Reverse Bucket List

Arthur Brooks is a Harvard professor, Ph.D. social scientist, #1 bestselling author, and columnist at The Atlantic who specializes in using the highest levels of science and philosophy to provide people with actionable strategies to live their best lives. Brooks provides happiness training and professional development to businesses, academia, government, and faith communities based on cutting-edge research in social science and neuroscience, as well as philosophy and wisdom traditions.

Brooks is the author of several groundbreaking books, including Love Your Enemies, From Strength to Strength, and the soon-to-be-released Build the Life You Want with co-author Oprah Winfrey. 

If you are unfamiliar with Brooks' work, we encourage you to enter into this conversation by watching this 15-minute TEDx talk and learn about his "reverse bucket list" approach. Then dive deeper into his website, books, podcast appearances, articles, and blog posts. 

Looking for stable and steady satisfaction? Divorce yourself from the cravings for money, power, pleasure, and fame - those are the bad four. Pursue the good four instead - faith, family, friends, and meaningful work. 

Delivering Happiness

Legendary Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh, started a customer service revolution when he made "delivering happiness" the most important measure of success for an online shoe retailer long before internet shopping was widely accepted. 

In his book by the same name, Tony explains how intentional culture creation within an organization creates the foundation for delivering happiness to every stakeholder and the ways in which he and his team stayed focused on this effort. Furthermore, Tony shares his beliefs that you should never outsource your one thing. 

While some of these concepts seem self-evident, Tony was a pioneer in leaving the boardroom theory talk and moving into practical, daily action and culture architecture. Delivering Happiness is a quick read that challenges conventional norms and provides practical steps that any organization can take to start on their culture building-journey. 

The Happiness Advantage

Shawn Achor is one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on mindset made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED Talk one of the most popular of all time with over 25 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. 

As detailed in his book The Happiness Advantage and his TED Talk, Shawn explains how only 25% of job successes are predicted by your IQ while 75% are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support, and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat. 

Shawn's work flips our broken view of managing success and happiness upside down to no longer see achieving a goal as the key to success. Instead, he spotlights the need to raise somebody's level of positivity in the present to create a Happiness Advantage - - where your brain performs significantly better than a brain that is negative, neutral, or stressed. The Happiness Advantage increases creativity, energy, and intelligence, all of which lead to improved business outcomes and higher dopamine levels.  

Shawn's book and TED Talks are great culture-building resources for any organization.