Shawn Achor

“Positivity is such a high predicator of success rates.”

“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.”

“Too many people limit their happiness and success by assuming that taking time off from work will send a negative message to their manager and slow their career advancement.”

“The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.”

“Joy is something you can experience even when life is not pleasurable. Even in the midst of a long run, when your legs are burning, you can still feel joy.”

“Joy makes us want to invest more deeply in the people around us. It makes us want to learn more about our communities. It makes us want to be able to find ways of being able to make this a better external world for all of us.”

“When people exercise, we talk about endorphins, but endorphins are just short-term. The reason why exercise is valuable is it trains your brain to believe, 'My behavior matters,' which is optimism.”

“The greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged brain.”

“To be truly engaged at work, your brain needs periodic breaks to gain fresh perspective and energy.”

“Smart vacations lead to greater happiness and energy at work and, therefore, greater productivity, intelligence, and resilience.”

“If you've ever tried to start up the habit of early-morning exercise, you have probably encountered how easy it is to get derailed by too much choice.”

“Taking a vacation can actually increase the likelihood of getting a raise or a promotion.”

“For me, meditation's hard because I feel like I have developed 'cultural attention-deficit disorder,' where, because we have so much stimulation, I feel like I have trouble focusing on things for very long. So when I try to meditate, my brain gets so scattered.”

“The decision to use recognition as an on-the-spot bonus instead of merely pay increases is a fascinating one, because pay increases can create new mental anchors for how much the person feels happy earning, whereas the social recognition program is ongoing, unexpected, and harder to form a mental anchor around.”

“We know that recognition and intrinsic motivation are important to our success, but the key is finding ways to effectively operationalize them.”

“Traveling the world can be an amazing - and even better - a happy experience. You just have to do it the right way.”

“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.”

“Positive and engaged brains are a company's greatest assets. More than time and even more than productivity, people must be happy.”