I finished this book in February 2025. I recommend this book 9/10.
Why you should read this book:
This is the book that provides scientific proof and many tactics on how you can improve your happiness at work and at home. The book shows how as a leader, you can improve your team's performance and how you can become the "glue guy" that others will rally around.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
You control and own your happiness. Look for the small stuff.
Take the long view and don't rush your changes.
Your mood affects everyone around you. Be the "Glue guy."
📝 My notes and thoughts
P39. So, how do the scientists define happiness? Essentially, as the experience of positive emotions—pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. Happiness implies a positive mood in the present and a positive outlook for the future. Martin Seligman, the pioneer in positive psychology, has broken it down into three measurable components: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. His studies have confirmed (though most of us know this intuitively) that people who pursue only pleasure experience only part of the benefits happiness can bring, while those who pursue all three routes lead the fullest lives. Perhaps the most accurate term for happiness, then, is the one Aristotle used: eudaimonia, which translates not directly to "happiness" but to "human flourishing." This definition really resonates with me because it acknowledges that happiness is not all about yellow smiley faces and rainbows. For me, happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.
P40. Barbara Fredrickson, a researcher at the University of North Carolina and perhaps the world's leading expert on the subject, describes the ten most common positive emotions: "joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love." This paints a far richer picture of happiness than the ubiquitous yellow smiley faces, which doesn't leave much room for nuance.
P45. The Happiness Advantage is why cutting-edge software companies have foosball tables in the employee lounge, why Yahoo! has an in-house massage parlor, and why Google engineers are encouraged to bring their dogs to work. These aren't just PR gimmicks. Smart companies cultivate these kinds of working environments because every time employees experience a small burst of happiness, they get primed for creativity and innovation. They see solutions they might otherwise have missed. Famed CEO Richard Branson has said that "more than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success." This isn't just because fun is, well, fun. It's because fun also leads to bottom-line results.
P51. Here are a number of proven ways we can improve our moods and raise our levels of happiness throughout the day. Each activity listed below not only gives us a quick boost of positive emotions, improving our performance and focus in the moment; but if performed habitually over time, each has been shown to help permanently raise our happiness baseline. Of course, since happiness is subjective and not the same for everyone, we all have our own favorite happiness booster. Maybe yours is listening to a particular song, talking to a friend, playing basketball, petting a dog, or even cleaning your kitchen.
Meditate.
Find something to look forward to.
Commit conscious acts of kindness.
Infuse positivity into your surroundings.
Exercise.
Spend Money (but not on stuff).
Exercise a signature strength (viasurvey.org).
P73. Just as our view of work affects our real experience of it, so too does our view of leisure. If our mindset conceives of free time, hobby time, or family time as non-productive, then we will, in fact, make it a waste of time. For example, many of the business leaders and Harvard students I work with exhibit the telltale symptoms of the "workaholic's curse." They conceive of all the time spent away from actual work to be a hindrance to their productivity, so they squander it. As one CEO of a telecommunication company in Malaysia told me: "I wanted to be productive because that's what makes me happy, so I tried to maximize the time I spent working. But, as I later realized. I had too narrowly defined what 'being productive' was. I started to feel guilty when I did anything that wasn't work. Nothing else, not exercise or time with my wife or relaxation, was productive. So I never had time to recharge my batteries, which meant that, ironically, the more I worked, the more my productivity plummeted." As we learned in the last chapter, allowing ourselves to engage in activities we enjoy can actually greatly enhance our performance at work. But simply doing them is not enough to get results, just like it was not enough for the hotel maids who only went through the motions and didn't think about all the exercise they were getting. When your brain conceives of family dinner or Sudoku or fantasy football or a phone call with a friend as a "waste of time," it won't be able to reach its inherent benefits. But if you change the fulcrum so that you conceive of such free time as a chance to learn and practice new things, recharge your batteries, and connect with others, you'll be able to leverage the power of that rest time and return stronger than before.
P75. At the leadership training from IDology, the trainers often ask their clients one question: "What identity are you wearing today?" If you're sporting self-doubt, you've undercut your performance before you even begin. So, when faced with a difficult task or challenge, give yourself an immediate competitive advantage by focusing on all the reasons you will succeed rather than fail. Remind yourself of the relevant skills you have rather than those you lack. Think of a time you have been in a similar circumstance in the past and performed well. Years of research have shown that a specific and concerted focus on your strengths during a difficult task produces the best results. You can use this technique in any situation. In charge of making Thanksgiving dinner but worry the food might not turn out as well as you'd like? Focus on the fact that you're good at time management and at following directions. Have to give a big presentation but believe you're a weak public speaker? Focus on how prepared you are, and hope much research you've done on the material. This doesn't mean you should ignore your weaknesses or chant empty affirmations to yourself or take on tasks you can't handle, it just means to focus on what you are actually good at as you walk down the hallway. Remember your signature strengths from the last chapter? Pick one that applies to the challenge at hand.
P79. How does this work? Well, if you can't make actual changes to your daily work, ask yourself what potential meaning and pleasure already exist in what you do. Imagine two janitors at the local elementary school. One focuses only on the mess he must clean up each night, while the other believes that he is contributing to a cleaner and healthier environment for the students. They both undertake the same tasks every day, but their different mindsets dictate their work satisfaction, their sense of fulfillment, and, ultimately, how well they do their job. In my consulting with companies, I encourage employees to rewrite their "job description" into what Tal Ben-Shahar calls a "calling description." I have them think about how the same tasks might be written in a way that would entice others to apply for the job. The goal is not to misrepresent the work they do but to highlight the meaning that can be derived from it. Then, I ask them to think of their own personal goals in life. How can their current job tasks be connected to this larger purpose? Researchers have found that even the smallest tasks can be imbued with greater meaning when they are connected to personal goals and values. The more we can align our daily tasks with our personal vision, the more likely we are to see work as a calling.
P85. Naturally, the Pygmalion Effect can be a very powerful tool in the business. So if you are a leader, whether of 3 people or 300, remember that the power to affect results rests not just in who's on your team but how you leverage your team. Every Monday, ask yourself these three questions: (1) Do I believe that the intelligence and skill of my employees are not fixed but can be improved with effort?; (2) Do I believe that my employees want to make that effort, just as they want to find meaning and fulfillment in their jobs?; and (3) How am I conveying these beliefs in my daily words and actions?
P93. Being stuck in these patterns might well make someone very successful in a particular aspect of his or her work. Tax auditors should look for errors. Athletes should be competitive. Traders should apply rigorous risk analysis. The problem comes when individuals cannot "compartmentalize" their abilities. And when that happens, not only do they miss out on the Happiness Advantage, but their pessimistic, fault-finding mindset makes them far more susceptive to depression, stress, poor physical health, and even substance abuse. This is the essence of a Negative Tetris Effect: a cognitive pattern that decreases our overall success rates. But the Tetris Effect need not be maladaptive. Just as our brains can be wired in ways that hold us back, we can retrain them to scan for the good things in life—to help us see more possibilities, feel more energy, and succeed at higher levels. The first step is to understand just how much of what we see is solely a matter of focus. As William James once said, "My experience is what I agree to attend to."
P102. The more you involve others, the more the benefits multiply. When the CEOs in Africa brought the activity to their children, they not only discovered more things to be grateful for but were also held more accountable for keeping up with the exercise. Several of the CEOs told me that whenever they had an especially terrible day at work and tried to skip writing down Three Good Things, their children would refuse to eat dinner until the exercise was completed. this kind of social support greatly increases the chance that these positive habits will stick. That's why I tell business leaders to do these exercises with their spouses as they fall asleep at night or have breakfast before they leave for work. A bonus: As they become more skilled at picking up on the positive all around them, they start to become better at seeing the things to be grateful for in their marriages as well. Furthermore, these exercises work as well with kindergartners as with college students and as well with middle managers or small business owners as they do with captains of industry and Wall Street analysts. It's not your age or what you do for a living; it's the training and consistency that count.
P120. The best leaders are the ones who show their true colors not during banner years but during such times of struggle. While a leader's natural reaction to financial crisis might be to lay low and wait for things to pick up, the Wall Street Journal stresses that this is the exact wrong approach; instead, managers should redouble their efforts, because "crisis can be catalysts for creativity." Leaders who become paralyzed by the obstacles in front of them miss this great opportunity. Helplessness will drive down not just their own performance but also employee well-being and their company's bottom line. On the other hand, leaders who find themselves energized by challenge and motivated by failure reap all kinds of amazing rewards.
P126. So the next time you catch yourself feeling hopeless—or helpless—about some snag in your career, some frustration at your job, or some disappointment in your personal life, remember that there is always a Third Path upward—your only task is to find it. And above all, remember that success is not about never falling down or even simply about falling down and getting back up over and over like I did in the Helping the Elderly experiment. Success is about more than simple resilience, It's about using that downward momentum to propel ourselves in the opposite direction. It's about capitalizing on setbacks and adversity to become even happier, even more motivated, and even more successful; it's not falling down; it's falling up.
P131. One of the best places to understand the effect of locus of control on performance is in the world of sports. Think about how the best athletes act in those ubiquitous post-game press conferences. Do they blame their losses on the sun for getting in their eyes or the referee for making bad calls? Do they attribute wins to their horoscopes or lucky streaks? No. When they win, they graciously accept the praise they receive, and when they lose, they congratulate their opponents on the job well done. Believing that, for the most part, our actions determine our fates in life can only spur us to work harder, and when we see this hard work pay off, our belief in ourselves only grows stronger. This is true in nearly every domain of life. Research has shown that people who believe that the power lies within their circle have higher academic achievement, great career achievement, and are much happier at work. An internal locus lowers job stress and turnover and leads to high motivation, organizational commitment, and task performance. "Internals," as they are sometimes called, have even stronger relationships—which makes sense given that studies show how much better they are at communicating, problem-solving, and working to achieve mutual goals. They are also more attentive listeners and more adept to social interactions—all qualities, incidentally, that predict success at work as well as at home.
P136. Regaining control, one circle at a time. Zorro Circle:
1) Write down your worries.
2) Identify what's in your control.
3) Write a small goal to make things move forward.
P138. Unfortunately, when it comes to our work, we are often faced with unreasonable expectations—both those we set for ourselves and those others set for us. But when our goals are unrealizable, we run the risk of ending up like that overreaching marathoner—frustrated, dejected, and stuck. In today's result-obsessed workplace, it's no wonder we're impatient and overly ambitious. We want to be the top salesman or earn the highest bonus or have the biggest office—and we want it NOW. If we hire a new CEO, we're expected to be profitable the next quarter; if we hire a new head coach, we're expected to win the very next game. Our reality TV culture, which tells us that change isn't worth making (or televising) unless it's immediate and Olympian in size, doesn't help either. We are taught to believe that total makeovers of the house, body, and paycheck are possible all in a 30-minute episode (minus commercials). But in the real world, this all-or-nothing mindset nearly guarantees failure. Furthermore, the feelings that result from frustrated attempts and overwhelming stressors hijack our brains, jumpstarting that vicious and insidious cycle of helplessness that puts our goals even further out of reach.
P152. The point is that whether it's a strict diet, a New Year's resolution, or an attempt at daily guitar practice, the reason so many of us have trouble sustaining change is because we try to rely on willpower. We think we can go from 0 to 60 in an instant, changing or overturning ingrained life habits through the sheer force of will. Tal thought telling himself he was on a diet would be enough to keep him away from his mother's chocolate cake. I thought telling myself to follow some spreadsheet would discipline me enough to practice the guitar. Well, that worked...for four days. Then, I went back to regularly scheduled programming.
P158. When Ted arrives at 7 A.M., the first thing he does is open his Internet browser. His home page is CNN, so he starts reading up on the day's breaking news. His intent is to scan the major headlines and move on, but invariably, he ends up clicking through the other links that catch his eye. Then, without even thinking about it, he opens two different websites where he checks his stocks and investments to see how they fared overnight. Next, he checks his e-mail, which will continue to stay open throughout the day, alerting him every time he receives new messages. Once he wades through his inbox, clicks on a couple more links and attachments, and fires back a few responses, he's ready to get to work. Sort of. Turns out, Ted generally gets about 30 minutes of real work done before he takes a quick coffee break, then he sits back down at his computer, where he can't help but notice that his home page has a whole new batch of headlines to scan. And what's this? Ten new e-mails? He'd better read them, then he checks his stocks, again, just to be sure financial Armageddon hasn't kicked in. Finally, Ted refocuses and gets into a groove with a new marketing plan...which lasts for about 10 minutes until his concentration is broken again by the arrival of new e-mails. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "And so it goes."
P167. Subsequently, in talking to athletes and non-athletes worldwide, I hear the same from both: Something weird happens in the human brain when you put your athletic shoes on—you start to think it is easier to just go work out now than to "take all this stuff back off again." In reality, it's easier to take off the shoes, but your brain, once it has tipped toward a habit, it will naturally keep rolling in that direction, follow the path or perceived least resistance. This isn't just about getting yourself to exercise. Think of the positive changes you want to make at your job and figure out what it would mean to "just get your shoes on" at work. The less energy it takes to kick-start a positive habit, the more likely that habit will stick.
P169. The first rule was this: Every day, before he walked through the conference room doors, he had to think of one employee he could thank for something. Then, the second rule was: Before he started the meeting and anything else could get in the way, he had to publicly thank that person. A simple sentence would do, and then he could move on to the rest of the meeting as planned, without the myriad choices hanging over his head.
P184. The better we feel about these workplace relationships, the more effective we will be. For example, a study of over 350 employees in 60 business units at a financial service company found that the greatest predictor of a team's achievement was how the members felt about one another. This is especially important for managers because, while they often have little control over the backgrounds or skill sets of employees placed on their teams, they do have control over the level of interaction and rapport. Studies show that the more team members are encouraged to socialize and interact face-to-face, the more engaged they feel, the more energy they have, and the longer they can stay focused on a task. In short, the more the team members invest in their social cohesion, the better the results of their work.
P191. A popular manager at a top 100 law firm once told me that he set out to learn one new thing about a co-worker each day, which he would then reference in later conversations. The social capital he invested in each day paid out in increasingly large ways as his employees felt more connected to both him and the firm. Of course, this does take effort on the front end. In the interview with Fast Company, one CEO and former head of a venture capital firm acknowledged that "to maximize the value that one gets from relationship, one has to give a great deal. I spend a fair amount of my time making introductions, providing referrals, providing connections, and generally engaging with the breadth of the community to benefit the business and personal lives of others.