Neil Pasricha is fixated on a most unfortunate paradox: Work is both the place we spend the most time in our waking lives and the place we are the least happy.

“That’s horrible,” Pasricha tells the CUNA News Podcast. “It means a lot of people are wasting their energy there.”

A Gallup study indicates just one in eight people is engaged with his or her job.

As director of the Institute for Global Happiness, and in his previous role in leadership development for Walmart, Pasricha has made it his mission to improve that ratio.

The chief obstacle, he says, is that people approach their jobs with the wrong mentality.

“It’s not that great work leads to big success, which leads you to be happy," Pasricha says. "It's that being happy leads to great work, which leads to big success.”

Through on-the-job experiences and a deep dive into psychology research, Pasricha—who will deliver a keynote address at CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference in June—discovered people can choose to be happy.

And he points out that happier people not only perform better in the workplace but also engender positivity among their co-workers, breeding even more success.

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