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Copyright © 2010 by Shawn Achor All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN BUSINESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Achor, Shawn. The happiness advantage: the seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work / Shawn Achor.—1st ed. 1. Happiness—Psychological aspects. 2. Work—Psychological aspects. 3. Positive psychology. I. Title. BF575.H27A27 2010 158.7—dc22 2010006621 eISBN: 978-0-307-59156-2 v3.1
To my parents, both teachers, who have dedicated their lives to the belief that we can all shine brighter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This section has been the most fun part of writing this book. I am humbled and excited knowing that every word in this book has been shaped by the people in my life. I hope I have written in such a way that you can still hear their voices. Thank you to my mentor, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar. I remember meeting him at a café in Harvard Square to discuss a new class on happiness. I found him to be a kind, mild, and unimposing man. Little did I know this humble stranger would soon transform Harvard, and my life in the process. It took him only one tall coffee to reorient my entire world, helping me see how my study of religious ethics at the divinity school paralleled the questions asked in the science of positive psychology. He encouraged my growth and forgave my failings. Knowing him is one of my daily gratitudes; for without him, I would not be in this field nor be writing this book today. Thank you to Elizabeth Peterson, one of my former students from the Positive Psychology class at Harvard, who later came to join my company. She, like Tal, is a loyal guardian of positive psychology, believing that it must not only remain a science, but must also be lived. Liz has painstakingly edited every word of this book for a year, and has in the midst of this challenge remained a true friend. Thank you to my mother, a high school English teacher and now college freshmen advisor at Baylor University, and to my father, a professor of psychology also at Baylor, who gave me the twin gift of a love for learning and a love for teaching. I am grateful to my sister, Amy, and brother, Bobo, who have kept the fires burning bright enough to remind me that I still had a home as I traveled nonstop for two years through forty countries. Thank you to Mr. Hollis, who offered his genius as a public high school teacher; he made me fall in love with academia. Thank you to Brian Little, who was the best professor I had at Harvard and who I studied fervently as his Teaching Fellow, trying to learn the art of lecturing from a master. Thank you to Professor Phil Stone for inspiring Tal and me. Thank you to Professor Ellen Langer for letting me join her lab and to learn how to think outside of the norms of what academia expects. Thank you to my literary agent, Rafe Sagalyn, for making this book possible; Tal said he was the best and he was right. Thank you to Roger Scholl at Broadway Books, who believed in this book, and to Talia Krohn at Broadway, who edited this book assiduously and with great insight. Thank you to the Young Presidents Organization for helping me meet so many new friends all over the world from Asia to South America. Thank you to Salim Dewji for arranging my speaking tour through Africa, a lifelong dream. Thank you to Michelle Blieberg at UBS and Lisanne Biolos at KPMG for their friendship and for inviting me into their companies to test our theories. Thank you to John Galvin and Steven Schragis, who started my speaking career, propelling me out of the classroom and into the public with talks at One Day University. Thank you to Michelle Lemmons, Greg Kaiser,