"No matter how high your IQ, your emotional intelligence, or your ability to relate to others, if you can’t learn to change your reality, you’ll never be truly inspired. … Let your new reality seep into your subconscious. Once you do you’ll find yourself capable of the kind of inspiration necessary for true greatness."
- Before Happiness, page 231
"Positive geniuses know that to see things others miss we must step back and take a departure from the way we have lived life up to this moment."- Before Happiness, page 227
Achor’s research, and this book, is a strong reminder that yes, it’s up to us to create our happiness, and it’s all about choices. Also, we have the ability (and I would add, responsibility) to spread that to others. He calls this Positive Inception.
Creating a happy life, a happy work environment, a happy team, a happy family doesn’t happen by accident. Research shows us that people who make deliberate choices to notice and to make the changes that move them in the right direction are indeed creating happier ways. It’s about seeing what is possible, and knowing that happiness can be in your reality.
"No matter what goal or challenge you set for yourself, if you want to be able to channel your full range of intelligences toward achieving it, your personal meaning markers should be points on your mental path."- Before Happiness, page 65
Getting to what is truly meaningful (Meaning Markers) and mapping your success route feels quite actionable, doesn’t it? How do we go from wanting success, and desiring a particular outcome, to achieving it? Achor suggests a few ways:
"Positive inception is not just about spreading happiness but about helping others see the reality in which success (and happiness) is possible."- Before Happiness, page 184
Achor describes how to help others tap into their resources. He gives us three strategies for doing so.
Shawn Achor has found the balance between presenting us with a whole lot of science about happiness and sharing stories that make that science real. And, he’s funny too! His strategies in this book give the reader tangible ways to implement some of the experiments he conducted with success. Achor shares his humour and his passion for this topic, and seems committed to helping each of us make our world a little, or a lot, better by creating more happiness.
Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. Shawn has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on happiness made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED talk is one of the most popular all time with over 4 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. Shawn teaches for the Advanced Management Program at Wharton Business School, and collaborates on research with Yale and Columbia University.