The document discusses how practicing positive psychology principles can help people find success. It outlines research showing that happiness precedes and enables success, rather than merely resulting from it. The key principles discussed include focusing on positive emotions to broaden thinking, finding meaning and engagement in daily activities, using optimism to change one's mindset, and investing in social relationships. Practicing gratitude, kindness, and character strengths can help shift one's outlook. The presentation aims to help people recognize ways to incorporate these principles in their daily lives to improve well-being and performance.

1. Make Happiness a Priority and
Find Success
Presented by
Derek Zuckerman, PhD
Associate Dean for Student Life
College of the Holy Cross

2. Learning Outcomes
 Recognize ways that you can adjust your daily
routine to incorporate positive psychology
principles
 Identify ways to improve your life
 Obtain an understanding of the positive
psychology mentality

3. Presentation Foundation
Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage: The
Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel
Success and Performance at Work.
Archor, S. (2010). The happiness advantage: the
seven principles of positive psychology that fuel
success and performance at work. New York:
Crown Business.

4. The Happiness Advantage
 Relationship between success and happiness
 How many of you believe, “If you work hard, you will
become successful, and once you become
successful, then you’ll be happy” (Achor, 2010, p. 3).
 The formula is broken
 “Happiness is the precursor to success, not merely
the result… happiness and optimism actually fuel
performance and achievement” (p.3).
 “We become more successful when we are happier
and more positive” (p.15).
 “It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to
perform at their best not when they are negative or
even neutral, but when they are positive” (p.15).

5. The Seven Principles
 The Happiness Advantage
 The Fulcrum and the Lever
 The Tetris Effect
 Falling Up
 The Zorro Circle
 The 20-Second Rule
 Social Investment

6. CHANGE is Possible
 “Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need
to change; it is the realization that we can” (p.
24).
 “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
 “Women are not good at math.”
 “I’m just not a funny person.”
 “She’s a born athlete.”
 Brains change with circumstances – World
records
 Must put in the effort

7. The Happiness Advantage
 Definition of happiness?
 “Subjective well-being”
 Measurable components: pleasure, engagement,
and meaning
 “Broaden and Build Theory” – out-of-the-box
solutions
 Prime the brain
 Avoid the undoing effect – “Don’t mess it up, this is
really important.”

8. The Happiness Advantage
(contd.)
 How do you find fun in your daily routine?
 “person-activity fit”
 Meditate
 Find Something to Look Forward To
 Commit Conscious Acts of Kindness
 Buy someone lunch, pay a toll for the car behind you
 Infuse Positivity Into Your Surroundings
 Exercise
 Spend Money (but Not on Stuff)
 Use money to do something as opposed to simply have
things
 Exercise a Signature Strength

9. The Happiness Advantage
(contd.)
 Use as a tool for management
 Encourage positivity – Google, Yahoo, Patagonia
 Recognition and Encouragement
 “Just as important as what you say to employees
is how you say it” (p. 59).
 The Losado Line – 2.9013 is the ratio of positive
to negative interactions necessary to make a
corporate team successful (p. 61).

10. The Fulcrum and the Lever
 “Simply put, by changing the fulcrum of our
mindset and lengthening our lever of possibility,
we change what is possible. It’s not the weight of
the world that determines what can be
accomplished. It is our fulcrum and lever” (p.
65).
 “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”
 Placebo Effect – poison ivy experiment
 “The mental construction of our daily activities,
more than the activity itself, defines our reality” (p.
71).

11. The Fulcrum and the Lever
(contd.)
 Believe in your own ability to succeed
 When faced with a difficult task or challenge, focus on all
of the reasons why you will succeed, rather than fail.
 Believe you can improve these abilities
 Develop a “growth mindset”
 “Work Orientations” – a job, a career, or a calling
 Doctors/Janitors – create a different mindset in your job
crafting
 “Forget about your current job title. What would our
customers call your job title if they described it by the
impact you have on their lives” (p. 80).

12. The Fulcrum and the Lever
(contd.)
 The Pygmalion Effect
 When our belief in another person’s potential brings
that potential to life
 Superman’s cape warning

13. The Tetris Effect