Selma Chrifi Alaoui - Communication and Development

Part 2 of the happiness advantage further explains the seven principles. The Tetris Effect is the third of those principles. The author begins this part of the chapter by giving the very simple analogy: someone who plays a game (the author gives a personal anecdote of his related to Grand Theft Auto) for hours and hours on end suddenly starts seeing it wherever they go and whatever they do. They start dreaming about it, working it around their daily lives, and become obsessive. Their brain makes everything connect somehow with the pattern they’re used to, the game in this case. In the same way, our brain can become stuck in a certain pattern that we are used to, and it becomes difficult to view the world in any other way that the one that it has been repeating incessantly. This pattern is not only the result of being obsessed with a game, but it can be caused by something as impactful as our profession. The author shares research that shows that people who have professions where t...

The Happiness Advantage ’s First Part speaks of the difference that happiness makes in our everyday life, and especially on our successes and failures. The author suggests that statistically, people who are happier are more successful, and not the other way around. His argument and his research is based on college students, with a case study at Harvard University, which showed that students that had not experienced excessive amounts of stress during their studies had the highest grades and were the most successful in their college careers. He then sets up the model for “success and achievement”, reducing it to seven elements: First, as the name of the book is called, “the Happiness Advantage”, which entails training the brain to focus on the positive to boost work efficiency; “The Fulcrum and the Lever”, which involves training our mindsets to see the world and experience things positively; the “Tetris Effect”, which stops the brain from focusing on stress and on what can go wrong...

In the Fifth Part, the author argues that the main, central and only question that one should ask about his or her own life is: “Do you want to be happy?”. Meaning no matter the circumstances, the external factors and the choices that we have made or not made, none of it should be questionable except the decision to be happy or not. What the author means by wanting to be happy is that you would truly want to be happy no matter what happens, no matter the tragedies and difficulties in your life, because giving happiness certain conditions means that you would never truly be happy. Saying yes to happiness has to be unconditional, and it is the best and most direct path to achievement “Awakening”. Life will happen to you, it cannot be controlled. So the question is whether you would be able to stay happy, regardless of any events, and whether you will be able to enjoy life just because you’re living it. The author says to make it a game, because if you stay happy no matter what life thr...