Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence“…what you pay attention to — what you rest your mind on — is the primary shaper of your brain.”

“…the default setting of the brain is to overestimate threats, underestimate opportunities, and underestimate resources both for coping with threats and for fulfilling opportunities. Then we update these beliefs with information that confirms them, while ignoring or rejecting information that doesn’t.”

“The brain is good at learning from bad experiences, but bad at learning from good ones…if the mind is like a garden, the ‘soil’ of your brain is more fertile for weeds than for flowers. So it’s really important to plant the seeds of inner strengths by repeatedly taking in the good.”

“If your boss gives you an excellent performance review that contains just one piece of critical feedback in a bucket of praise, you’ll likely focus on that one negative comment. Negative stimuli are perceived more rapidly and easily than positive stimuli.”

“Lasting intimate relationships usually need at least five positive interactions to balance every negative one. People really begin to thrive when positive moments outnumber negative ones by at least a three-to-one ratio, and ideally higher. Negative contaminates positive more than positive purifies negative.”

“You’re not looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses, but rather correcting your brain’s tendency to look at it through smog-tinted ones. And by taking in the good, you become more able to deal with the bad.”

“As you take in a feeling of strength, see if you can let yourself truly become a little stronger. The mind (and brain) takes its shape from what it rests upon, and you’re letting it mold itself around the positive experience that you are taking in.”


For over three decades, Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, management team retreats, seven bestselling books, articles, and blog have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The Clemmer Group is the Canadian strategic partner of Zenger Folkman, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations.