reaction paper 4

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, and instead focus on possibilities; “Falling up”, which suggests the best way to come out of a situation of failure and suffering; the “Zorro Circle”, which suggests learning to achieve small goas before focusing on bigger ones to avoid getting overwhelmed; the “20-second Rule”, which deals with how we tend to resist to new changes by changing our habits; and finally, “Social Investment”, which stresses the fact that isolation is counter-productive and that investing in social relationships is very important.

This part emphasizes the importance of happiness the same way that the previous reading we had did. The fact that this is so reiterated speaks to me and tells me that happiness really does need to come first, regardless of anything happening in our lives, and that’s how we can be successful. Something else that resonated with me is what the author said about school children who actually liked doing their homework because that homework was a privilege for them.

I know that as Al Akhawayn students, we do feel a lot of pressure and experience a lot of stress because of the heavy workload of the courses we take, despite popular belief in the Moroccan society. In fact, I cannot think of anyone among my entourage who spent their entire college career without a certain period where they were overwhelmed with what their studies and with balancing workload and social life. But when I thought about it, I feel like myself and my friends come from pretty privileged backgrounds, some more than others. The fact that we take our studies for granted might be why we experience stress. Similarly to the school children, I often see that the most successful students are the ones who come from underprivileged backgrounds and can only access the education we have here through scholarships. I think it is important for myself, and for everyone, to learn to appreciate everything we were offered, and to stop seeing our studies as a chore and instead face how lucky we are. More than our education, I think if this is applied to every area of our lives, happiness will be easily achieved.