The Happiness Advantage | Summary

The name of Shawn Achor’s first book is “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work” and it was released in September of 2010. This book was published by Random House LLC and it has remained on the bestseller list for quite some time. This book is responsible for changing the way that people from all over the world conduct their lives and careers. This book starts out with Shawn explaining his experience at Harvard University. He explained how his gratitude for being able to attend one of the best universities in the world caused him to fall in love with the school. Looking back, he was able to determine that his experience at Harvard was significantly impacted by his enormous sense of gratitude for being selected to attend. This insight was partly responsible for the inspiration behind the topics he would chose to research. Shawn points out the fact that Harvard is a very demanding university and most of the students who attend experience a great deal of stress due to these high expectations. A theory was formed and it basically stated that the students who do not have a sense of gratitude for being at Harvard become stressed easier.