Before Happiness Quotes

“The reason some people see the world so differently from others is that the human brain doesn’t just take a picture of the external world like a camera; it is constantly interpreting and processing the information it receives.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“only when we choose to believe that we live in a world where challenges can be overcome, our behavior matters, and change is possible can we summon all our drive, energy, and emotional and intellectual resources to make that change happen.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“I defined happiness as “the joy we feel moving toward our potential.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“when I say, “creating a positive reality,” I don’t mean simply being optimistic. I also don’t mean adopting some sort of deluded view of the world in which simply wishing for wealth will suddenly result in a windfall of millions, or simply envisioning your cancer disappearing will cure you forever. This is neither positive nor productive.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“All it takes is consciously remembering that we need to include others in our reality.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“if you want to set the tone or mood, make sure you get some of the first words in. Think about it, which meeting would you prefer to attend? One that starts with “Let’s get going because we have so much to do today and a lot of fires to put out” or one that starts with “I’m happy to see you all today—it’s great that we have such a strong team working on these exciting new projects”? Same reality but a very different outlook. Then sit back and watch how people’s engagement and motivation improve in response to your power lead. It’s one of the most effective tools in this book.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“This is a very important study because it shows that when we perceive a reality in which success is likely, that success become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Look around at the people in your office, on the subway, sitting across from you at the cafe. Have you ever wondered if the world you see is the same one they see?”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Before potential, there is a motivation. Before motivation, there is an emotion. And before emotion, there is your reality.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“And only when we choose to believe that we live in a world where challenges can be overcome, our behavior matters, and change is possible can we summon all our drive, energy, and emotional”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“As St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century said it best, “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“As researchers at New York University have found, putting unrealistic, fantastical goals onto a vision board actually makes us feel worse about ourselves because it makes us think we are missing out on life.25”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Of all the things that we think matter to SAT scores, the number of test takers in the room is never one of them. What do you normally think is most predictive of SAT scores? Scores at the school over the past decade? The amount of federal funding received? The percentage of minority students? Socioeconomic class? Nope. The N, or number of test takers. Amazingly, the researchers found a –0.68 correlation between the N of test takers per location and their SAT score, meaning that the more test takers in the room, the lower their SAT scores. And that is a huge effect. A correlation of –1.0 would mean that test takers’ entire SAT score was determined solely by the number of people in the room and that none of it was based upon their intelligence and education. A –0.68 correlation is massive.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: Five Actionable Strategies to Create a Positive Path to Success

“Researcher Richard Wiseman, in his article “The Luck Factor,” says that if you are an apple picker and you keep coming back to the same trees every day, eventually you’re going to run out of fruit.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“In my first book, The Happiness Advantage, I described the research on how a happy brain reaps a massive advantage in the workplace. I wrote about how, when we find and create happiness in our work, we show increased intelligence, creativity, and energy, improving nearly every single business and educational outcome. In short, that book was about how happiness comes before success. This book is about what comes before both. If you want to create positive change in your life, you first have to change your reality.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Success, then, is not just about how much intelligence you have; it’s about how much of your intelligence you believe you can use.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“One of my favorite studies found that if you memorize sets of positive, neutral, and negative words, then sleep for seven to eight hours, you will remember around 80 percent of all three lists a day later. If you miss a night of sleep and stay up for thirty-six hours as I did, you still remember most of the negative and neutral words, but you remember 59 percent fewer positive words!20 This is because your brain interprets a lack of sleep as a threat to the central nervous system, then goes on high alert, scanning the world for additional threats—that is, negatives.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“That was a brilliant reminder that looking at the world from the vantage point of other cultures can open us up to all kinds of ideas, possibilities, and paths to success that we might otherwise have missed.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Yet hundreds of years ago cartographers from Europe decided that Madrid was above Rio de Janeiro and that Australia should be way “down under.” From then on, we have always looked at the world from the same fixed viewpoint.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“Why did some of the impoverished children in Indonesia create a happy playtime with only some sticks and string, while others sat bored and sullen?”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“before happiness and success comes your perception of your world. So before we can be happy and successful, we need to create a positive reality that allows us to see the possibility for both.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“The Cleveland Clinic Foundation funded a study in which one group of healthy volunteers spent fifteen minutes a day practicing “finger abductions,” which are basically like a biceps curl but with one finger.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“and for that, every single one of your direct descendants had to overcome dangers, looks, and sickness long enough to be able to have sex.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

“The primary one among executives, she says, is an inability to rely on other people: when most executives face a massive challenge or stressor, they try to figure out how to solve the problem alone.”
― Shawn Achor, Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change