A social life seems like something which might interfere with someone’s work life or with their personal health, however, social interactions and relationships play a very big role in the happiness advantage. Achor goes to explain how one’s social life can help with controlling stress and with maintaining happiness in the workplace. Having a social investment means to rely on someone to help you through a situation, whether it is trying to resolve the problem or helping alleviating their stress from a certain situation. Having others around you, family, friends, coworkers, etc, helps with a person achieving the happiness advantage. Being able to talk to someone, having people who can relate to situations, people who can help destress is vital in order to maintain happiness. One thing which I find that my workplace could work is social investment. From experience, I know that talking to some of my coworkers throughout the workday helps me deviate my mind away from the stress I may have from working, however, this is seen as “wasting/ stealing time” away from work. Our manager does not want us to talk to each other if we get any spare time. He wants us to keep moving around, and find other work to do. I feel that socializing during some downtime should not be frowned upon if all other work is done. Socializing may be the only way that someone de-stresses or maintains their happiness advantage.
