Best 45 quotes of Shawn Achor on MyQuotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happiness inspires productivity.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The absence of disease is not health.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You can study gravity forever without learning how to fly.

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

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

As Harvard Business School professor Peter Bregman advises, 'Don't write a book, write a page...Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well.

Because in life, knowledge is only part of the battle. WITHOUT ACTION, KNOWLEDGE IS OFTEN MEANINGLESS. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part.

Happiness is the joy you feel striving toward your potential

Here was someone who had dismissed most of what I had just been saying as too obvious to even discuss; yet apparently it wasn't obvious enough. I realized that he was the living embodiment of one of the greatest paradoxes of human behavior: Common sense is not common action.

Now I realize that I want Leo to be like my father. I don't just want him to be happy, but also to make everyone around him happier. To not only be creative, but to make everyone around him more creative. To not only be successful, but to make everyone around him more successful. I don't just want him to be a bright light; I want him to make others shine brighter as well.