The latest research on happiness is that the most successful business people, entrepreneurs, doctors and workers are happy first. In fact, happiness, optimism and joy can dramatically improve your professional achievement, if that’s important to you.
• Doctors put in a positive state before diagnosing show 3x more intelligence and creativity & make diagnoses 19% faster than doctors in a neutral state.
• Optimistic salespeople sell 56% more than pessimists. 
• Happy students far outperform their peers on tests.1
Being happy, joyful and optimistic can radically improve the quality of your life. Happiness and optimism can be learned by anyone and applied immediately.
Optimists live seven years longer than pessimists, according to a study done at Yale University analyzing 600 people. Those who viewed aging from a positive perspective live on average 7.5 years longer than those who did not. So you can add nearly a full decade to your life by having a sunnier perspective!
Optimism has substantial health benefits. How’s your breathing? Do you have asthma or frequent bronchitis? A study at Harvard found that optimists have significantly better lung function. Changing the way you feel about things may help you to breathe easier, literally.
Given the economic pressures many areas of the world have encountered recently, how does optimism play out at work? No matter what the economy is doing, there are always certain people who thrive.
Dr. Martin Sullivan of the University of Pennsylvania spent 20 years interviewing 350,000 executives and learned something fascinating: the top 10% performers think differently from others: they are all optimists! That’s a pretty amazing statistic. So if you want greater success, achievement, and effectiveness at work, become a more positive thinker.
1 (Data from the book The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor)