SURROUND yourself with a Star System of Positive Influencers

• "The height of your potential is predicted by the people who surround you."
• "The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team." -John Wooden
• "The conclusion of a decade of my work is clear. You can be a superstar; you just can't be one alone. What you need is a star system: a constellation of positive, authentic influencers who support each other, reinforce each other, and make each other better."
• "We need to stop asking 'How many points did you score?' and start asking 'How did you help your team win?'"
• "Whereas negative influencers sap your energy, positive people actually provide energy when you are low, which helps you more effectively solve problems, deal with challenges, and work toward your goals."
• Shawn Achor suggests surrounding yourself with a mix of three types of Positive Influencers:
  • "Pillars are those who are a rock for you in tough times."
  • "Bridges are connectors to new people or resources outside of your existing ecosystem."
  • "Extenders are Positive Influencers who push you out of your comfort zone."

EXPAND your power by helping others lead from every seat

• "Your time and energy are finite, but the demands on them are infinite. You simply cannot meet those demands unless you EXPAND responsibility and the work of leadership to everyone who has a stake in the mission."
• "If we want small potential we should leave leadership in the hands of the 'leaders.' If we want Big Potential we must inspire and enable others to lead from every seat."
• "To sustain change, we must reward and reinforce people's efforts to create change...When people see the fruits of their efforts, it creates a positive feedback loop whereby progress becomes a catalyst for even greater change."
• "Are you helping to improve people's lives with your work, even on the smallest scale? Are you able to connect with people at a deeper level?"

ENHANCE your resources by becoming a Prism of Praise

• "Some people treat praise like a limited commodity...Yet what so many fail to recognize is that praise is actually a renewable resource. Praise creates a Virtuous Cycle—the more you give, the more you enhance your own supply."
• "Instead of praise misers, we need to become Praise Prisms...prisms do not merely absorb or deflect light. By shining it on others, they enhance it and make it more beautiful."
• "Our response to praise is often to either deflect it, whether out of shyness or humility (for example, 'I just got lucky'), or absorb it, out of the misguided belief that it is in short supply. In both cases, the praise is stifled and the light is extinguished before it can have a chance to fully shine. We must find a way to take in the light of praise and refract that light outward."

DEFEND the system against negative attacks

• "Contrary to what many people believe, emotions like sadness, fear, and anger do not obstruct the path to Big Potential. To the contrary: They are necessary and useful...The opposite of joy is not sadness; it is apathy, which is the loss of energy to pursue one's goals."
• "We do not need to despair if we experience fear, anger, or sadness. In fact, they are crucial. They become problematic only when they become imbalanced—when our fear tips into paralysis, when our anger tips into rage, when our sadness tips into despair. The key is to DEFEND ourselves against the forces that conspire to push us over that edge."
• "[W]e found that just a few minutes spent consuming negative news in the morning can affect the entire emotional trajectory of your day; our study revealed that individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning were 27 percent more likely to report their day as unhappy six to eight hours later—it was like taking a poison pill each morning that made all of your efforts, energies, and interactions throughout the day more toxic."
• "By simply getting people to focus their brain for just ten minutes a week on the positives in their life, they were more invigorated, moved more, got more done, and, as a result, were able to leave work earlier."

SUSTAIN the gains by fueling the Virtuous Cycle

• "Objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Without a positive force driving us to continue, we will slow down due to the friction of life and the unbalanced negative influences in our world."
• "Meaning is that 'unbalanced force' that keeps us going, especially in busy or stressful times."
• "Celebration is the oxygen of Big Potential. And if we want to sustain the gains we have achieved, we need to keep breathing it in. We need to remember that whatever seat we sit in, we have the power to create change worth celebrating. The more we celebrate, the more we enrich our lives with meaning. And the more meaning we have in our lives, the more there is to celebrate."