Before Happiness: The Five Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

"Before Happiness" is an instruction manual to help you change your own reality and perceptions. Only when you change the lens you see the world through will your behavior – and ultimately your life – change for the better. This can lead to incredible opportunities in your career, and many other powerful benefits.

Now, we should point out that Achor isn't talking about sticking your head in the sand and pretending everything is fine when it isn't. And, he's not talking about just being optimistic about life. It's more than that. He's talking about believing that you have the power to do something about the negative events in your life, or in the world at large.

This is the kind of book we love reading, and love talking about. It's engaging, practical, enthusiastic, and based on the latest science in the field of positive psychology. And once you start it, you won't want to put it down.

You may have heard of Shawn Achor. He's the best-selling author of "The Happiness Advantage", which we've covered in a previous Book Insight. Achor is a Harvard-trained professor who's won over a dozen awards for distinguished teaching. He's a leading researcher in the field of positive psychology. And his TED talk remains one of the most popular of all time.

All of us can learn something from a book like this. The author's five-step approach is practical and useful, no matter who you are or where you're at in life.

So, keep listening to find out why speed is of the essence during times of change, why going to the art museum can help you spot details at work, and how to block out some of the noise of your day so you can focus on the positive.

"Before Happiness" is a fairly quick read. The book is divided into five sections, one for each of the author's five steps. These are, first, choose the most valuable reality. Second, map your meaning markers. Third, find the X-spot. Fourth, cancel the noise. And last, create positive inception.

If you follow these five steps, the author says, you'll do more than achieve momentary happiness. You'll create a permanent positive mindset that encourages success in your personal and professional life.

Before explaining these five steps in detail, the author spends a chapter talking about the science of our brains, and how they perceive reality. He says that the human brain receives 11 million pieces of information every second from our environment. But, our conscious brain can process only 40 bits per second. This means that we have to choose a very small percentage of this information to think about, and must discard the rest. According to the author, if you're able to focus on the positives, you're more likely to succeed.

A key part of this is how you use your multiple intelligences. By this, he means your intelligence – or IQ – your emotional intelligence – or EQ – and your social intelligence. All three of these are important, and they help shape your reality. But one is not more important than the other. Your success and happiness depend on how well your brain knits each of these together.

The next five chapters focus on the author's five steps, which teach you how to create a more positive reality.

Step one is to choose your most valuable reality. This may sound like science fiction, but the author does a good job of keeping this idea grounded in the real world.

Let's go back to the point about your brain processing 11 million pieces of information about your environment every second. In this first step, you learn how to choose the information that will best harness your multiple intelligences so you can reach your full potential.

Start by recognizing that there are alternative realities. Now here's an example of what the author means by this. During the recession of 2008 through 2011, the author worked with many banking and investment firms after they went through a major restructuring. Most employees who still had a job were doing the work of multiple people. They were stressed, disengaged, defeated, and unhappy. The belief that their salaries would keep growing indefinitely had been turned upside down.

But there were some employees and leaders who stayed motivated and engaged. Even through the chaos and uncertainty these people were thriving. Why? Because they were quickest to let go of the old reality and envision a new life for themselves. The author found that, time and time again, the people who embraced a new reality in times of stress and change were the quickest to bounce back.

One strategy you can use to choose your most “valuable reality” is to add more vantage points. By this the author means that you need the ability to see things from multiple perspectives.

A professor at Yale School of Medicine understood the importance of seeing things from multiple perspectives. So, he started taking his medical students to the art museum. His goal was to teach them the importance of perspective, and to train their brains to add new vantage points. This would help them see the world in several different dimensions.

Now, this might sound a bit "out there." But what's interesting is that the exercise helped these future doctors improve a skill that saved lives. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the students who took this class showed a 10 percent improvement in their ability to detect important medical details. There are now over 20 medical schools that require their students to attend similar art classes.

To add more vantage points in your life, go to an art museum regularly. Practice looking at the works from multiple angles and vantage points. Try to notice details that you might have overlooked on a quicker inspection.

The art museum isn't your only option. Do whatever you can to shake up your day and break from your routine. For instance, drive a different route to work, or every day, talk to someone you wouldn't normally talk to. Work on changing your patterns. When you do, you might be surprised at what you see, and who you meet.

When you force yourself to see new perspectives, you build a skill set that can improve your performance, and your brain's ability to create multidimensional realities.

Although there are five steps in "Before Happiness," let's skip ahead to step four because it's so important and relevant today. This one is about boosting your positivity by eliminating noise.

Stop and think about how much noise you experience every day. And we don't just mean noise you can hear. We mean noise as in information and distraction. Noise comes from the outside world, and it also comes from the constant chattering of your mind. When that noise is full of anxiety, worry, stress, fear, and negativity, your chances of success, and your engagement, plummet.

All this noise has another negative effect besides driving you to distraction. It hides or blocks positive signals that you should be paying attention to. A signal is information that's true and reliable. Signals alert you to opportunities, possibilities, and resources you can use to succeed. For example, a signal would be a compliment from your boss on the report you just finished, or even some constructive criticism you can use to improve and grow.

We need to make an important point here. Signals aren't always positive, at least not on the surface. They can be profoundly negative events. But the author says negative events can be positive signals if they inspire action that leads to a more successful outcome. Noise is everything else that keeps you from believing that success is possible. Noise is the self-sabotage or doubts you go through before giving a presentation, or the office gossip that keeps you from focusing on your work.

As human beings, our brains are hardwired to pay attention to negative noise. Thousands of years ago, when the world was a lot less noisy, this negative noise helped us survive. But today, our brains register noise as five times louder than signals. The trick is to figure out what deserves your attention, or, how to tell signal from noise. And, this isn't easy to do. But if you learn how to tell these two apart, you can transform your career and your life. Fortunately, the author has many practical strategies you can use.

First, learn how to identify noise. And there are four ways to do this. For example, if the information is unusable, and your behavior will not be altered by the information, it's probably noise. If the information is untimely, that is, you're not going to use the information right away or it'll be obsolete by the time you do use it, it's probably noise.

If information distracts you from your goals, it's noise. For example, if your goal is to achieve a promotion next month, then checking Facebook while at work is noise.

Last, noise is hypothetical. It's based on what someone else believes could be, instead of what actually is.

So how can you experience less noise? Well, the author's goal is to help you tune out just five percent of the noise you experience daily. One way to do this is to actively disengage from conversations or media that provide information that's unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting – the four criteria you just heard about.

The author has done this in his own life by limiting the amount of TV he watches. He canceled his cable subscription, and took the batteries out of the remote and hid them in the bedroom.

There are many other ways to cut down on the noise in your life. First, try removing the news media links from your computer's bookmark bar. You're less likely to scroll through the news if you have to physically type in the address. You can also do this with any sites you visit regularly that you think are just noise.

Next, don't read articles or watch shows about tragedies that can't or won't affect your behavior. If you listen to music while you work, make sure it doesn't have lyrics.

Now, we should point out that these are completely optional. Many people believe it's important to keep up on the news, and they don't feel like it's "noise" at all. These suggestions don't have to be permanent. You can try them whenever you feel like you need a break from the stimulation and noise in the world.

Limiting your TV and Internet use are just a few of the strategies the author suggests for limiting the amount of noise in your life. But this only reduces the external noise. How do you slow down the noise and chatter of your own mind?

There are three strategies the author outlines here. One of these is to make sure that the worry or fear you're feeling is in proportion to the actual likelihood of the feared outcome.

This might sound a bit complex, but it's really not. Here's an example. Say you're worried about losing a valuable client. Instead of worrying about it all the time, look into that client's past to see how many times they've switched suppliers. If you find out they rarely switch, you still need to give them excellent service. But, it means you don't have to worry that they're just going to up and walk away.

Or, say you're constantly afraid that you're going to catch the 'flu. Research how many people in your area, in your age group, are catching the 'flu. Chances are, when you look into the facts, you'll realize that you're worrying way more than you need to be.

The last chapter in "Before Happiness" is especially useful for people managing teams. Here, the author shows you how to transfer these skills and strategies to other people, like your team or your family, so they can start experiencing a more positive reality. And the keyword here is positive. In this chapter, the author shows you why any strategies to affect a change in behavior have to be rooted in positivity, or they just won't work long term.

So, what's our last word on this book? "Before Happiness" is fascinating, useful, and hard to put down once you start. The author writes with such interest and enthusiasm that we wanted to cover every detail in every chapter here. His advice and five-step approach are valuable for anyone who wants to change their mindset and, in turn, change their reality to one that's more positive and fulfilling.

We really believe that using the tips and strategies in this book will help you see that positive change is possible, no matter where you are in life.
What sets "Before Happiness" apart is that the author goes out of his way to cite brand new, original studies and research. He also cites research from his colleagues that normally wouldn't reach business readers.

All too often, business books cite the same studies again and again. This gets a bit wearing. The research you'll find in here is new, interesting, and very relevant – and we appreciate this approach.

All in all, we have no trouble recommending "Before Happiness." This is a book you won't want to miss.

"Before Happiness" by Shawn Achor, is published by Crown Business.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.

Click here to buy the book from Amazon.