TEDxBloomington - Shawn Achor - "The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance"

Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.

His research and lectures on happiness and human potential have received attention in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, as well as on NPR and CNN Radio, and he travels around the United States and Europe giving talks on positive psychology to Fortune 500 corporations, schools, and non-profit organizations.

Achor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a BA in English and Religion and earned a Masters degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics.

Now he is the CEO of Aspirant, a Cambridge-based consulting firm which researches positive outliers-people who are well above average-to understand where human potential, success and happiness intersect. Based on his research and 12 years of experience at Harvard, he clearly and humorously describes to organizations how to increase happiness and meaning, raise success rates and profitability, and create positive transformations that ripple into more successful cultures.

In Shawn's TEDxBloomington presentation, he says that most modern research focuses on the average, but that "if we focus on the average, we will remain merely average." He wants to study the positive outliers, and learn how not only to bring people up to the average, but to move the entire average up.

http://www.aspirantworld.com

About TEDx In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxBloomington, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxBloomington event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

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[ImBuddhaD]

The Law of Attraction doesn't say: 'a positive state of mind will lead to better results due to better focus and internal processes', it says: 'believe something and it will physically materialize'. That's massive pseudo-science and making people believe it doesn't allow them to apply there own abilities to reach their full potential, but rather to trust something fundamentally flawed and unscientific.

I'm a firm supporter of positive psychology and positive thinking, but please keep it real.

[Denise Sisco]

One great advantage to Shawns positive philosophy is the impact it will have on relationships. When you have someone that is negative and pessimistic, it affects everyone around that person. One small change in attitude makes a HUGE difference. It can change a marriage, a family, even a the life of a child.

[Alfie Hollins]

Good vid

[betharlene]

Anderson, I suggest you read more about quantum mechanics AND the law of attraction. You are basing your premise on fewer particles. This is inaccurate so it biases your entire conclusion. Cheers!

[cheekymensch]

The unicorn story illustrated the main point that your brain cannot process 2 things at the same time, and so as she chose the unicorn scenario her brain was not telling her to cry and get dramatic about getting hurt.

[Aryllwind9]

The unicorn story was unnecessary.

[Jaap den Dulk]

Stephen. That is awesome!

[Janice Herrick]

Having seen, heard Shawn Achor twice, I am so happy to learn about positive psychology. What a difference this can make in a life! This guy rocks!

[Stephen Hawkes]

We tried to turn this into a web app to see what it would look like: hapyr.com

[Mark Januszewski]

In fact the Law of Attraction does not state that [yeah, the lazy book & CD peddlars do] ....what it really states is that the predominate thoughts create a demand and the subconscious mind, once that demand is set, spends 24-7 looking and finding the supply to meet the demand and, once the supply surfaces, if we take action, it will manifest. Clearly stated in Haanel's work, really the founder of this idea, is that 'Knowledge does not apply itself.' It's work changing 'blueprints' 100% true

[Coastalgirl38]

Can't wait for physical and social needs to be taken care of to take care of our mental state. He's talking about actually changing the brain pathways. Makes a lot of sense. Going to try it.