Shawn Achor
Shawn Achor
Shawn Achor is an American happiness researcher, author, and speaker known for his advocacy of positive psychology. He authored The Happiness Advantage and founded GoodThink,Inc. His TEDxBloomington talk "The Happy Secret to Better Work" is one of the 20-most viewed TED talks...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
Shawn Achor quotes about
loss thinking world
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.
thinking anxiety brain
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.
struggle reality thinking
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.
meaningful past thinking
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.
individual-choice giving choices
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.
strong jobs land
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.
mean successful goal
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.
joy strive feels
Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.
finding-happiness ifs hard
It's hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.
forever study gravity
You can study gravity forever without learning how to fly.
meaningful way paychecks
The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.
real views waste
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.
inspire productivity
Happiness inspires productivity.
positivity ideas priorities
The idea of investing in the positivity of employees is often low down on companies' priority lists.