Summary Of Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor, psychological researcher, speaker, author and CEO of GoodThinkInc., an American organization which offers services and seminars to promote improved work performance through positive psychology. Achor argues in his February, 2011 presentation at a TEDx event in Bloomington, Indiana, that changing the formula of success and choosing to live in a world where happiness inspires productivity can be achieved by retraining your brain to be more positive over the course of 21-days.

The content of Achor’s speech claimed that we are wired to believe happiness comes only after we have achieved success in the form of thoughts like "I'll be happy when I finish school", or "I'll be happy when I find a job." He states the formula we are all

I think David Phillips would have also approved of this method or boring people to death with information. Shawn used his speech time wisely by incorporating experiences with statistical data and facts. I thought it was really smart to include the statistical data sources on the slide rather than mentioning them in his actual speech. He used those experiences as examples and ways to highlight his theory’s point. For me the point was really made with personal observations such as when he was at Harvard and then again as a lecturer. He noticed Harvard students were more focused on the stress of the work instead of the privilege of simply being there. As well with most organizations and schools across the 45 countries he traveled to who used the same formula to motivate performance (Achor, 2011). He clearly described the formula did not work because it remained difficult to achieve happiness byway of success when the ‘goalposts of success’ kept changing or moving further away. Though Shawn's presentation was geared toward happiness at work, his examples made his theory applicable to all aspects of