Happiness implies a positive mood in the present and a positive outlook for the future.

If success causes happiness, then every employee who gets a promotion, every student who receives an acceptance letter, everyone who has ever accomplished a goal of any kind should be happy. But with each victory, our goalposts of success keep getting pushed further and further out.The formula is broken because it is backward. The relationship between success and happiness works the other way around; happiness is the precursor to success. Happiness, optimism and a positive mindset makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.

The Happiness Advantage

The most successful people, the ones with the competitive edge, don’t look to happiness as some distant reward for their achievements; they are the ones who capitalize on the positive and reap the rewards at every turn.

The chief engine of happiness is positive emotion. The ten most common of these are: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love.

Defining Happiness As Positive Emotioms

<ul><li>Meditate</li><li>Find Something to Look Forward To: think about or create a future reward. Often the most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation.</li><li>Commit Concious Acts of Kindness: these must be intentional, not retrospective.</li><li>Infuse Positivity in to Your Surroundings: by decorating the space or spending some time outside.</li><li>Exercise</li><li>Spend Money (on Experiences): especially with other people, rather than stuff.</li><li>Exercise a Signature Strength: something embedded in your personality, like a love of learning, humour, honesty, creativity or gratitude (viacharacter.org).</li></ul>

Getting in to a Positive Mindset

Based on Losada’s mathematical modeling, 2.9013 is the ratio of positive to negative interactions necessary to make a corporate team successful. It takes three positive comments, experiences, or expressions to fend off the languishing effects of one negative. Dip below this tipping point and performance quickly suffers. Rise above it - ideally, the research shows, to a ratio of 6 to 1 - and teams produce their very best work.

The Losada Line

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Archimedes' quote about the fulcrum and the lever inspires us to move our own fulcrum (the mindset we have) and lengthen our levers (how much possibility and power we believe we have) to lift our world and maximise our potential.Our brains are processors with finite resources. We can spend those on looking at pain, negativity, stress and uncertainty, or to look through a lens of hope, gratitude, resilience and optimism. We can't change reality, but we can change how we perceive the world.

The Fulcrum and The Lever

People with a "job" see work as a chore, and the paycheck is the reward. People with a "calling" view work as an end in itself. Their work is fulfilling, because they feel it contributes to the greater good, draws on their personal strengths, and gives them meaning and purpose. These are the people who are more likely to succeed.

"A Job" vs "A Calling"

The more we can align our tasks to a personal vision, the more likely we are to view work as a calling.Write down the tasks at work that feel devoid of meaning and ask yourself "what is the purpose of this task?" If the answer still seems unimportant, ask again, and keep going until you get a result that is meaningful to you.Even a rote or routine task can be made meaningful if you find a good reason to be invested; you felt productive, you improved your skillset, you showed you were smart and efficient, you learnt from a mistake, you made life easier for a customer or client.

From a Job to a Calling

The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.

The tetris effect is named after the phenomenon experienced by tetris players who begin to see tetris-like patterns in every day life after playing for long periods of time. With a negative tetris effect, we always spot the annoyances, stresses and hassles. With a positive tetris effect, we can condition our minds to always look for opportunities and ideas that allow our success rate to grow.

The Tetris Effect

When you write down a list of “three good things” that happened that day, your brain will be forced to scan the last 24 hours for potential positives; small or large laughs, a feeling of accomplishment, a strengthened connection with family, or a glimmer of hope for the future.In just five minutes a day, this trains the brain to become more skilled at noticing and focusing on possibilities for personal and professional growth, and seizing opportunities to act on them.

Three Good Things

On every mental map after crisis or adversity, there are three mental paths:<ol><li> You keep circling around where you currently are.</li><li>You are led to further negative consequences.</li><li>You are led to a place where you are stronger and more capable than before.</li></ol>Study after study shows that if we are able to conceive of a failure as an opportunity for growth, we are all the more likely to experience that growth. In this way, we give ourselves the greatest power possible: the ability to move up not despite the setbacks, but because of them.

Mental Maps to Success

Imagine that you walk into a bank. There are 50 other people in the bank. A robber walks in and fires his weapon once. You are shot in the arm.Is this fortunate or unfortunate?<ul><li>70% say unfortunate: "how unlucky I happened to be there at that time and I was the one who was shot."</li><li>30% say fortunate: "I could have been shot somewhere worse," or "a child could have been shot instead."</li></ul>The situation is objectively bad. But, both counterfacts are invented by us. This shows we actually have the power in any given situation to consciously select a counterfact that makes us feel fortunate, not helpless.

Change Your Counterfact

Our fear of consequences is always worse than the consequences themselves.

Common sense is not common action.

Sustaining change is difficult to do with willpower alone, because willpower becomes more worn out the more we use it. A better way is to decrease the willpower required by decreasing the "activation energy" (time, choices, mental and physical effort) for habits we want to adopt, and alternatively, increasing it for habits we want to avoid. <ul><li>Decrease activation energy by reducing the time it takes to do something by 20 seconds, e.g sleeping in your gym clothes. </li><li>Increase activation energy by increasing the time by 20 seconds, e.g. putting the TV remote batteries in a cupboard. </li></ul>

The 20 Second Rule

In the midst of challenges and stress, nothing is more crucial to our happiness and success than holding on to the people around us.

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 Achor

The majority of compliance tactics fall in to six basic categories:<ol><li>Reciprocation</li><li>Consistency</li><li>Social Proof</li><li>Liking</li><li>Authority</li><li>Scarcity</li></ol> These "weapons of influence" are based on psychological principles we have been subjected to and learned to accept from an early point in our lives. They can produce an automatic and mindless compliance from us and thus, when exploited, have great power.

Weapons of Influence

"We should try to repay what another person has provided for us." <ul><li>The Rule Is Overpowering: there is no relationship between the liking of the requestor and the decision to comply with the request.</li><li>The Rule Enforces Uninvited Debts: it is not required to have asked for what is received in order to feel obligated to repay.</li><li>The Rule Can Trigger Unfair Exchanges: the combination of internal discomfort (a feeling of obligation) and the possibility of external shame (being called a "moocher") may result in being willing to agree to an unequal exchange.</li></ul>

Weapon One: Reciprocity

"Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment." A commitment is most powerful when it is:<ul><li>Active: actions (writing it down) speak louder than words (saying it aloud).</li><li>Public: due to a drive to look like a consistent person, viewed as a positive personality trait.</li><li>Effortful: the more effort goes in to it, the greater its ability to influence.</li><li>Made in the absence of outside pressures: such as threats or rewards.</li></ul>

Weapon Two: Consistency

"We view a behaviour as more correct to the degree that we see others performing it." Social proof is most powerful under the conditions of:<ul><li>Uncertainty: when we are unsure of ourselves, or when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, e.g. the bystander effect.</li><li>Similarity: when we are observing the behaviour of people just like us.</li></ul>

Weapon Three: Social Proof

"We most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like." The factors that reliably cause liking are:<ul><li>Physical Attractiveness: we automatically assign favourable traits such as talent, kindness, honesty and intelligence to good-looking individuals.</li><li>Compliments: even if it is known the flatterer stands to gain something.</li><li>Contact: or, familiarity.</li><li>Cooperation: working towards a common goal.</li><li>Association: the opposite of the tendency to dislike someone who brings us bad news. The positive connection does not have to be logical. </li></ul>

Weapon Four: Liking

"We are willing to go to almost any length on the command of authority." In the absence of genuine authority, the appearance of authority is enough:<ul><li>Titles: usually take years of work to earn, but can be easily adopted without proof.</li><li>Clothing: such as tailored suit or a uniform.</li><li>Trappings: such as luxury cars or jewellery.</li></ul>

Weapon Five: Authority

"Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited." Scarcity is most powerful when combined with:<ul><li>Censorship: we hate to lose freedoms we already have, so we react against the interference by wanting the item more than before e.g. access to censored information. </li><li>Recent Loss: we value things that have only recently become less available to us more e.g. revolutions after a period of economic growth, followed by a sharp reversal.</li><li>Rivalry: we value something most when we are in competition for it e.g. another potential buyer for a property.</li></ul>

Weapon Six: Scarcity

"Learn the six psychological secrets behind our powerful impulse to comply." - cover.

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Some people just won't take no for an answer. In "Influence," Dr. Robert Cialdini explains the six psychological principles that drive our powerful impulse to comply to the pressures of others and shows how we can defend ourselves against manipulation (or put the principles to work in our own interest). "Influence" guarantees two things: Readers will never say yes again when they really mean no, and they'll be more persuasive than ever before.

Robert B. Cialdini

Influence (rev)

Embrace your demons, and follow your heart.

<ol><li>Defusion: learning to perceive thoughts, images and memories as pictures and words, rather than threats, rules and objective facts.</li><li>Expansion: making room for unpleasant feelings, sensations and urges; allowing them to come and go without struggling with them or running from them.</li><li>Connection: bringing full awareness to your here-and-now experience, with openness, interest, and receptiveness; focusing on, and engaging fully in the present. </li><li>The Observing Self: accessing a transcendent sense of self; unchanging and ever present, where no thought is dangerous, threatening, or controlling.</li></ol>

Mindfulness Skills

Acceptance and commitment therapy aims to create a rich, full and meaningful life while effectively handling the painful thoughts and feelings that go with it.<ul><li>Effectively handling painful thoughts and feelings is done through mindfulness, which can be divided in to defusion, expansion, connection, and the observing self.</li><li>Creating a rich, full and meaningful life is done by setting goals, guided by your values, and taking committed and effective action to achieve them.</li></ul>

Acceptance & Commitment

Your values are what is most important, deep in your heart; what sort of person you want to be; what is significant and meaningful to you; and what you want to stand for in this life. There are ten domains of values:<ul><li>Family</li><li>Intimate Relationships</li><li>Friendships</li><li>Employment</li><li>Education and Personal Development</li><li>Recreation, Fun and Leisure</li><li>Spirituality</li><li>Community Life</li><li>Environment and Nature</li><li>Health and Body</li></ul>

Finding Your Values

<ul><li>Focus on one domain at a time.</li><li>Write down your goals. This makes you more likely to take action.</li><li>Goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time -bound.</li><li>Set a combination of immediate, short term (days to weeks), medium term (weeks to months) and long term (years) goals.</li><li>Never set a dead person's goal, something a dead person could do better than you.</li></ul>

Setting Goals

<ul><li>Fusion with unhelpful thoughts. Solution: defuse the thoughts and recognise them as just words.</li><li>Expectations that are unrealistic. Solution: break goals down to smaller pieces, extend their timeframes, and don't be afraid to make mistakes.</li><li>Avoidance of uncomfortable feelings. Solution: recognise that working towards goals generates pleasant feelings too, of curiosity, excitement and satisfaction.</li><li>Remoteness from your values. Solution: write down your values, read them through, and change as required. </li></ul>

Obstacles to Change

A guide to ACT: the revolutionary mindfulness-based program for reducing stress, overcoming fear, and finding fulfilment – now updated. International bestseller, 'The Happiness Trap', has been published in over thirty countries and twenty-two languages. NOW UPDATED. Popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and are directly contributing to our current epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression. And unfortunately, popular psychological approaches are making it even worse! In this easy-to-read, practical and empowering self-help book, Dr Russ Harries, reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in the 'The Happiness Trap', where the more they strive for happiness the more they suffer in the long term. He then provides an effective means to escape through the insights and techniques of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a groundbreaking new approach based on mindfulness skills. By clarifying your values and developing mindfulness (a technique for living fully in the present moment), ACT helps you escape the happiness trap and find true satisfaction in life. Mindfulness skills are easy to learn and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress, enhance performance, manage emotions, improve health, increase vitality, and generally change your life for the better. The book provides scientifically proven techniques to: reduce stress and worry; rise above fear, doubt and insecurity; handle painful thoughts and feelings far more effectively; break self-defeating habits; improve performance and find fulfilment in your work; build more satisfying relationships; and, create a rich, full and meaningful life.

The Happiness Advantage

Influence (rev)

The Happiness Trap

MC Jarratt