Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Shawn Achor

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.

I once stayed at a Ritz in D.C., paid for by a client, and when I asked to change rooms because mine smelled of smoke, the hotel immediately found me a better room, then paid for my dinner and drinks and even threw in a free massage to compensate me for the very minor inconvenience.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Positivity is such a high predicator of success rates.

I'd love it if every company could give raises to the average worker for doing good work.

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

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

Not every vacation is equal. And theory - the idea that vacations should increase happiness - doesn't always translate to reality.

The research says that being successful doesn't automatically make you happier, but being happier - being more positive - makes you more successful.

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

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.

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

What we've been finding is people are afraid of happiness. They're afraid of happiness because they think we'll stagnate or we'll be blind: that if I'm happy now, I won't keep fighting as hard. If I'm happy now, I won't push as hard to make a better world. That's what pleasure does. Joy does the exact opposite.

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

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 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.

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.

Positive vacations have a significant effect upon energy and stress.

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

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.

Turnover can be one of the most expensive problems at a company.

We sometimes think that the best doctors are the ones who have the most specialized knowledge or the fanciest degrees, but in fact, study upon study, including one published in the 'New England Journal of Medicine,' show that the best doctors are the ones who also know how to connect with their patients.

Poorly planned and stressful vacations eliminate the positive benefit of time away. The less the stress, the more likely you will experience a positive benefit from the time off. A positive, well-managed vacation can make you happier and less stressed, and you can return with more energy at work and with more meaning in your life.

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

You've probably noticed how when someone says hello or smiles at you, your automatic reaction is to say hello or smile back.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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