Hacking Happiness
How to Intentionally Adapt and Shape the Future You Want
1. Edition September 2020
220 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Learn to love uncertainty--and shape the future you want
You have a successful life; a professional career, nice home, maybe kids or even a dog, so why are you so damn unhappy? Spread so thin at work, nothing gets the attention it needs; tasked with leading others through rapid change, you're not sure where you're heading yourself. Disruptive technology, catastrophic global events and increasing mental health problems means your secure and linear pathway to happiness no longer exists.
Success today is not about the perfect plan to achieve more, manage change and mitigate risk. Our brave new world is calling us to throw out any rulebook and leap into what we fear most--the unknown.
That's exactly what Penny Locaso did when she turned her life upside-down to tackle our happiness-deficit problem. She emerged as the world's first Happiness Hacker and the inventor of the Intentional Adaptability Quotient(r): a quantifiable method for individuals and organisations to become more skillful at, and even relish, adapting to rapid change.
Welcomed by business leaders worldwide, IAQ(r) catapulted Penny to prominence as a TedX Talk star and faculty member at the acclaimed Singularity University by showing that in our highly disruptive present we must embrace instability and complexity to achieve clarity, purpose, and the sense of meaning that brings real joy.
* Learn how experimentation, danger, and even failure are crucial to happiness and success
* Take courage and focus on what you're avoiding, not what you're missing
* Reskill yourself and others to accept--and even enjoy-uncertainty
* Explore your IAQ(r): focus, courage, curiosity, accountability, connection, experimentation and reflection
This book is an opportunity to look at work and the world through a new lens and see that by surfing on the edges of our comfort zone we--professionals, leaders, everyone--can intentionally adapt to create a successful and fulfilling future.
Gratitude ix
Introduction xi
How to maximise your journey xix
Part I -- The Happiness Poverty Problem 1
1. Why success is a shit sandwich 3
2. Screw the plan; embrace the uncertainty 21
3. From reacting to adapting 33
Part II -- Hack Your Happiness 51
IAQ Skill 1 -- Focus 53
4. Focus: Busy = Bullshit 55
5. Focus: From doing to being 79
IAQ Skill 2 -- Courage 107
6. Courage: Fear is your future 109
7. Courage: Brave discomfort to shape change 131
IAQ Skill 3 -- Curiosity 149
8. Curiosity: Embrace the unknown 151
9. Curiosity: To be, not to do 169
Perfection doesn't live here, practice does 197
Continue your hacking happiness journey 201
Resources 203
Index 207