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The Happiness Advantage (Shawn Achor) - Book Summary

2020-08-09 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 8:01 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, Evidence-based framing

In a Book Club episode on Shawn Achor's The Happiness Advantage, Ali presents the book's case that happiness fuels success rather than following it, and its principles: the fulcrum and the lever, the Tetris effect, falling up and the value of social support.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Is success a product of happiness? Introducing Book Club and The Happiness Advantage

  • ★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series summarising key insights from his favourite books, is on The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. — 00:00:00 · Book Club

00:00:53 — The happiness advantage: the formula backwards, and tactics to raise baseline happiness

  • ★★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor argues we have the formula backwards: success does not result in happiness; happiness is the key ingredient of success. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Research from over 200 studies with over 275,000 participants, cited in The Happiness Advantage, has shown that happiness leads to success in many domains. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor argues that waiting to be happy limits the brain's potential for success, while cultivating a positive brain makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali says he will make another video on the ways research has shown we can make ourselves happier. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Tactics in The Happiness Advantage to raise baseline happiness: meditation, something to look forward to (anticipation is the most enjoyable part of an activity), conscious acts of kindness, exercise, and using a signature character strength. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali says happiness is largely a choice, and there are different things we can do to increase our own levels of happiness. — 00:01:57

00:02:23 — The fulcrum and the lever: mindset, and the 1979 study of men told it was 1959

  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor's fulcrum and lever: our power to maximise our potential rests on the length of the lever (how much power and possibility we believe we have) and the position of the fulcrum (our mindset). — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): In a study cited in The Happiness Advantage, researchers had 75-year-old men live as if it were 1959, when they were 55; after only a week they showed big improvements in appearance, memory and even intelligence. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali says the study of men living as if it were 20 years earlier shows that changing our mindset can bring genuine change in ourselves and the world around us. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor's Tetris effect: the brain keeps looking for patterns to fit to the world; the negative Tetris effect gets stuck in patterns that hurt success, the positive one is trained to look for opportunities. — 00:03:24

00:03:28 — The Tetris effect, and writing down three things you are grateful for

  • ★★ Ali says we can train ourselves into and out of a negative or positive Tetris-effect mindset by repetition, force of will and practice. — 00:03:54
  • ★★★ To start building a mindset that looks for positive patterns, Ali recommends writing down three things you are grateful for every day. — 00:04:23
  • ★★ Ali cites evidence that writing a daily list of things you are grateful for does more for personal happiness than doubling your salary, which he finds mind-boggling. — 00:04:52

00:05:10 — Falling up: three paths after a negative event

  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor's falling up: after a negative event we can end up worse than before, or use adversity and failure to become stronger and more capable than before. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Ali says the ideal way to respond to failures and setbacks is to turn them into a learning opportunity. — 00:05:21

00:05:45 — The social support network

  • ★★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor's research finds that successful people invest in their social support networks and as a result are happier, more productive, engaged, energetic and resilient. — 00:05:51
  • ★★★ Ali says that putting your head down and locking your door against your university friends to work for exams is probably not the best way to succeed, because a strong social network matters so much. (hedged) — 00:05:51
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Research from Harvard on over 24,000 American workers found that people with few social connections are two to three times more likely to suffer from depression. — 00:05:51
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Other studies have found that a poor social support network is as bad for life expectancy as smoking, obesity, high blood pressure and little exercise. — 00:06:20

00:06:38 — Ending: happiness as a key ingredient we can develop

  • ★★★ Ali concludes that we need to see happiness as a key ingredient we can all develop, rather than an outcome or afterthought of success reserved for high achievers. — 00:06:49
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): Shawn Achor writes that happiness is not the belief that we need to change, but the realisation that we can. — 00:06:49

00:07:18 — A bit extra: retakes

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether Ali read The Happiness Advantage on Kindle or on paper, the channel answers Kindle. — creator comment · Kindle

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: happiness advantage · Shawn Achor · Tetris effect · The Happiness Advantage

Also: Albus Dumbledore · Book Club · falling up · Harvard University

Only in the description or credits: Kindle

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