator, author, and speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology. He is best known for his research reversing the formula of success leading to happiness—his research shows that happiness in fact leads to success. Achor spent 12 years studying what makes people happy at Harvard University. He later authored The Happiness Advantage and founded the Institute of Positive Research and GoodThinkInc. His TEDx talk "The Happy Secret to Better Work" is one of the 20-most viewed TED talks.

SHAWN ANCHOR

Similar ideas to SHAWN ANCHOR

Optimistic explanatory style

Eustress vs distress

1. Cultivate optimism