1. “We want to push the limits of possibility as far as they can go, not limit them in the way too many discouraging bosses, parents, teachers, or media stories tell us they should be limited.” ― Shawn Achor
2. “According to the Roman poet Ovid, the sculptor Pygmalion could look at a piece of marble and see the sculpture trapped inside of it.” ― Shawn Achor
3. “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.” ― Shawn Achor
4. “The most successful decisions come when we are thinking clearly and creatively enough to recognize all the paths available to us, and accurately predict where that path will lead. The problem is that when we are stressed or in crisis, many people miss the most important path of all: the path up.” ― Shawn Achor
5. “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.” ― Shawn Achor
6. “The people who can most successfully get themselves up off the mat are those who define themselves not by what has happened to them, but by what they can make out of what has happened. These are the people who actually use adversity to find the path forward. They speak not just of ‘bouncing back,’ but of ‘bouncing forward’.” ― Shawn Achor
7. “You do not have to be your genes, your childhood, your environment. We can choose how our brain looks at the world.” ― Shawn Achor
8. “When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism.” ― Shawn Achor
9. “Beliefs are so powerful because they dictate our efforts and actions.” ― Shawn Achor
10. “Without action, knowledge is often meaningless.” ― Shawn Achor
11. “The Pygmalion Effect is when our belief in another person’s potential brings that potential to life.” ― Shawn Achor
12. “Happiness implies a positive mood in the present and a positive outlook for the future.” ― Shawn Achor
13. “A quick burst of positive emotions doesn’t just broaden our cognitive capacity; it also provides a quick and powerful antidote to stress and anxiety, which in turn improves our focus and our ability to function at our best level.” ― Shawn Achor
14. “You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body.” ― Shawn Achor
15. “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.” ― Shawn Achor
16. “Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral, or stressed.” ― Shawn Achor
17. “By changing the fulcrum of our mindset and lengthening our lever of possibility, we change what is possible. It’s not the weight of the world that determines what we can accomplish. It is our fulcrum and lever.” ― Shawn Achor
18. “As you might have guessed, it turns out that there is no such thing—in a scientific sense, at least—as luck. The only difference (and it is a big one) is whether or not people think that they are lucky—in essence, whether they expect good or bad things to happen to them.” ― Shawn Achor
19. “Happiness gives us a real chemical edge on the competition. How? Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that not only make us feel good, but dial up the learning centers of our brains to higher levels.” ― Shawn Achor
20. “It’s hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.” ― Shawn Achor
21. “Positive emotions help us organize new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and retrieve it faster later on.” ― Shawn Achor
22. “The greatest competitive advantage in our modern economy is a positive and engaged brain.” ― Shawn Achor
23. “Money can buy happiness, but only if used to DO things as opposed to simply HAVE things.” ― Shawn Achor
24. “The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.” ― Shawn Achor
25. “Successful people see adversity as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block.” ― Shawn Achor
26. “Even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive edge.” ― Shawn Achor
27. “Happiness is not just a mood — it’s a work ethic.” ― Shawn Achor
