Shawn Achor Quotations

We not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy.

Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.

Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success.

You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body.

Positivity is such a high predicator of success rates.

Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.

Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its finite resources as you process the world.

The idea of investing in the positivity of employees is often low down on companies' priority lists.

You spend money on Internet connection for your employees. Why not spend money on the energy that fuels their brains?

Happiness is actually an individual choice, even in the midst of negative circumstances. It's not something our employers can give to us, though they can limit and influence that choice.

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed.

As we got more interested in time management and productivity, we lost the individual, and with that individual loss, we lost happiness as well. So I think the world has actually been malnourished as we've focused so much on productivity and ignored happiness and meaning to our own detriment.

Most people keep waiting on happiness, putting off happiness until they're successful or until they achieve some goal, which means we limit both happiness and success. That formula doesn't work.

Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.

It's hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.

You can study gravity forever without learning how to fly.

The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.

Just as our view of work affects our real experience of it, so too does our view of leisure. If our mindset conceives of free time, hobby time, or family time as non-productive, then we will, in fact, make it a waste of time.

Happiness inspires productivity.

Study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving.

Happiness is the precursor to success.

Happiness is not the belief that we don't need to change; it's the realization that we can.

When a manager openly expresses his faith in an employee's skill, he doesn't just improve mood and motivation; he actually improves their likelihood of succeeding.

Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full. It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective, and successful at work and in life.

Successful people see adversity as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block.

The absence of disease is not health.

One of the most powerful forces in human nature is our belief that change is possible.

..the more you believe in your own ability to success the more likely it is that you will.

Beliefs are so powerful because they dictate our efforts and actions.

If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.

Happiness is a social creature. If you try to pursue it in a vacuum, it's very difficult to sustain it. But as soon as you get people focused on creating meaningful connections in the midst of their work, or increasing the meaning and depth of their relationships outside of work, we find happiness rising in step with that social connection.

When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.

The way we define happiness is the joy you feel striving toward your potential

The best leaders are the ones who show their true colors not during the banner years but during times of struggle.

You can eliminate depression without making someone happy. You can cure anxiety without teaching someone optimism. You can return someone to work without improving their job performance. If all you strive for is diminishing the bad, you'll only attain the average and you'll miss out entirely on the opportunity to exceed the average.

Each one of us is like that butterfly the Butterfly Effect . And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations our families and our communities.

Happiness is such an incredible advantage in our life. When the human brain is positive, our intelligence rises, we stop diverting resources to think about anxiety.

Habits are like financial capital – forming one today is an investment that will automatically give out returns for years to come.

The greatest competitive advantage in our modern economy is a positive and engaged brain.

We become more successful when we are happier and more positive.

So many people are struggling to create happiness while their brain is inundated by noise. If your brain is receiving too much information, it automatically thinks you're under threat and scans the world for the negative first. Because the brain is limited, whatever you attend to first becomes your reality.

By changing our mindset and habits, we can actually dramatically change the course of life, improve intelligence, productivity, improve the quality of our lives, and improve every single education and business outcome.

Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed.

[It's] the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

Happiness is a mindset for your journey, not the result of your destination.

Waiting to be happy limits our brain's potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.

Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.

For two minutes a day, think of one positive experience that's occurred during the past 24 hours. Bullet point each detail you can remember. It works, because the brain can't tell the difference between visualization and actual experience. So you've just doubled the most meaningful experience in your brain.

The contents of the glass don’t matter; what’s more important is to realize there’s a pitcher of water nearby. In other words, we have the capacity to refill the glass, or to change our outlook.

Spend two minutes a day scanning the world for three new things you're grateful for. And do that for 21 days, The reason why that's powerful is you're training your brain to scan the world in a new pattern, you're scanning for positives, instead of scanning for threats. It's the fastest way of teaching optimism.