SECRET TO BETTER WORK
The Happy Secret to Better Work: TED Talk Annotated Resource List
Ted Talks Analysis:
The Ted Talk that I chose to talk about is Shawn Achor’s The happy secret to better work. The over all talk is about re organizing people’s idea of successful lives and happiness. Achor begins the talk by giving a short story of him and his sister when they were young. He ties this story into how we can use happiness; his sister had gotten hurt but instead of letting her cry and be hurt he told her that no human could land like that and that she must be a unicorn. This new idea that she wasn’t actually hurt but instead a unicorn. This idea leads his sister to not only believe that she wasn’t hurt but also that she was a unicorn which made her happy. The next idea he brings up is breaking the cult average. He says that doctors will mold data to the average and if you fall under the average there must be something wrong with you. He then argues that if we study the average, we will remain average. He wants to use positive psychology to not only study the positive outliers but use those outliers to raise the entire average. Achor states that if we change our lenses from negative to positive we will be able to be much more successful and happy. After he made his claim Achor went into describing his points; he stated that in today’s world we consider our happiness to come from success but this is a losing battle. It is a losing battle because when we are successful we want to be more successful, if we have good grades we want better grades, if we go to a good school we want to go to a better school. The pattern will go on and on and happiness will never be achieved. Achor proposes that we rethink how we see.
happiness; instead of only finding happiness from our success we use happiness to be successful. He believes that if we start paying more attention to the good things around us we will be happy and therefore more efficient and more successful.
Works Cited Book Sources Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Isabella Selega Csikszentmihalyi. A life worth living: contributions to positive psychology: New York: Oxford, 2006. Print This book talks about what positive psychology can do for an individual and their outlook on life. This talk focoues on how a person views things can have a direct impact on their wellbeing, their productivity and, their happiness. Joseph, Stephen, and P Linley. Positive psychology in practice. New Jersey: Wiley, 2004. Print. This book Goes talks about the habits that a person practicing positive psychology would. These habits are some that Achor himself talks about and are habits that I found from other sources as well. Internet Sources "Positive Psychology and the Science of Happiness." www. Pursuit-of-happiness.org. Pursuit of Happiness Inc, 2014. Web. 2015. This website breaks down the method of thinking positively in your life. It discusses the 7 habits of happy people and some of these habits were directly talked about by Achor in his Ted Talk. "The Happy Secret to Better Work." Shawn Achor:. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2015. This is the Ted Talk itself. This talk gave me great insight in to a topic I find incredibly fascinating. I myself try very hard to stay happy no matter what is going on in my life and I am very please to find that not only am I not alone in this endeavor but there is an entire area of study dedicated to it. Reference Sources “Positive psychology.” Encyclopedia of positive psychology. 2nd ed. 2009. Print.
This entire encyclopedia covers all the topics with positive psychology. Just reading a few entries from this book would allow a person to gain enough knowledge to understand this Ted Talk better. Scholarly Journal Article Peterson, Christopher. “Positive Psychology.” Reclaiming Children and Youth 2009: 3-7. Online. This article talks about what positive psychology is all about. Because this particular Ted Talks is about using positive psychology to find happiness having a general idea about what positive psychology is would be a huge benefit.
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