3. Agree to disagree. You will not agree with all nine secrets the first time you read them. That’s okay. Expect to disagree. But remember you have the power to slowly let new ideas into your brain whenever you like. A hundred years before neuroplasticity became a buzzword, American philosopher William James said, “Plasticity, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence but strong enough not to yield all at once.”
2. Change your scenery. Reading this book cover to cover in one night is fine. But if you change your scenery, you’ll get more out of it. A chapter in the buzzing airport, a chapter at the beach, a chapter in bed before flicking off your lamp. Our brains are stimulated by different air, smells, and sounds. Everywhere you read the book you’ll get something different from it and you’ll more easily recall the lessons. Carry this book as you’re moving.
1. Create a seven-day challenge. Any time you read an idea in this book that you want to try, give yourself a seven-day challenge. Write down every day in your calendar for seven days “Do X” and then try to do it. If you can do it for seven days, you just proved you could do it for seven days. Then you can do it for another seven days. Then it becomes a habit. Aristotle says, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The Happiness Equation is the result of an unrelenting search, over more than a decade, to hack human happiness. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of positive psychologists, dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs and thousands of personal interviews.
Turning to a wide range of sources – from the Buddha to Vonnegut and from Hitchcock to Home Alone – Neil Pasricha focuses on one life-changing question:
What is the simplest formula for a happy life?
This book has the answers.
The Happiness Equation will teach you:
And much, much more.
Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a Walmart executive, a New York Times-bestselling author, and a husband and dad. After selling more than a million copies of his Book of Awesome series, he now shifts his focus from observation to application.
“I’m blown away by The Happiness Equation. Neil’s nine secrets will improve how you think, how you feel, and how you act! All in two hours. Read this book—it’s the best twenty dollars you will ever spend!”
—KEN BLANCHARD,
coauthor of The New One Minute Manager and
Refire! Don’t Retire
“When Neil Pasricha talks, leaders of all levels and backgrounds stop what they’re doing … and listen.”
—HOWARD BEHAR,
former president, Starbucks Coffee
“Dale Carnegie was last century. Stephen Covey was last decade. Neil Pasricha is what’s now. The Happiness Equation is a two-hour ticket to changing your life!”
—SUSAN CAIN,
author of Quiet and cofounder, Quiet Revolution
“This book does one of the best jobs I have ever seen in explaining happiness! While everyone else implies that happiness is ‘out there,’ Neil points out that it is really ‘in here’!”
—MARSHALL GOLDSMITH,
coauthor of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
“This lighthearted and compelling book presents commonsense suggestions for achieving happiness that will most definitely motivate new rituals and change habits in your life.”
—STEVE REINEMUND,
former Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, and former Dean, Wake Forest University School of Business
“Neil Pasricha is a life coach for the next generation! In The Happiness Equation, he makes happiness attainable by using scientifically proven habits that require low time investment and reap massive rewards!”
—SHAWN ACHOR,
author of The Happiness Advantage
“With simple effortlessness, Neil renders complex ideas easily memorable and everyday practical. Disarmingly written, memorably fun, and unstoppingly useful. Reading it made me immediately want to give it to everyone I know!”
—COL. CHRIS HADFIELD,
former Commander of the International Space Station and author of The Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
“Neil’s new book The Happiness Equation is a treat, an enticing journey that helped me identify and overcome the obstacles we all set on our path to happiness. His playful writing comes across as friendly advice without the painful refrain of artificial rules that typically characterize so-called self-help advice.”
—FRANCESCO CEFALU,
Director of Development, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
“The Happiness Equation has great information that will lead to tremendous changes in both your professional and personal life!”
—TONY HSIEH,
CEO, Zappos, and author of Delivering Happiness
“The Happiness Equation shows you how to live life on your own terms. A dazzling and highly useful action book I’ll be giving to everyone I know!”
—DUNCAN MAC NAUGHTON,
former Chief Merchandising Officer, Walmart
“How is it possible for subtle, nonjudgmental lessons to hit you on the head like the proverbial ton of bricks? I’m not sure how he did it, but Neil Pasricha is the modern-day master of what it means to live intentionally. I loved this book!”
—CHRIS GUILLEBEAU,
author of The $100 Startup
“Neil has a way of creating a moment in time and shares many unique lessons on how you can live a happier more purposeful life. His ability to connect with his readers is not only impactful but transformational. In The Happiness Equation he offers intimate lessons on how you can live a truly rich life in a way that is tangible and fun. Happiness and freedom are free and attainable—and this book helps light the path!”
—BRUE POON TIP,
Founder and CEO, G Adventures, the largest adventure travel company in the world, and author of Looptail
“Ready for world-class happiness? This powerful book is your mighty guide.”
—ROBIN SHARMA,
author of The Leader Who Had No Title
“The awesome Neil Pasricha turns his keen powers of observation and his extensive experience in leadership building to the subject of happiness. Clear, practical, and thought-provoking, The Happiness Equation reveals how all of us can live happier lives.”
—GRETCHEN RUBIN,
author of The Happiness Project
“With self-effacing humor and disarming honesty, Neil shares insights gained from his own personal experiences, in a book you simply can’t put down. Whether you relate instantaneously to his stories or engage from a distance, his simple rules stick with you. They are clear beacons guiding the way to a more conscious and fulfilled life.”
—AMEE CHANDE,
Managing Director, Alibaba UK, and Board Member,
World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts
“Neil joined the Audi Executive Team across the United States and his happiness lessons were the highlight of the show, engaging dealer associates, and invigorating the audience. He is always on point, thought-provoking, and receives near-perfect ratings. Listen to him!”
—PETER DONNELLAN,
Director, After Sales, Audi of America
“The Four-Hour Work Week meets The Happiness Project in The Happiness Equation—an incredible book that gave me time-saving tips in the first few minutes and a genuinely happier life by the end. Neil is the master of happiness. Buy this book!”
—BILL MARSHALL,
cofounder, Toronto International Film Festival
“The interactions, trust, healing, laughter, camaraderie, sadness, and vulnerabilities that come with taking care of patients are gifts to be enjoyed and appreciated. Sadly, the prism where we can see these qualities becomes rapidly clouded. There is a real role for Neil’s work within health care. The more penetration his philosophies have, the more satisfaction, quality, and longevity we’ll see.”
—DR. MARK SHAPIRO,
Sharp HealthCare
“Neil Pasricha has done it again! With his bestseller The Book of Awesome he shared the observation of awesome. And now with The Happiness Equation he shifts to the application of awesome. Prepare yourself before reading. Nobody has hacked happiness like this before!”
—FRANK WARREN,
author of PostSecret
“Being happy is the biggest challenge in life. The Happiness Equation is full of reminders of ways we know we can increase our happiness and also supplies wholly new approaches based on scientific research and common sense. It feels like Neil is talking to you. The secrets are simple, and Neil’s explanations and enthusiasm make you want to start practicing all of them immediately.”
—BARBARA ANN KIPFER,
author of 14,000 Things to Be Happy About
“Neil Pasricha takes us on a journey of incredible self-discovery. Easy to read + practical solutions = the best happiness book ever written.”
—JIM THOMPSON,
COO, Walmart China
“Neil Pasricha has created the Handbook for Life. Every day we are faced with a barrage of inputs that deflect us from being present with the things that really matter. The things that make us happy. Page by page, Neil weaves beautiful anecdotes into simple secrets for everyday life. The result: we are given the tools to sort perspectives and information in a way that allows us to see the goodness that the real world holds for us. Bravo, and thank you.”
—DAVID HAY,
former Managing Director, Merrill Lynch
“You know that wise friend you have? The one you call when you need hope, perspective, and someone to give you permission to do and think the things you know are best for you? Reading this book is like having wine with that friend.”
—DREW DUDLEY,
CEO, Nuance Leadership
“If you want to live your dreams now—not in five, ten or twenty years—then buy The Happiness Equation today. It is impossible to read this book without making changes that lead to living a more fulfilling life. Even if you’re in your eighties like me!”
—ROBERT WRIGHT,
former Chairman, Teck Resources
“Neil has masterfully distilled happiness. Both beautiful and pragmatic, Neil’s treatise elicits tears of acknowledgment and awakens the dormant reverie of a happier future.”
—JORDAN AXANI,
CEO, Triplust
“I’ve spent my life on the math of relationships, but this book entails the science of something I never covered at OkCupid: a person’s relationship with himself. It’s an excellent guide to making that relationship the strongest and happiest it can be.”
—CHRISTIAN RUDDER,
cofounder, OKCupid, and author of Dataclysm
“Be happy first. These three words are so counterintuitive that most of us don’t know what to do with them. Neil does.”
—SETH GODIN,
author of What to Do When It’s Your Turn
“Want to get happy? Steal everything you can from this book.”
—AUSTIN KLEON,
author of Steal Like an Artist
I HAVE SPENT more than a decade developing leaders.
I have had incredible experiences speaking about leadership to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, eating dinner with royal families in the Middle East, sharing stages with Harvard deans, and consulting on leadership to organizations like Audi, Viacom, and GE. I have worked as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, interviewed billionaires, and worked directly for two CEOs at the world’s largest company.
But after years successfully helping people lead teams, lead businesses, and lead organizations, something slowly dawned on me.
Hardly anyone was happy.
Every conference lunch was filled with conversations about struggling to find balance, feeling too busy, and keeping up with others. So many leaders said they didn’t have space in their lives, were stressed about time and money, and felt burdened with endless decisions and conflicting advice. Even the greatest leaders in the world—even billionaires, even Fortune 500 CEOs—were all plagued with dramatic crises on a daily basis. Fiery cauldrons of stress were bubbling in their heads and stomachs.
I also realized I wasn’t happy myself.
I was searching for simple models to decide what to do, searching for structure to relieve stress, and searching for guidelines to steer me through tough decisions constantly bogging me down. I thought about all the times I felt guilty not getting work done, burned out after a crazy week, or struggling in messy mental states for days navigating tough choices.
Looking back, I can’t believe how much time I wasted.
Being happier is the biggest challenge you face every single day at work. Same if you’re a stay-at-home mom, studying through school, or traveling abroad. Teaching and training your brain to stay positively focused while navigating the bumps of life is something we’re not taught at school. I mean, have you ever taken a course called “How to Be Happier”?
For the past few years, I have led workshops every summer with high school students who are brought together for the entire month of July for a world-class enrichment camp. These students have the highest grades in their schools, participate in the most clubs and teams, and are all destined for Ivy Leagues. They love the program because they get to meet and spend time with people like them. I do the workshops because I was lucky enough to attend when I was in high school.
What started organically, with no notes and no slides, has slowly evolved into a talk I give called “9 Secrets to a Happier Life.” And at the end of my talk I open up to questions. I am always surprised by what is asked. The students don’t have questions about getting better grades, getting into the best schools, or landing the highest-paid jobs. They know they can do all that. Everything they ask comes from a desire to be happier.
“How much money do I need to retire?” “What’s the best way to handle criticism?” “How do I get more done with less stress?” “How do I find my true passion?” “How can I cure my anxiety?” “What’s the best way to achieve more inside and outside work?” “What do I do when everyone gives me different advice?” “How can I become a more positive person?”
The sessions are illuminating because they show how some of the smartest kids around don’t care about developing brainpower or technical smarts. They want contentment … freedom … and happiness. They want to want nothing … do anything … and have everything.
They just want to live happier lives.
So don’t you think every college, university, and library would be full of courses and advice on how we can become happier? On how we can make decisions that spur ourselves into positive action every day?
When I asked a hospitality CEO if he knew a book, model, or website that actually helped people navigate and simplify their most challenging decisions so they can live with contentment, freedom, and happiness, he said, “That book doesn’t exist. It would be like asking every high-powered executive, successful person, and positive leader to distill all the personal mental models they’ve created over their lives into one book. Nobody has ever done it.”
I know this is true because I’ve been searching for a practical book with real frameworks on leading myself to happiness for years. I wanted something beyond stories about generals, parables about penguins, and research studies with data pointing any which way. I wanted real, I wanted practical, I wanted clear. I wanted an action book that I could use every day.
This is that book.
Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
—LAO TZU
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
— SENECA
You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
— STEVEN WRIGHT
LET’S START OFF with some bad news.
The happiness model we’re taught from a young age is actually completely backward.
We think we work hard in order to achieve big success and then we’re happy.
We think the scribble goes like this:
Study hard! → Straight A’s! → Be happy!
Interview lots! → Great job! → Be happy!
Work overtime! → Get promoted! → Be happy!
But it doesn’t work like that in real life. That model is broken. We do great work, have a big success, but instead of being happy, we just set new goals. Now we study for the next job, the next degree, the next promotion. Why stop at a college degree when you can get a master’s? Why stop at Director when you can be VP? Why stop at one house when you can have two? We never get to happiness. It keeps getting pushed further and further away.
What happens when we snap “Be happy” off the end of this scribble and stick it on the beginning? Then these important six words look like this:
Now everything changes. Everything changes. If we start with being happy, then we feel great. We look great. We exercise. We connect. What happens? We end up doing great work because we feel great doing it. What does great work lead to? Big success. Massive feelings of accomplishment and the resulting degrees, promotions, and phone calls from your mom telling you she’s proud of you.
Harvard Business Review reports that happy people are 31% more productive, have 37% higher sales, and are three times more creative than their counterparts.
So what’s the first thing you must do before you can be happy?
Be happy.
Be happy first.
Being happy opens up your learning centers. Your brain will light up like Manhattan skyscrapers at dusk, sparkle like diamonds under jewelry store lights, glow like stars in the black sky above a farmer’s field.
American philosopher William James says, “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.”
The Happiness Advantage author Shawn Achor says, “It’s not necessarily the reality that shapes us but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.”
William Shakespeare says, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
SHAKESPEARE SAYS, “FOR there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” But if it’s just thinking, plain thinking, why can’t we think ourselves into a good mood whenever we want? Seems like we should be able to just flip a mental switch.
But we all know it’s not that easy. Sometimes our brains get focused on negative things. We can’t stop! I do this all the time. And you want to know a secret? Everybody does. Every single person gets stuck focusing on the negative sometimes. I’ve spoken on stages with the best-known motivational speakers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and political leaders from around the world. Do you know what they’re all doing backstage? Freaking out. Sweating. Thinking something might go wrong.
We all have negative self-talk. There is no such thing as an eternal optimist. There are people who feel optimistic, but those people have negative self-talk, too. And that’s okay. The problem isn’t that we have negative thoughts in our brain.
The problem is we think we shouldn’t have negative thoughts.
But why do our brains focus on negative things? Once we understand this we can learn how much we can control and make conscious efforts to be happy using proven techniques.
This is one of the most important things I can share with you.
Why is it so hard to be happy?
Because life was mostly short, brutal, and highly competitive over the two hundred thousand years our species has existed on this planet. And our brains are trained for this short, brutal, and highly competitive world.
How short, brutal, and highly competitive was it?
Let’s do a quick experiment.
Stop, close your eyes, and picture the last time you felt completely alone in the middle of nowhere.
Was it camping in the mountains when you walked away from the fire and stood on the jagged edge of a mirrory lake? Was it a misty waterfall you found on a field trip when your classmates disappeared and all you could hear was the wind rustling the leaves in the forest canopy? Was it jogging at sunrise on a sandy beach when you curled around the coastline and suddenly couldn’t see anyone for miles in any direction?
Picture yourself back in that scene.
Now mentally erase from our planet all of the following:
You are now standing alone in the middle of the planet with none of those things. Take your phone out of your pocket and toss it away. Take your shoes and shirt off, too, because they don’t exist. Take everything off. You are completely naked with nothing around. None of those things exist. And none of them will be gin to exist before the end of your life!
Now close your eyes, picture yourself there, and remember that:
99% of our history was living in this world.
99% of our history was with a life span of thirty years.
99% of our history was with brains constantly battling for survival.
Life was short, brutal, and highly competitive, and we have the same brains now that we’ve had throughout our history.
Were we happy back then? The better question is: Did we have time to be happy?
David Cain, author of This Will Never Happen Again, describes this exact situation on his website Raptitude: Getting Better at Being Human:
If one of our ancestors ever actually became happy with his possessions, with his social standing, or with what he had accomplished in life, he would suddenly be in a particular kind of danger. There was no cradle of civilization to depend on if something went wrong. So survival required us to make our own safety nets. Having enough could never feel like enough, or else we’d become complacent, leaving us vulnerable to predators, competitors, and bad luck. Lasting happiness was too risky.
This instinctive need for what we don’t yet have creates in us a persistent state of dissatisfaction. Without it, our ancestors would always be only one failed hunting session away from starvation. This simple, ruthless script is programmed to drive survival at all costs. It works exceedingly well for this purpose, but it leaves us feeling stress and unpleasantness much of the time. Unhappiness is nature’s way of keeping people on their toes. It’s a crude system, but it has worked for thousands of years.
We have the same brains we’ve always had through this short, brutal, and highly competitive time in our history. Our brains didn’t just suddenly change when we got printing presses, airplanes, and the Internet. How have our brains been programmed?
What did this fear do? It drove our survival. We survived at all costs. We were paranoid. We were fighters. We were ruthless. We were brutal. We were murderous. And because of it … we got here. And because of it … we took over the planet. And because of it … we have everything in the world.
So this begs the question: Is that fear still programmed into our heads today?
YES, THAT FEAR is still programmed into our heads.
It’s everywhere, it’s between our ears, it’s in our brains.
Tom Hanks, one of the world’s most successful actors, who earns millions with every movie and has scored two Academy Awards, said, “Some people go to bed at night thinking, ‘That was a good day.’ I am one of those who worries and asks, ‘How did I screw up today?’”
Andy Grove is the longtime Intel executive who helped transform the company into a multibillion-dollar success. He was believed by many to have helped drive the growth phase of Silicon Valley, was named Time’s Man of the Year in 1997, and was idolized by Steve Jobs, according to Jobs’s biography. How did he famously put it? “Only the paranoid survive.”
Our brains still follow this paranoid model every day, and it is a recipe for unhappiness! Some call it Medical Student’s Syndrome. That’s a term Jerome K. Jerome first coined in his 1889 classic, Three Men in a Boat: “I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of ‘premonitory symptoms,’ it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
“I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that, too—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight …”
It’s not just medical students. We’ve all been there.
We scan the world for problems because that led to our survival. And our current design of the world only reinforces and grows these negative-lens feelings.
At your doctor’s office when you get lab results, the doctor says, “Your blood sugar is fine, your cholesterol is fine, but your iron is low.” What do you do? You talk about getting your iron up. Eat steak! No work is done improving your blood sugar or cholesterol. If cholesterol should be below 200mg/dL and you’re at 195, great! If you’re 205, that’s a problem. Doctors get paid when we’re sick. Shouldn’t we pay them when we’re healthy?
Retail store managers “manage by exception” by staring at morning reports, finding a number below average, and trying to bump it up. If that report says your traffic count is fine, basket size is fine, but checkout time is below average, what does the boss want? Faster checkouts. More cashiers! No work is done improving statistics that are already average.
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