We all want to be more successful.

According to Shawn Achor, the bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage, who had researched happiness for years at Harvard believes that:

1) Success doesn’t bring happiness. Happiness brings success.

Intelligence and technical skills of an employee can only contribute to about 25% of their job success. 75% of long term job success is predicted by optimism (which is the belief that your behavior matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive stress.

2) See problems as challenges, not threats.

3) More work means you need more social support (frie. Giving support is better than receiving.

4) Send a 2-minute “thank you” email every morning.

5) Use the 20-second rule to build the habit.

If you can make the positive habit 20 seconds easier to start, you’re likelihood of doing it rises dramatically.

And you can do the same thing by flipping it for negative habits. Watching too much television? Merely take out the batteries of the remote control creating a 20 second delay and it dramatically decreases the amount of television people will watch.

This article originally appeared on Barking Up The Wrong Tree