Happiness – it’s something we seek, work and pray for. We want to be happy in our personal lives, be happy and successful in our business lives, but
how do we get there?
For the next 7-8 weeks, we’re going to dive into that subject using Shawn Achor’s book, ‘The Happiness Advantage’, written in 2010. He’s a student, teacher and believer of positive psychology. You can read more about him here. I heard about this book from my friend, Cory Miller. He read it and was so impressed, he bought it for his entire staff, so I just had to get a copy and read it for myself. I read a lot of business books – this one focuses on changing your mindset and looking at situations from a positive perspective instead of negative. A quote from the beginning of the book –
“Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can.”
A freedom we all have is the power of our thoughts. We can choose to begin our day thinking negatively about what will probably go wrong or how we will mess something up, or we can start to put positive thoughts in our heads, making small changes that over time, will bring about a positive change in our lives. In addition to using the 7 principles in his book, for each principle, I’m going to find a scripture or two to go along with his points because I can see faith in Achor’s words (he is the son of a preacher), they just aren’t there in print.
I consider myself a realist and so I like to think of myself as logical—most of the time! So I’m not much for people writing about being positive without putting some solid steps behind it. So I was glad when I found this in his introduction:
“The Happiness Advantage starts at a different place. It asks us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. It is about learning how to cultivate the mindset and behaviors that have been empirically proven to fuel greater success and fulfillment. It is a work ethic.”
I’m no psychologist or researcher, but I am someone who has gone through the book several times and even made notes and I thought what I came up with may perhaps be helpful to some of my readers. So I hope you’ll accompany me the next couple of months while we look at the power of positivity (I first saw this word in his book-nice) and the power of faith and see what we can learn together.