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Before Happiness
Book

Before Happiness

The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

Shawn Achor
Crown, 2013

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Best-selling author Shawn Achor, a psychologist who teaches and conducts education-related research at Harvard University, discusses five basic skills you need to make sustainable positive changes in your life. He explains that happy people live longer and enjoy better health, higher productivity and greater success. These people generally see obstacles as temporary, while unhappy people tend to see roadblocks as permanent. Achor describes how to create an environment conducive to personal happiness that fosters lasting, satisfying change. He offers thorough data to back up his main points and most of his text is interesting, though some readers may find it somewhat academic. Nonetheless, presenting five concrete steps toward achieving happiness is a great practical achievement. getAbstract recommends Achor’s method to busy people who seek actual measures they can take to become happier.

Take-Aways

  • Create a “positive reality” to allow, encourage and enable happiness.
  • That includes trying to experience “positive genius…the greatest precursor of success, performance and even happiness.”
  • Creating a positive reality means developing five basic skills:

About the Author

Shawn Achor wrote the international bestseller The Happiness Advantage. He spent 12 years at Harvard studying happiness. Achor travels the world lecturing and researching. His TED Talk on happiness has 14.6 million views.

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    T. G. 6 years ago
    Great summary. Bought the book.
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    D. C. 6 years ago
    In reply to Ashish Agarwal, I guess the authority tried to highlight the fact you can always see things from a different angle, and it is in your hands to pick up a positive reality that is present in every circumstances.
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    J. W. 7 years ago
    #30DaysOfSummaries "create a positive reality" is what I feel most of this summary, and it can be an effective way to approach success and happiness.