reaction paper 6

The last part of the Happiness Advantage talks about the Rippler Effect. The author starts by showing through a story that real change needs to start with ourselves first, and the best way to do is through following the 7 principles that he has described throughout the book, not individually or by applying some of them, but by adopting them all. They are all interconnected with each other, and following each principle makes following the others even easier. He claims that following the 7 principles is the ultimate way of reaching the Happiness Advantage, after which change will start to ripple out from ourselves to the world around us. He explains this by the simple fact of human nature that pushes us to mimic what we observe. He gives the example of a study, in which people were paired together with one given the instruction to smile at the other, and the latter was instructed to keep a neutral face. The result of that was that people overwhelmingly returned the smiles, no matter what personal state they were in. Another example that he gave was one he observed during a rugby match, where a player on the screen was hurt in a specific spot on his body. The author observed that everyone in the bar where the match was broadcasted instinctively touched the same spot on their bodies and expressed similar sounds and facial expressions of pain.

What the author describes is something that I think everyone can relate to. For example, in my case, when I hear verbal accounts of something physically painful that happened to someone, I also physically feel a slight pain in the same spot, and sometimes it literally hurts to keep listening to stories like that. It also happens whenever I see someone crying, where I would feel my eyes begin to tear up as well.

I think it is a very telling sign that whatever you project onto the world is what the world will project to you. This is why I always try to spread positivity whenever and wherever I can, I try to smile and say hi to everyone, even if I do not know them. With strangers, some might find it strange that I would smile at them, but most of the time I get a smile back. In Ifrane, everyone is friendly, but back when I was in Paris, I got a lot more of those weird looks.

This book has taught me a lot, and using what small efforts I already try to make, it has become a goal for me to succeed in applying all the principles mentioned, and to try to achieve what the author calls the Happiness Advantage.