Topic: Happiness and Positive Psychology
The Happiness Advantage – Shawn Achor
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Introduction
o A book in the tradition of Positive Psychology (pioneered by Martin Seligman)
o Basic Premise is that Happiness is the precursor to Success, not the other way around
o Happiness and Optimism fuel performance and achievement.
o Book shows why the Happiness Advantage is so powerful and can be put to daily use
Main Points of Book:
o Seven Main Principles:
1. The Happiness Advantage: Because positive brains have a biological advantage
over brains that are neutral or negative, this principle teaches us how to retrain
our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and
performance.
2. The Fulcrum and the Lever: How we experience the world and our ability to
succeed within it constantly change based on our mindset. This principle
teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (our fulcrum) in a way that gives us
the power (the lever) to be more fulfilled and successful.
3. The Tetris Effect: When our brains get stuck in a pattern that focuses on stress,
negativity and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. This principle teaches us how
to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see-and-seize
opportunity wherever we look.
4. Falling Up: In the midst of defeat, stress and crisis, our brains map different
paths to help us cope. This principle is about finding the mental path that not
only leads up out of failure or suffering but teaches us to be happier and more
successful because of it.
5. The Zorro Circle: When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational
brains can get hijacked by emotions. This principle teaches us how to regain
control by focusing first on small, manageable goals and then gradually
expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones.
6. The 20-Second Rule: Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because
our will is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and
succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making
small energy adjustments, we can reroute the path of least resistance and
replace bad habits with good ones.
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7. Social Investment: In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to
hunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people
invest in their friends, peers and family members to propel themselves forward.
This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of
success and excellence -- our social support network.
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Name of Book – Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
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Introduction
o “This book summarizes, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive
aspects of human experience—joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I
call flow”
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Main Points of Book:
o Psychic entropy ( internal disorder) is the default state of the mind
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“The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call
ontological anxiety, or existential dread.”
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“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits
in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal
experience is thus something that we make happen.”
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“This simple truth—that the control of consciousness determines the quality of life—has
been known for a long time; in fact, for as long as human records exist”
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“THERE ARE TWO MAIN STRATEGIES we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The
first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how
we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.” The second is
better.
“Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring
happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that
return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic
entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add
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complexity to the self. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create new
order in consciousness.”
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The objective (in life) is to develop an "autotelic self". “The “autotelic self” is one that
easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its
inner harmony. A person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes
on, and in flow most of the time may be said to have an autotelic self.
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The autotelic self is able to transform entropic experiences into flow!
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“However, enjoyment, as we have seen, does not depend on what you do, but rather on
how you do it.”
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Mihaly and other researchers discovered through ESM (Experience Sampling Method)
that people were happier when they were engaged in leisure activities that involve less
material (inexpensive) resources as opposed to expensive resources.
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Work vs Leisure: In one study, they tested how Flow varied between work and leisure.
Used the ESM method. Discovered that 54% of the time people were in Flow when at
work. Number is 18% for leisure. However, paradoxically, people indicated that they
would rather be doing something else more often when at leisure than when at work!!
This paradox can be explained by cultural stereotypes.
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Use of Free Time: The ultimate test is what we do with solitude. The goal should be to
fill the free time with activities that help grow the self.
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“A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external
environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative
life.”
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Pathway to an Autotelic Life: “It does not matter where one starts—whether one
chooses goals first, develops skills, cultivates the ability to concentrate, or gets rid of
self-consciousness”
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Rules for Developing an autotelic self
 Goal Setting
 Becoming immersed in the activity
 Paying attention to what's happening
 Learning to enjoy immediate experience
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Autotelic Self - “Someone who is in harmony no matter what he does, no matter what is
happening to him, knows that his psychic energy is not being wasted on doubt, regret,
guilt, and fear, but is always usefully employed. Inner congruence ultimately leads to
that inner strength and serenity we admire in people who seem to have come to terms
with themselves.”
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Cultivating Goals: Pitrim Sorokin (Sociologist at Harvard) divided the various epochs of
western civilization into three types:
1. Sensate (cultures integrated around views of reality designed to satisfy the
senses)
2. Ideational (cultures look down on the material/tangible and strive for material
supernatural ends)
3. Idealistic (cultures which are a combination of the two and are able to combine
an acceptance of concrete sensory principles with a reverence for spiritual ends.
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Steps to Self-Actualization: (consensus among psychologists)
1. [Inward] Self-Preservation: Basically, survival instincts
2. [Expansive] Community: Expansion of the horizons of the meaning system to
embrace the values of the community (family, neighborhood, religious group,
etc)
3. [Inward] Reflexive Individualism : Turns inward, is no longer blindly conforming
and develops an autonomous conscience.
4. [Expansive] Final Integration: Final turning away from self, back toward
integrating with other people.
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Name of Book – Happier (Tal Ben-Shahar )
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Introduction
o The primary objective of the book is to leverage decades of research in psychology with
a view towards showing how to maximize Happiness, the “ultimate currency”
o The book is action-oriented and is a workbook. “The work has to comprise both
reflection and action.”
Main Points of Book:
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The advice from Positive Psychology is different from self-help gurus in a radically
different way. Their advice/solutions are based on rigorous testing and not on baseless
platitudes and off-the-cuff assertions. Supreme court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my
life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
We need both reflection and action.
Ritualizing positive actions will allow us to achieve excellence. In Aristotle’s words, “We
are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The Happiness Archetypes:
“Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a
destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the
mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the
experience of climbing toward the peak.”
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In extensive cross-cultural and longitudinal studies of happiness, psychologist David
Myers found a very low correlation between material wealth and happiness, except in
cases of extreme poverty where people’s basic needs were not being met. Moreover,
although for the last fifty years the population in many countries has become wealthier,
studies reveal no increase, and often a decrease, in levels of happiness
The emphasis in my approach is not so much on attaining goals as it is on having them.
In his article “Positive Affectivity,” psychologist David Watson underscores the value of
the journey: “Contemporary researchers emphasize that it is the process of striving after
goals—rather than goal attainment per se—that is crucial for happiness and positive
affectivity.” The primary purpose of having a goal—a future purpose—is to enhance
enjoyment of the present.
Summarizing the research on goals and happiness, Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues
write, “People seeking greater wellbeing would be well advised to focus on the pursuit
of (a) goals involving growth, connection, and contribution rather than goals involving
money, beauty, and popularity and (b) goals that are interesting and personally
important to them rather than goals they feel forced or pressured to pursue.” While
most if not all people pursue popularity, beauty, and money—and, at times, feel forced
or pressured to do something—Sheldon is pointing out that we would be happier if we
shifted more of our focus to goals that are self-concordant. Self-concordant goals are
goals that we pursue out of deep personal conviction and/or a strong interest.
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