The Happiness Track

How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

By: Emma Seppala

Narrated by: Nan McNamara

A leading expert on health psychology, well-being, and resilience argues that happiness is the key to fast tracking our professional and personal success.

Everyone wants to be happy and successful. And yet the pursuit of both has never been more elusive. As work and personal demands rise, we try to keep up by juggling everything better, moving faster, and doing more. While we might succeed in the short term, it comes at a cost to our well-being, relationships, and, paradoxically, our productivity. In The Happiness Track, Emma Seppala, the science director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project, explains that our inability to achieve sustainable fulfillment is tied to common but outdated notions about success. We are taught that getting ahead means doing everything that’s thrown at us (and then some) with razor-sharp focus and iron discipline; that success depends on our drive and talents; and that achievement cannot happen without stress.

The Happiness Track demolishes these counter-productive theories. Drawing on the latest findings from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience—research on happiness, resilience, willpower, compassion, positive stress, creativity, mindfulness—Seppala shows that finding happiness and fulfillment may, in fact, be the most productive thing we can do to thrive professionally. Filled with practical advice on how to apply these scientific findings to our daily lives, The Happiness Track is a life-changing guide to fast tracking our success and creating the anxiety-free life we want.

Full helpful information

This book has a lot of useful information that one can use in a daily basis. The most helpful knowledge that I got from this book was the demystification of the hustle culture. How the pursuit of wealth can be harmful to us and get in the way of a most important goal which is the pursuit of happiness.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to have a balanced lifestyle in a world full of harmful ideals.

A great listen

This book is great for understanding the level of productivity and the pressure is a productivity in a busy corporate environment. Prioritizing happiness, along with understanding what reasons the additional pressures of being Constantly connected but un engaged and how it can impact your emotions and feelings.

Must read -- quick and persuasive

I have been an overachiever and also have been suffering from extreme and debilitating anxiety and depression for last decade.

Loved it a lot. Used to be a person who would dismiss many such books earlier. The author of this book happens to have been a student and professor at my college, so I couldn't dismiss it by thinking --- oh easy to say, she doesn't know what it takes to aim high to achieve greatly and be a part of such overachieving networks it gives you anxiety and depression all the time.

Very well researched and data backed. And I could connect the dots of what she said, and what a 5 year practitioner of Vipassana had said to me (calming body through breath, because even anger can be felt in the body first before the mind).

Highly recommend to feel better about oneself and this book can persuade you scientifically to start a 15min daily breathing practice.

And if you've begun to lose the strength to live anymore, it may give you back some strength as it did for me, and some answers too

WARNING!

Great overall book reviewing the broader strokes of positive psychology. EXCEPT the way the author presents chapter 5, she appears to not understand the difference between Clifton's strengths and Dweck's mindset. The author really does seem to mean a fixed mindset when she writes about the associated dangers, but used the word "strengths" instead of trait or ability. This makes chapter 5 a pretty dangerous misdirection. If you have studied and get the difference, then you'll probably enjoy the rest.

Well Done

Refreshing in a seeming business environment of success or die. The book was an intellectual retreat every business professional should take periodically to touch their humanity.