Shawn Achor

Positive vacations have a significant effect upon energy and stress.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Positivity is such a high predicator of success rates.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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