Here is a list of quotes from the book “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor, in which the author argues that happiness leads to success and not the other way around. I’ve written about the concept at length here.
About why happiness is important:
"Waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive, which drives performance upward." -- Shawn Achor
About what the social sciences do wrong when they only look at average behavior:
“You can eliminate depression without making someone happy. You can cure anxiety without teaching someone optimism. You can return someone to work without improving their job performance. If all you strive for is diminishing the bad, you’ll only attain the average, and you’ll miss out entirely on the opportunity to exceed the average. You can study gravity forever, without learning how to fly.” -- Shawn Achor
About a common mistake that smart people make when it comes to happiness:
“Brilliant people sometimes do the most unintelligent thing possible. In the midst of stress, rather than investing, these individuals divested from the greatest predictor of success and happiness: their social support network. Countless studies have found that social relationships are the best guarantee of heightened, well-being and lowered stress, both an antidote for depression and a prescription for high-performance. But instead, these students had somehow learned that when the going gets tough, the tough get going - to an isolated cubicle in the library basement.” -- Shawn Achor
About redefining happiness:
“Happiness is not a belief that we don’t need to change. It is the realization that we can.” -- Shawn Achor
"So how do scientists define happiness? Essentially as the experience of positive emotions – pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. [...] 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." -- Shawn Achor
About the happiness advantage:
“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.” -- Shawn Achor
About the ability to change:
“Since this book is about the Happiness Advantage, it’s more than a little comforting to know that people can become happier, that pessimists can become optimists, and that stressed and negative brains can be trained to see more possibility. The competitive edge is available to all who put in the effort.” -- Shawn Achor
About the evolutionary role of happiness:
“Extensive research has found that happiness actually has a very important evolutionary purpose, something Barbara Fredrickson has termed the 'Broaden and Build' theory. [...] Instead of narrowing our actions down to fight or flight as negative emotions do, positive ones broaden the amount of possibilities we process, making us more thoughtful, creative and open to new ideas. [...] Recent research shows that this “broadening effect” is actually biological; that happiness gives us a real chemical edge on the competition." -- Shawn Achor
About the impact of maintaining good social relationships:
“First, social interactions jolt us with positivity in the moment; then, each of these single connections strengthens our relationship over time, which raises our happiness baseline permanently.” -- Shawn Achor
