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
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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
In his article "In Pursuit of Happiness: Better Living from Plato to Prozac," Mark Kingwell describes how there has been many debates on the meaning of happiness for many years yet still a singular, justifiable definition eludes society. The pursuit to define and understand happiness has invited several debates, questions, arguments, and suggestions alike. In 1996, a hand full of genetic and behavioral studies suggest evidence that one’s achievable degree of happiness is genetically decided, with evidences showing that no achievement will change your happiness, you are either happy or you’re not. Some studies demonstrated a correlation between dopamine levels in the brain and expressions of personal satisfaction, while others indicated that
Brooks utilizes personal emotional appeal to his audience that creates relatability to Kathy Fletcher and David Simpsons. The couple lives in a house consisting of “small bedrooms” yet they still manage to accommodate everybody that is welcomed to their home. Brooks give the idea that the couple are average, yet managed to do a tremendous task. These children refer to Kathy and David as “Momma and Dad,” showing that they represent what they didn’t have and it creates a relationship between the children and Kathy and David. The children are also “unfailingly polite” and “turn toward one another’s loves” proving that they are now part of a family and they began to rely on each other like a family does.
As Tim O'Brien discusses Curt Lemon's death, he effectively highlights the underlying paradoxes of a war story's truths by telling the same story in three accounts that each differ in diction, mood, tone, and sometimes imagery. For example, in the first paragraph, O'Brien utilizes a neutral, objective tone as he briefly lists the events before, during, and after Lemon's death. How so? O'Brien implicates his staunch neutrality in the middle of the first paragraph, where he nonchalantly recants, "He [Curt Lemon] was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead." Here O'Brien seems to be playing with the audience's emotions, as he intentionally uses phrases such as "playing catch" and "laughing" to indicate vibrancy and child-like
27/16 O’Brien Synthesis Soldiers fought for many years. They fought through sadness and many fears. They fought with hopes of coming out alive. They fought for peace and for us to be free.
John M. Barry uses pedantic diction and metaphors, to captivate his audience. Barry lectures to his audience about how in the realm of science a person must have the courage to be innovative, Barry states, "To be a scientist requires not only intelligence and curiosity, but passion, patience, creativity, self-sufficiency, and courage" (Barry 6-8). Barry uses scholarly diction to get his point across when inferring about how a scientist must explore the unknown. Barry states, "The less known, the more one has to manipulate and even force experiments to yield an answer" (Barry 66-68). With Barry’s borderline lecturing, he adds in metaphors, which the audience has to then work to uncover its hidden meaning.
Success is something you attract by the person you become. For things to improve, you have to improve. For things to get better, you have to get better. For things to change, you have to change. When you change, everything changes for you.”
In “What We Are to Advertisers” and “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” both Twitchell and Craig reveal how advertisers utilize stereotypes to manipulate and persuade consumers into purchasing their products. Companies label their audience and advertise to them accordingly. Using reliable sources such as Stanford Research Institute, companies are able to use the data to their advantage to help market their products to a specific demographic. Craig and Twitchell give examples of this ploy in action by revealing how companies use “positioning” to advertise the same product to two demographics to earn more profit. Craig delves more into the advertisers ' plan by exposing the science behind commercials.
Amekeco Brooks Jr. The 2016 election was driven by the fear, nostalgia, and bias of the American people, but was it rigged? The President-elect, Donald Trump, felt the election was rigged against him. That idea is nothing more than a baseless theory of Mr. Trump. To rig an election would be no easy task and mistakes are rarely made.
In Happiness: Enough Already, Sharon Begley makes a case for the modern views of happiness and sadness by providing different professional opinions on the the happiness industry, some believe happiness is the sole purpose of life while others believe it is equal to sadness. Jerome Wakefield, a professor at New York University, is approached by many students with complaint concerning their parents’ opinions on dealing with depression, which consist of antidepressants and counseling. Ed Diener, a psychologist, at the University of Illinois, raised to question the idea of a national index of happiness to the Scottish Parliament. Eric Wilson, a professor, at Wake Forest University, tried to embrace becoming happier but ended up embracing the importance
Not only is this physically unhealthy, but sadness can take over an individual's personality and mess with their mental state of mind as well. On the other hand, some people respond to tragedy positively. As a result of thinking positively, some individuals improve themselves and change their lives for the better. In chapter two of The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt discusses this approach through three different methods that include meditation, cognitive therapy, and
In his untitled gun control and gun rights cartoon, Chris Britt establishes an accusatory tone using critical irony and a macabre diction to condemn the national threat disregarded by the Republican Party for ignorantly advocating unregulated licensing of guns. Chris Britt evidently displays, in his work, a frustrated sentiment towards the American federal government, specifically addressing the Republican Party. Deliberately, Chris Britt labeled the gun store as “GOP Guns and Gore” and highlighting that the store is “Open 24-7”. Bluntly, Britt specified “GOP” (“Grand Old Party”), interchangeably corresponding to the Republican Party, to emphasize his personal disdain against their party platform. Indisputably, through irony, Chris Britt exhibits
Personal anecdotes like these allow for the audience to feel as if they can trust the information being set forth by
The United States is made up of some of the most diverse and interesting cultures in the world. Jamila Lyiscott proves this by showing her different dialects and how they are all equally important. Lyiscott believes that the way she speaks towards her parents, towards her friends, and towards her colleagues are all one in the same. Throughout the entirety of her speech, Lyiscott changes up her vocal patterns and dialects so that the audience can understand first hand what each of these dialects are. When she talks about her father, Lyiscott uses her native tongue, when she talks to her fellow neighbors and close friends she switches it up to a more urbanized dialect, and when she is in school she masks the other two dialects with a professional sounding language.
The author Andrew Curry thinks that workers today are unfulfilled because they would rather work a job they do not like and earn more money than work a job that they are passionate about and earn less. He also talks about how people seem to work more than relax in today's age like when he says “instead of working less, our hours have stayed steady or risen.” (Curry, Kirszner and Mandell 399) the evidence that he uses to connect his view is the amount of people who complain about their jobs. Nowadays everyone knows a person that constantly complains about his or her job but they still work that same job because of the financial gain. Many people today hate the job they work but that same job is the reason they have a car, house etc.
Throughout the novel Tuesday’s With Morrie, the author, Mitch Albom, reflects on his Tuesday meetings with his old professor, now consumed with a terminal illness, and, using many rhetorical choices, reveals “The Meaning of Life,” which they discussed profusely and divided into several categories. Topics such as Death, Emotions, Aging, Money, Culture, and more are all discussed in their weekly conferences, Morrie passing his wisdom on to one of his favor students. And Albom, writing about their talks, uses numerous rhetoric devices to discuss this wisdom. As Morrie Schwartz, dying of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), speaks with Albom, the two talk about Death.