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Grade 7：A Lecture about ‘The Happiness Advantage’

April 9, 2018

Grade 7：A Lecture about ‘The Happiness Advantage’

On Thursday the 29th of March, a volunteer named Ben Yang, co-founder of Kingdom Education, gave the Grade 7 students a speech about happiness. He told us about a book called ‘The Happiness Advantage’. He told us that in order to be successful, we have to first achieve happiness. He also told us about 6 practices to do everyday so we can achieve happiness and eventually be successful.

He first said that he was born in the US and went to the UK to attend boarding school when he was 12. Then when he grew up he went to Hong Kong to be an investment banker. He and his brother started investing in companies, and they made so much money that when he was 45 years old and his brother was 40 they were able to ‘semi-retire’. He and his brother then spent one year doing nothing with their lives. One day their parents called and told them that they could not keep on wasting their lives anymore. So he and his brother founded Kingdom Education, a summer school directed towards sports.

After talking about himself he started talking about the book, ‘The Happiness Advantage’. Shawn Achor, the book’s author, applied for Harvard when he was 18. At first, he just did it so he could try, but after a few weeks, he got a letter from Harvard telling him that he has been accepted. He was very surprised and excited because he had just got chosen to study in one of the best universities in the world. He ended up staying at Harvard for 12 years: first doing his undergraduate degree, then a graduate degree, and then even becoming a professor there.

While working there he started examining many of his students. He found that there were two kinds of students. There were students with positive mindsets who were always happy and had a lot of friends and good grades. There are also students with negative mindsets, who tended to have fewer friends and have bad grades. This was his impression. He believed you had to be happy before you could be hardworking and successful. He then came up with 6 things to do everyday for 3 weeks that would make you happy.

The presentation ended when Mr. Yang told us that happiness is the key to achieving success and more happiness, and he hoped that we would all have positive mindsets in the future. We benefited a lot from the lecture and wish to put some of these ideas into practice.

(Written by Chenchen Li Supervised by Miss Chen)