introduction

BEYOND HAPPINESS

{ If you want to change your life, you first have to change

your reality.

In my fi rst book, The Happiness Advantage, I described the re-

search on how a happy brain reaps a massive advantage in the
workplace. I wrote about how, when we fi nd and create happiness
in our work, we show increased intelligence, creativity, and en-
ergy, improving nearly every single business and educational out-
come. In short, that book was about how happiness comes before
success. This book is about what comes before both. If you want
to create positive change in your life, you fi rst have to change
your reality.
To be honest, I think I’ve learned more about happiness over
the past five years than I did in a decade sitting in labs and teach-
ing in classrooms at Harvard. During this time, I have had the

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opportunity to travel to fi ft y-one countries, speaking at compa-

nies and schools and learning more about this connection be-
tween success and happiness. But each place I visited pushed me
harder. The more I observed, the more I wanted to understand
how we can positively change people’s view of the world to make
them not just happier in the moment but more engaged, more
motivated, more alive—permanently. I wanted to learn how we
could help people not just succeed at certain tasks, or accomplish
certain goals, but reach entirely new levels of success. But over
the course of my travels I also found that it wasn’t enough to study
success and happiness where it was easiest: in a controlled experi-
ment with privileged university students as subjects. I wanted to
test my theories where it was hardest.
So to my mother’s dismay, I was driven to lectures in Venezu-
ela in bulletproof cars to speak with leaders under threats of “ex-
press kidnappings” about the research on resilience. I slept in huts
in Tanzania surrounded by the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen (and
I’m from Texas, so that’s saying something) to hear from people
who had been kicked off their land but who remained optimistic.
I spoke about happiness at a public school assembly on the one-
year anniversary of a mass shooting at the school. In a shanty-
town in Kenya I met with illiterate mothers, one of whom was
determined that her eight-year-old daughter would go to Harvard
someday. I was the positive psychology expert for the Everyday
Matters campaign to see if happiness remains a choice for indi-
viduals with a chronic neuromuscular disease. I worked with the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the midst
of an epidemic of depression, and Freddie Mac in the midst of a
mortgage crisis. My company began working on an ambitious ini-
tiative at Walmart aimed at raising the happiness levels of their

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1.5 million associates who are struggling to make ends meet in

the face of complicated family and educational issues. And I met
with doctors attempting to cure terminal cancer in children at St.
Jude and Boston Children’s Hospitals to fi nd out why sick four-
year-olds are more likely to tell their parents that “everything
will be okay” than the reverse.
At the other end of the spectrum, I was invited to work
with Google and Facebook as they dealt with the confusing in-
flux of wealth that was, ironically, sapping employees of their
engagement and motivation. What did I learn? That for all my
research about the connection between success and happiness, I
was missing something important.
Happiness led to success, true, but what gave someone—
especially someone facing obstacles and hardships—the under-
standing that happiness was possible in the fi rst place? Why did
achievement and happiness seem like a possibility to one person
but impossible to someone else in the same position or situation?
Why did some illiterate mothers believe their children could get
into Harvard, while others couldn’t fathom the idea? Why did
some of the impoverished children in Indonesia create a happy
playtime with only some sticks and string, while others sat bored
and sullen? Why could missing out on a bonus inspire one leader
at a UK fi nancial services company to work better and harder,
while causing another leader at the same company to give up and
stop trying? Why did some people diagnosed with MS suddenly
start training for marathons, while others remained mired in the
belief that they’d lost the ability to participate fully in life?
Soon it became clear. The reason some people were thriving
while others—people in the exact same situation—were stuck
in hopelessness was that they were literally living in different

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realities. Some were living in a reality in which happiness and suc-

cess seemed possible, despite the obstacles. Others were living in
a “reality” where it was not. After all, how could someone expect
to achieve happiness or success when stuck in the mindset that
neither was possible?
I began to realize that if we wanted to create a real, long-
lasting, and sustainable change, we needed to show people how
to fundamentally change their reality—the entire lens through
which they viewed their world.
Of course, there are certain objective facts we must accept
about our lives. Those kids in Tanzania are poor. Those UK bank-
ers did miss out on those bonuses. Those MS sufferers are sick.
But how we choose to look at those objective facts is in our minds.
And only when we choose to believe that we live in a world where chal-
lenges can be overcome, our behavior matters, and change is possible
can we summon all our drive, energy, and emotional and intellectual
resources to make that change happen.
My research over the past five years, coupled with other amaz-
ing research emerging from positive psychology labs all over the
globe, helped me understand what I had been missing: that before
happiness and success comes your perception of your world. So before
we can be happy and successful, we need to create a positive reality
that allows us to see the possibility for both.
This book is the culmination of my research showing that
there is a simple five-step process for raising our levels of success
and happiness by changing our reality to positive.
But to be clear, when I say, “creating a positive reality,” I don’t
mean simply being optimistic. I also don’t mean adopting some
sort of deluded view of the world in which simply wishing for
wealth will suddenly result in a windfall of millions, or simply

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envisioning your cancer disappearing will cure you forever. Th is

is neither positive nor productive. When I talk about a positive
reality, I’m not talking about one in which good things magically
happen by the sheer power of positive thinking; I’m talking about
one in which you can summon all your cognitive, intellectual, and
emotional resources to create positive change, because you believe that
true change is possible.
The consistent ability to create this kind of reality is called
positive genius, and it turns out to be the greatest precursor of
success, performance, and even happiness. In this book I’ll
share five practical, research-based steps to help you raise your
levels of positive genius and, in turn, your rates of success. The
steps are:

1. Choose the most valuable reality : How to see multiple re-

alities and select the one that leads to positive growth.

2. Map your meaning markers: How to identify and chart

the best route to accomplishing your goals.

3. Find the X-spot: How to use success accelerants to pro-

pel you more quickly toward your goals.

4. Cancel the noise: How to boost the signal that points to

greater opportunities, possibilities, and resources.

5. Create positive inception: How to amplify the effects of

a positive mindset by transferring your positive reality
to others.

Before potential, there is a motivation. Before motivation,

there is an emotion. And before emotion, there is your reality.

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This reality is the difference between fleeting happiness and a

permanent mindset that fosters success in every personal and
professional endeavor. The goal of this book is to help you become
a positive genius so that you can achieve true greatness in every
aspect of your life and career.

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