Tom Rath

“When I speak with people who love their jobs and have vital friendships at work, they always talk about how their workgroup is like a family.”

“If my colleagues stop eating donuts and are more active, it saves me money on next year's insurance premium, and I get to work with people who have more energy and creativity each day. Yet most organizations fail to make health a cultural priority. Instead, they treat healthcare like any other expense.”

“'StrengthsFinder 2.0' is an effort to get the core message and language out to a much broader audience. We had no idea how well received the first strengths book would be by general readers - it was oriented more toward managers - or that the energy and excitement would continue to grow.”

“I first found out I had cancer on my eye and lost an eye to this disease when I was 16, and I've since had cancer in my kidneys and pancreas and a host of other areas.”

“What we've learned is that if you can make the right decision in the supermarket aisle, it's a heck of a lot easier to make a good decision when you reach in your cupboard when you're craving a snack at eight o'clock at night.”

“If a school makes an effort to provide kids the right foods and help them to be more active, this benefits the student and the family's health. If you embark on a program to improve your health with a church or community group, you are more likely to stick with it over time.”

“It's tempting to work more than 60 hours a week and sacrifice sleep, not move, and eat bad foods as they are convenient. But this comes with a cost.”

“What works for one person's needs is almost always very different from the next.”

“I've seen people be effective, even among local teams, by offering something that improves wellbeing in a small way - people who get passionate about smart investment strategies and managing finances for retirement, for example.”

“When top scientists and psychologists talk about what's important to our overall wellbeing and how satisfied we are with our lives, the only thing that they all agree on is that social relationships are probably the single best predictor of our overall happiness.”

“Every day, I read about new ideas and research that could help someone I care about live a longer and healthier life.”

“I think the term 'friend' itself has lost almost all of its exclusivity. Even the term 'good friend' is overused. Adding the word 'vital' provides a clear definition of what we mean.”

“The real energy occurs in each connection between two people, which can bring about exponential returns.”

“People with high levels of wellbeing have been careful to work out early in the morning and not to have heavy meals throughout the day because you kind of fall off a cliff in terms of your energy by 2 or 3:00 if you have a lunch with a lot of heavy foods.”

“When we build on our strengths and daily successes — instead of focusing on failures — we simply learn more.”

“When you ask people about what they enjoy doing, time spent with the boss is even worse than time spent cleaning the house. So this suggests that there are a lot of leaders out there who are not doing an adequate job.”

“Leaders need to be thinking constantly about what they're doing to create a basic sense of security and stability throughout an organization.”

“Regardless of your age, you can make better choices in the moment. Small decisions - about how you eat, move, and sleep each day - count more than you think. As I have learned from personal experience, these choices shape your life.”

“The most important thing executives can do is send a very clear message to their employees that they care about each person's overall wellbeing and that they want to be a part of helping it improve over time.”

“There's a conventional wisdom that says that strategic thinking is much more important than relationship building, which doesn't seem to be nearly as highly valued as it should be, based on what some of the leaders that I've spoken with have said to me.”