Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Shawn Achor - Page 2

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.

Happiness inspires productivity.

You can study gravity forever without learning how to fly.

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

Happiness is the precursor to success.

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

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.

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

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

The absence of disease is not health.

Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.

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.

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.

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.

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