The internationally bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential illuminates how harnessing our beliefs can influence our success in the real world. Same world. Different beliefs. Different outcomes. The greatest predictor of your future is the beliefs you hold about the world. In this extraordinary book, world-renowned researcher and author Shawn Achor illuminates how beliefs change the math about what is possible and probable in our lives. And by changing the math, beliefs change our path. Drawing on two decades of research, as well as his work with NASA, the NFL, and over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, Shawn has discovered that the predictive power of beliefs has increased significantly. Beliefs about ourselves, money, the world, politics, faith, and work do more than shape the lens through which we see the world. They shape what happens next. Scientifically speaking, beliefs don’t just reflect reality. Beliefs bend reality. Unfortunately, our beliefs can be empowering or they can be destructive. During what Achor calls the Great Drift, we have seen the staggering rise of the Four Horsemen of the Modern World: burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. We are underperforming our true potential. But there is hope. Stunning new research in this book reveals the seven most predictive “core beliefs” that alter our future health, success, wealth, and education. Scientifically, these core beliefs take the cap off our potential, enrich us, strengthen us, and heal us. Shawn explores the six main ways of changing your and others’ beliefs using research-based strategies he has tested everywhere from Wall Street to impoverished schools in Africa, from Camp Pendleton to Camp David: • The Disaster Elevator: change what part of the brain processes the world. • The Memory DeLorean: change the memory. • Stopping Negative Mantras: change the language. • Creating a Neural Tribe: change the sources. • Starting the Wave: change the contagious actions. • Common Texts, Common Action: change the texts. The Power of Beliefs shows how seven core beliefs predict your present, bend the probability of future success, and, in the modern world, are the key to creating a better life for you and for others. After twelve years at Harvard University, Shawn Achor has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between a positive brain and success. His research has graced the cover of Harvard Business Review , his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 25 million views, and his PBS lecture has been seen by millions. Shawn’s research has taken him to more than 50 countries to work with a wide range of groups, including Marines at Camp Pendleton, every NBA team owner, school children in South Africa, farmers in Zimbabwe, public schools in Flint, Michigan, and over half of the Fortune 100 companies. Shawn is one of only two speakers to ever be invited to speak to the White House staff at Camp David and has worked with two U.S. Presidential Administrations. He is the bestselling author of several books, including The Happiness Advantage , which has sold over a million copies. Chapter 1 The Power of Beliefs Is Ascending Beneath the noise and bustle of modern progress, something unexpected, and quietly extraordinary, has emerged. Scientifically, yet largely unnoticed, the power of our beliefs has been rising steadily for two decades. In the modern world we can now peer inside the brain, edit genes, and teach machines to think, yet we struggle and often fail to find meaning, change habits, and sustain joy. Surrounded by the tools and triumphs of technology like MRIs, SSRIs, and AI, we easily assume that the impact of “mere belief” on our future is fading. But the research tells a different story. Beliefs are the hidden key. Stunning new research reveals just how powerfully our deepest assumptions about the world and ourselves shape our future lives. These “core beliefs,” both empowering and limiting, are now increasingly predictive of our future health, success, and educational outcomes. Beliefs don’t just shape our perceptions; they scientifically change the probabilities of our actions and future outcomes. In short, beliefs change the math about what is possible and probable. By changing the math, beliefs change our path . . . . The Rise of Belief Back in 1955, a Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist named Henry Beecher published a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association that irrevocably changed the field of medicine. In “The Powerful Placebo,” Beecher suggested that “placebos”—fake drugs or interventions that the patient believes are real—create a real and quantifiable outcome change compared to the control group who receives no treatment. In the fifteen studies Beecher performed on more than a thousand participants with different diseases, the placebo group had a positive benefit 35 percent of the time compared t