Emma Seppälä > Quotes

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. —Alan Watts1 When”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“1. Live (or work) in the moment. Instead of always thinking about what’s next on your to-do list, focus on the task or conversation at hand. You will become not only more productive but also more charismatic. 2. Tap into your resilience. Instead of living in overdrive, train your nervous system to bounce back from setbacks. You will naturally reduce stress and thrive in the face of difficulties and challenges. 3. Manage your energy. Instead of engaging in exhausting thoughts and emotions, learn to manage your stamina by remaining calm and centered. You’ll be able to save precious mental energy for the tasks that need it most. 4. Do nothing. Instead of spending all your time focused intently on your field, make time for idleness, fun, and irrelevant interests. You will become more creative and innovative and will be more likely to come up with breakthrough ideas. 5. Be good to yourself. Instead of only playing to your strengths and being self-critical, be compassionate with yourself and understand that your brain is built to learn new things. You will improve your ability to excel in the face of challenge and learn from mistakes. 6. Show compassion to others. Instead of remaining focused on yourself, express compassion to and show interest in those around you and maintain supportive relationships with your co-workers, boss, and employees. You will dramatically increase the loyalty and commitment of your colleagues and employees, thereby improving productivity, performance, and influence. These”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Psychologically. If you’re like most people, you probably fall prey to the ebbs and flows of your state of mind. Your moods, not external factors, determine how your day will go. You can be on a beautiful beach yet feel miserable because you are upset at a family member. Or you can be blissful in bumper-to-bumper traffic because you just found out that you and your partner are expecting a child—positive emotions help keep you emotionally balanced regardless of circumstances. How? Research by Barbara Fredrickson8 and others shows that positive emotions help you bounce back from stress much more quickly. By helping you rapidly recuperate from negative emotions, they effectively shorten the time you feel stressed, angry, or depressed and make you generally more optimistic.9”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“•  Relationships. At work, constantly focusing on achievement can increase negative interactions with co-workers, leading to competitiveness, rivalry, and distrust, which further lead to counterproductive work behaviors.17 In personal relationships, it is linked to higher levels of work-life conflict, reduced family satisfaction and functioning, and relationship problems with spouses.18 If you are always thinking about the next thing you want to accomplish, you likely are not as present for your family and loved ones. They inevitably sense that they are not as important as whatever task you are worried about tackling next.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Research shows that, for some, the idea of helping a person who is suffering or in need can feel daunting. One may feel overwhelmed by the situation and wish to get away from it. In her books and TED talk, Brené Brown52 encapsulates this experience with one term: vulnerability. Being faced with another person’s pain is difficult. Being compassionate toward that person may make you feel uncomfortable. It will require you to display deep authenticity, and we’re not used to displaying vulnerability at work. Yet it’s worth it.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“In fact, Bernardi found that periods of silence inserted between tracks of music were much more relaxing than the soundtracks designed to induce relaxation or periods of silence administered without music in between. Physiologically, taking a “silence break” had the most profound relaxing and calming effect. Other studies have found that silence—despite being void of content—can help develop new brain cells.33 It”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“For example, we take our children to the park after work while fitting in a call to a colleague; we attend a meeting while working on our to-do list for the following day; or we post a LinkedIn update as we are having lunch with a friend. When multitasking, we are never fully attentive to what is going on right now—and we lose out on what is happening in that precise moment.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“You may recognize that you purposefully call on it by overscheduling yourself, overcommitting and waiting until the last minute to complete projects—because you depend on anxiety to fuel yourself.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina, along with other researchers who study the impact of positive emotions, have found that happiness brings out our best potential in four concrete ways.5 Intellectually. Positive emotions help you learn faster, think more creatively, and resolve challenging situations. For example, Mark Beeman at Northwestern University has shown that people have an easier time solving a puzzle after watching a short comedy clip. Fun, by easing tension and activating pleasure centers in the brain, helps spark neuronal connections that facilitate greater mental flexibility and creativity.6 It’s no surprise then that multiple studies have shown that happiness makes people 12 percent more productive.7”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Research shows that negative feelings like anxiety and depression, unlike positive emotions, make us more self-centered.17 In contrast, positive emotions boost our inclination to connect with others in productive ways.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Physically. Fredrickson has found that positive emotions improve physical well-being by increasing strength and cardiovascular health as well as by improving coordination, sleep, and immune function. Additionally, positive emotions are associated with reduced inflammation.20 In other words, being happier helps to keep you healthier, even if you work in a high-intensity or stress-inducing environment. In fact, positive emotions speed up recovery from the cardiovascular impact of stress.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“A Good Thing to Remember Most of us identify
with what’s
going on
inside our head.
We take it
to be
truth.
And yet,
often,
it’s not.
Especially,
When it makes us feel
small,
afraid,
less than. Confined,
Controlled,
Constricted,
Conflicted.
Then it’s
Usually
A lie.
That’s
A good thing
to
remember.”
― Emma Seppälä, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos

“CEOs believe that the most important skill needed to navigate today’s complex business world is creativity.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“In the following chapters, I will share empirically validated data demonstrating that the path to long-term success and well-being is often the opposite of what we’ve been taught.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Every day, we have a choice about how we interpret our lives. We have the choice to either focus on what we want and don’t yet have (say, better work habits), thereby feeling down. Or we can focus on what we do have (say, loyalty and integrity). Every one of us has at least one aspect of ourselves (and probably many more!) for which we can be grateful. When we take note of our positive qualities and are grateful for them, we become more self-compassionate—not to mention that we start to see ourselves in a much more realistic and positive light.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, but they make the best of everything they have”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Had R. H. Macy assumed he was not made for business after the first five stores he created failed, he would never have founded the wildly successful Macy’s stores.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“On the other hand, research23 shows that when we are completely in tune with what we are doing, we more fully enjoy that activity. Moreover, being completely present allows us to enter a state of complete absorption that is extremely productive. Think of a time when you were faced with a project you were dreading. You knew it would involve a lot of effort; maybe you kept putting it off. However, once you started—perhaps finally egged on by an impending deadline—you became engaged and the project just flowed. You found that you actually enjoyed the process. You became highly productive because you focused completely on the task at hand. Instead of being stressed about the future and having your attention pulled in different directions, you got the work done and done well, and you were happy to boot.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“These theories of success permeate our culture. They are ingrained in us from the time we attend elementary school (“Don’t daydream!” “Focus!” “Work harder!”). But while these theories are widely popular and appear to make a lot of sense, they are, in fact, incredibly flawed. While some people have attained success this way, they have done so at great cost. In fact, research demonstrates that these theories actually hurt your potential for success and happiness because they lead to a host of negative consequences: they harm your ability to connect productively with others, impede work creativity, diminish your energy, prevent you from performing at your best, and make you less resilient in the face of challenge and failure. Research suggests that you are also more likely to end up burned out, isolated, and suffering from poor physical and mental health.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Scientific findings suggest that calmness helps you conserve mental energy, allows you to exercise self-control without effort, and reduces the power of negative thoughts by providing perspective. HOW”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Research shows that we—especially Westerners, and Americans in particular—thrive on high-intensity positive emotions.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Paradoxically, slowing down and focusing on what is happening in front of you right now—being present instead of always having your mind on the next thing—will make you much more successful. Expressions like “live in the moment” or “carpe diem” sound like clichés, yet science backs them up robustly. Research shows that remaining present—rather than constantly focusing on what you have to do next—will make you more productive and happier and, moreover, will give you that elusive quality we attribute to the most successful people: charisma.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“3. Manage your energy. Instead of engaging in exhausting thoughts and emotions, learn to manage your stamina by remaining calm and centered. You’ll be able to save precious mental energy for the tasks that need it most.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Multitasking, instead of helping us accomplish more things faster, actually keeps us from doing anything well. When you are performing any individual task, if you are able to give it your undivided attention, you will accomplish it far more efficiently and quickly while also enjoying the process.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“•  Join a sports team (a structured activity, yes, but better than nothing!), or take a fun exercise class like pole dancing, trampoline, or trapeze.         •  Engage in games that are fun for you. It could be board or card games, crosswords, or darts. Perhaps you love putting together model airplanes or building with Legos. Consider buying a Ping-Pong or pool table . . . and be careful not to turn that table into another place for competition and über-focus.         •  Find a play partner. Animals and children are always ready to play and laugh. Find opportunities to play with your own children or pets or those of friends and family. Finding”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Diversification can also mean slightly broadening experiential and intellectual horizons.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Here are the six major false theories that drive our current notions of success:         •  Never stop accomplishing. Stay continuously focused on getting things done. To achieve more and stay competitive, you’ve got to move quickly from one to-do to another, always keeping an eye on what’s next.         •  You can’t have success without stress. Stress is inevitable if you want success. Living in overdrive is the inescapable by-product of a fast-paced life. Suffering is inevitable and even necessary.         •  Persevere at all costs. Work to exhaustion; spend every drop of mental energy you have staying on task despite distractions and temptations.         •  Focus on your niche. Immerse yourself in your area of knowledge; by focusing exclusively on your field and becoming an expert in it, you’ll know how to best solve its problems.         •  Play to your strengths. Align your work with your talents. Do what you do best, and stay away from your weak areas. To discover your talents and weaknesses, be your own toughest critic.         •  Look out for number one. Look out primarily for yourself and your interests so you can successfully outperform the competition.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Decades of research have shown that happiness is not the outcome of success but rather its precursor. In other words, if you want to succeed, you have to be more like the French press workers in the basement. WHAT’S”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“5. Be good to yourself. Instead of only playing to your strengths and being self-critical, be compassionate with yourself and understand that your brain is built to learn new things. You will improve your ability to excel in the face of challenge and learn from mistakes.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success

“Perhaps more importantly, when you believe in strengths alone and you aren’t successful—not getting into your first choice university, not getting that job you wanted, not getting the promotion you thought you deserved, not being in a good relationship—you are devastated. You become hopeless because you assume you can’t progress in those areas. Unsurprisingly, research shows that subscribing to the idea of strengths is linked to higher levels of depression,1 probably in part because it leads to excessive self-criticism.”
― Emma Seppälä, The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success