The Happiness Advantage

The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work

Shawn Achor

Who should read: Anyone who struggles to find happiness in their work. 

Favorite quote: “Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state.” Daniel Golemen. “Our emotions.. are enormously contagious.”

Why I feel it is important to veterinary medicine: Happiness at work in veterinary medicine is far more challenging than one would think. The assumption is that happiness depends on circumstances, rather than a skill we can develop. This book walks us through how to develop it as a skill.

Do you want to be happy? How much energy do you put into being happy? Is it worth it? One of the most interesting take aways for me from this book was how widespread and deep the impact of happiness has across our lives. Happiness  makes us smarter, more motivated, productive, successful, and creative, receive better reviews and pay, and much less likely to get burned out or get sick.  A study evaluating MD’s demonstrated that happy doctors gave a correct diagnosis more often and more rapidly than non-happy physicians. Not only that, but it is contagious to those around us- it appears it can ripple about three degrees past us.

Would you believe that you can train for happiness, or that you have control over the level of happiness in your life? If so, the big question and struggle is: How do we find long-term happiness? 

Shawn Achor introduces seven principles that were repeatedly identified in successfully happy individuals. He introduces these principles in a manner that gives us actionable strategies suggesting we approach happiness as a skill that can be improved upon. He does warn us that as with any skill, we need to put work and practice in to strengthen and improve upon it. 

Side note: I’ve taken the liberty of renaming most of the principles, as the original names hinge on Mr. Achor’s storytelling approach to introducing the concepts, which leaves the titles a bit puzzling without the back story.

Compound Interest of Happiness

The crux of this principle is that success does not bring happiness- happiness brings success. Positive psychology reports three components of happiness: pleasure, engagement and meaning. Pursuing one component brings happiness, but it doesn’t pervade life and success as fully as an individual who pursues all three will experience. My take away from this is to make sure that we are dedicating time outside of work towards well-being, and our career and profession (or any other aspect in your life) will benefit as a consequence. The more happiness you derive, the more success and happiness you find. 

The Relativity of Mindset

The distilled concept here is that mindset, more than circumstances, shapes our experience and emotional reaction. This can turn a job into a career, and even into a calling. Likewise, I feel like I’ve seen the reverse happen- as veterinary professionals begin to get jaded and burned out, they lose their sense of calling and find themselves in a career and job that makes them miserable. While for some, a career switch may be the right choice, for most a mindset shift is warranted, as mindset will follow you no matter where you go! Happiness is relative. Meaning, you define your own happiness, and your own experiences. 

Positive Cognitive Bias

The exercise here is brain training. Our cognitive biases often trend towards seeing more positive or more negative. When you get in the rut of negative mindset, you tend to see the negative in all situations and overlook the positive. When you trend towards positive, a small negative situation may roll right off of you, or not even register as significant. Your brain is a filter, and you can change your filter and choose your bias. A really powerful example of this filter effect can be seen here: link Training yourself towards a positive cognitive bias has three notable consequences: happiness, gratitude and optimism. 

Failing Forward

Here we go with mindset again! Growth mindset. You want it. If you view bad situations as wholly negative, that is all they will be for you. If you choose to view them as opportunities for growth, that is what they will be for you. Mr. Achor talks about counterfacts as an operative exercise to practice failing forward. As you consider each situation, there are multiple different ways to interpret- counterfacts. Typically these counterfacts either cast a positive light or negative interpretation of the situation. Whichever you choose to believe is either going to allow you to grow forward, or slide you into a negative mindset and cognitive bias.    

Sense of Control

Your sense of control over your life has a direct impact on your health, happiness, wellness, productivity and satisfaction. Feeling as though you lack control has a negative impact on those things, and feeling as though you do have some authority over the outcome of your life positively impacts those things. The wrinkle here is that we cannot control those around us, and sometimes their actions will have a significant consequence on our circumstances. But you can always control your reaction to those consequences. And when you focus on the aspects you can control, and do so intentionally, you maintain an overall sense of control. 

Hacking Habit Builds

Our habits can be fuel towards happiness or unhappiness. But if you’ve lived a few years on this earth, you’ve probably experienced the struggle in building positive habits and breaking bad habits. While there are a plethora of books delving deep into the science, strategy and theory behind habit building, a quick and easy hack is to run a self-assessment of the behaviors and conditions that are involved in the habit, and increase obstacles when you are trying to break a habit, and decrease obstacles when trying to build a habit. For example: You want to get up early and go to the gym for a workout. One of my greatest obstacles in any morning routine is getting dressed- I hate finding the clothes, making an outfit and getting dressed. It seems like an insurmountable task when I’m still fighting to stay conscious. So, if I want to build the habit of early morning workout, I could lay out, or even put on my workout outfit the night before. Using this strategy for habit building requires planning and celebrating small wins and progress, and slowly moving the progress forward, accordingly. If you focus on only the end result, instead of smaller wins of progress, one incident of failure can quickly become “I failed at this habit” instead of “I failed at this attempt. (See also: Positive Cognitive Bias and Failing Forward)

Social Investment

If you only pick one of these principles to master, this one has the greatest payoff! More reliable in predicting happiness than salary, age, race or gender, strong social relationships is your winner! It directly impacts your ability to identify growth opportunity, your positive cognitive bias, and the amount of investment in happiness (your compound interest return). 

The concept of working on happiness as a skill was novel to me. I think it is a general assumption that happy people are just naturally happy- they don’t have a lot of control over it. They were genetically blessed, or had a great childhood, or whatever excuse you want to give. However, if you analyze their habits and traits, there are many that you can emulate or strengthen, and develop your own quality of happiness! 

The book also impressed upon me how wide reaching and powerful happiness can be in all areas of your life. It’s not a chicken or an egg scenario- happiness brings success, well-being, productivity and efficiency, moreso than struggling to achieve those things brings happiness. 

Science says the pursuit of happiness is not frivolous nor unreachable. It is within our reach, and given the impact on those around us, one might also consider it a responsibility. 

How you going to start strengthening your happiness? 

Practical Implementation Exercises: 

1. Compound interest of happiness: Identify your signature strengths. Utilize one of each day for one week. Try to use it in a new way each day. 

2. The relativity of mindset: Take some time to consider how your job has meaning. This can be meaning for those you work with, for clientele, for the world at large. Find a way to remind yourself daily of this meaning before your shifts.  

3. Positive cognitive Bias: Each day find three things you are grateful for in your day. You can increase the positive effect by choosing someone to involve in this practice, both for accountability and to provide another positive perspective. Also, bonus by including someone is that you’ve worked on Principle 7 (Social Investment).

4. Failing forward: Practice your ABCD’s in any scenario that didn’t go as well as you’d like: Adversity: identify the problem. Belief: What is your reaction to the event? If your first reaction is negative, take some time to find a counterfact that is positive. Consequence:  How can you use this experience to grow? Disputation: If your first reaction (belief) was negative, remind yourself that your reaction is a belief, not a fact. Now, challenge it. Identify evidence for and against it. 

5. Sense of control: Take five minutes each day to work on a problem that has been aggravating you. You are never committed to more than five minutes. But always do at least five minutes. 

6. Hacking habit builds: Identify a habit you want to build (may I suggest Exercise 3?!). Brainstorm about what you see is the most likely to derail your practice of this habit. Identify how you could remove or minimize that obstacle, and implement your idea. Repeat as often as needed! 

7. Social investment: Get in the practice of capitalizing on good news. When someone shares good news with you, respond positively and enthusiastically to their news, but also continue the conversation with comments and follow-up questions. You increase the benefit of the positive event (Principle 1, Compound Interest) as well as build a deeper social connection! 

Additional resources:

1. Free Character Strengths Test
2. Understanding How Much Our Mind Filters
3. Growth Mindset