Dr Daniel Archor The Pursuit Of Happiness Analysis

Dr. Achor’s Argument Throughout his talk Dr. Shawn Archor makes several points. He begins by talking about outliers and how we should learn about what makes them so successful instead of deleting them. That leads to his point on society’s “backwards” thinking. What he means by this is that the common school of thought is “if I work harder, I will be more successful. If I am more successful, then I will be happy”. He reasons that this is backwards is because once one reaches their goal, they tend to set another higher goal after the first is met; if success is redefined every time a goal is accomplished and happiness is placed on the opposite side of success then, by that logic, happiness is unachievable. Dr. Archor suggests that there is an easier way to obtain happiness, by retraining one’s brain.
Retraining one’s brain can result in them becoming the beneficiary of the “happiness advantage”. Dr. Achor defines this as one’s brain functioning better at a positive emotion than it does at a negative, neutral, or stressed. He then supports this claim by saying that intelligence, creativity, and energy levels rise and the brain functions 31% better when happy. One way he demonstrates the “happiness advantage” is with evidence from his research that shows 75 job% of …show more content…
Archor made a lot of sense. I know that my moods affect how productive I am and the quality of work I produce. The happier I am, the easier it is for me to do work, and it always seems to be of a better quality. When I am in a bad mood I have a difficult accomplishing much of anything, as a result I am not usually too concerned about the quality of that work. I also really relate to what he said about our “backwards” view of success because when I accomplish something I am happy and proud of myself, but shortly after I usually find discontent in those accomplishments and chase bigger and better ones because then I can be happy with myself and take pride in what I have