Shawn Achor is the author of The Happiness Advantage and the 21-day happiness challenge. He teaches the life-changing gift of prioritizing positive thinking and just how important placing your focus upon happiness is. You can already imagine reading his quotes can help you turn your mind around.

10 Best Quotes From Shawn Achor

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

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

Only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by IQ, 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support, and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

t’s not reality that shapes us. Rather, it is 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.

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

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.

the key to daily practice is to put your desired actions as close to the path of least resistance as humanly possible. Identify the activation energy—the time, the choices, the mental and physical effort they require—and then reduce it. If you can cut the activation energy for those habits that lead to success, even by as little as 20 seconds at a time, it won’t be long before you start reaping their benefits.

When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.”

I started to realize just how much our interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality.

Simply believing we can fly won’t set us aloft. Yet if we don’t believe, we have no chance of ever making it off the ground.

Who Is Shawn Achor?

Shawn Achor focuses on studying what is called positive psychology, which basically can be summed up in this quote, “If we study merely what is average, we will remain merely average.” Shawn studies how we can maximize human potential and what the secrets to positive change are.

If you are not familiar with the happiness advantage you can read all about it here. This is basically the fact that when we are happy and hold an optimistic outlook our brains, our creativity, and even our productivity level increase.

Not only does this happen but our health increases. Shawn Achor urges people to discover the importance of bringing their mindset to be positive. Since many feel this is not an easy feat he researched and created the 21-day happiness challenge.

5 Habits That Foster Optimism

In the 21-day happiness challenge, Shawn Achor asks participants to chose one habit to use daily for 21 days. Each are researched and proven to train your brain to adopt a more optimistic, happier, and wholesome approach to life.

These habits lift your vibration and are great to integrate outside of the challenge as well. Let’s cover them and you can see if you would like to bring them into your daily life.

Gratitude

Simple, pause and list 3 new things you are grateful for each day. This causes your brain to begin scanning your day and your life for positive input rather than the habitual negative input.

To learn more about practicing gratitude you can even follow Louise Hay’s guided morning gratitude meditation.

Meditation

Shawn Achor asks for only 2 minutes of your day to pause, breathe, and be fully present because it will retrain the mind to let go of negativity more easily and to find better focus. This practice has been long known by yogis and monks but meditation doesn’t just stop at increasing optimism it has numerous health benefits too.

Journaling

Grab your journal and put it on your bedside table because this habit asks you to write one positive experience you have had each day. Why is this so impactful?

Have you noticed that it is common when people are asked about their day, their negative experiences are what they remember the most? This habit rewires the brain to find more meaning in the day and to again search for positive input as opposed to negative ones.

Random Acts of Kindness

This habit spreads the advantage of happiness to others as well. To practice it, it can even be something simple as sending a positive and kind email each day, but this profoundly increases our feelings of social support.

With humans as social creatures, it is important to our happiness and wellbeing to feel supported and connected. Find out more about practicing loving-kindness in everyday life.

Excercise

Each one of us has a sacred physical vessel, also referred to as a human body. Taking only 10 minutes each day to exercise not only boosts endorphins and empowers the immune system, but it ingrains the belief that your behavior matters which then continues to your approach to the rest of the day.