The Keys to Happiness: My Review of the Happiness Advantage

This week I’m reviewing the book The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life by Shawn Achor. Have you read other books related to happiness at work? Email me. I'd love to read them too!

The core idea of The Happiness Advantage is that the conventional wisdom that success leads to happiness is actually backwards - happiness is what actually leads to success. The book covers seven principles of positive psychology (the scientific study of what makes life most worth living) that have been empirically shown to improve happiness and success. 

I liked how Shawn was able to explain how the principles derived from research. For example, there is a concept known as Post-Traumatic Growth which is essentially a modern version of the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". The phrase is old but Shawn goes over recent research that proves that suffering can lead to positive growth in many different scenarios, such as residents of a town that experienced bombing or women diagnosed with breast cancer. This research justifies the principle that learning from failure can lead to greater happiness.

My personal favorite principle from the book is the Tetris Effect (not just because I'm a nerd that likes video games). The idea is that if you train yourself to consistently look for positive things in the world, you will naturally become better at seeing positive things and will become a more positive person as a result. This fits nicely alongside my principle to look for good.

I thought this book was full of practical advice. For example, one way to put the Tetris Effect into practice is to end a day by writing down a list of three good things that happened that day. Consistently writing down good things every day will train your brain to keep an eye out for positive things.

I liked reading this book and recommend it to anyone looking for more ways to bring happiness into their life.