Happiness Advantage Intro - Great Reads

“If you observe the people around you, you’’ find most individuals follow a formula that has been taught by schools, companies, parents or society. That is if you work hard, you will become successful and once successful, you will become... Happy.

This pattern of belief explains what generally is our motivation through life.

Only problem is the formula is broken.

If success were to cause happiness, then every promotion, or every goal met should make you happy. But with each victory, our goalposts of success keep getting pushed out farther and farther until it's pushed out over the horizon.

DISCOVERING THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE

Our author, Shawn, had the privilege of attending Harvard. While there, he witnessed first hand how many students who seemingly were happy about their acceptance to this fine institution were later consumed by the workload, pressure and the fear of failure. This prevented their ability to be HAPPY in their circumstances.

Later, Shawn traveled for a speaking engagement in Africa where he spent time talking to students near a shantytown and he realized his stories using privileged American students would be inappropriate for this audience so instead asked the students, “who here likes to do schoolwork?” Instantly over 95% of the hands went up and there was a room full of enthusiastic students. Many of these students' parents grew up without an education.

Our author quickly realized how much our Interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality.

He became fascinated with what caused those high potential individuals to develop a positive mindset to excel, especially in such a competitive environment. And likewise, what causes those who succumbed to the pressure to fail - or stay stuck in a negative or neutral position.

He questioned, what's going on that caused so many to obtain excellent educations, and shiny opportunities yet absorb the wrong lessons. They had never been formally taught how to maximize their brains potential or how to find meaning and happiness. Armed with iphones they multitasked their way through a storm of resume building experiences, often at the expense of the real experiences. The pursuit of high achievement, they isolated themselves from peers, loved ones and compromised every support system.

What you will take away from this book summary, is that we become more successful, WHEN we are happier and more positive. Optimistic salespeople outperform their pessimistic counterparts by 56 percent. Students primed to feel happy before taking math achievement tests far outperform their neutral peers.

It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are POSITIVE.

Please watch the short 2 minute video summary...

Watch next week for Principle 1 - CHANGE IS POSSIBLE