Ted Assignment

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

Made by Dzhula Ostap, student 32019

..The more you believe in your own ability to success the more likely it is that you
will.- Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor is an American happiness researcher, author, and speaker known for his
advocacy of his positive psychology. He is well known because of his book The
Happiness Advantage and his Cambridge-based firm Good Thinking incorporation,
that provides consultation, seminars that are based on improving work performance.

Shawn speech about effectiveness of work and happiness was filmed in May 2011 at
TEDxBloominghton. In this exciting and very funny speech he tries to break our
stereotypes and to explain that not happiness depend on hard working, but positive
perception of world make us more productive. Due to his huge experience and lots of
researchers he provide amazing example for every thought.
During the first part of speech, we can notice that Shawn has huge bag of experience in
talking to the public. Usually it is easily to notice that speaker is stressed or nervous, but
in Shown speech I could not notice any note of worrying. His voice was calm and welltempered, with correct intonation, so I felt curiosity of listening him instead of disgust.
What is more, research in the field of linguistics showed that there is a direct correlation
between social status, power, prestige of man and his vocabulary. In other words, the
greater social or professional position of person is, the greater its ability to communicate
with words and phrases.

This means that there is a direct correlation between the social status of person, his
prestige and number of gestures and movements, which he uses. Shawn shows us that he
is very prestige and well-educated person. He supplied his perfect intonation with good
gesture. We can notice that every joke or example is accompanied with special

movement that help people to take part and imagine situation. Bright example is when
he shows, by hands, two beds and how he with his sister sits and play on it. What is
more he accompanying every fact, which he tries to explain with certain type of moves,
that make people understand that he is expert in this theme.
In addition to this, he used presentation to help people understand whole situation.
His presentation helps auditory to follow the correct line of events. It is widely seen
in episode with graph. When he group up all his speech around this graph.
In my opinion, Shawn Achor is professional speaker. In his speech he combine all skills
that great orator need to know. His manner of speaking is well mixed with his moves
and gesture. What is more he filled his presentation with jokes and examples that make
it not monotone and funny, but in same way it is filled with professional dates, that make
his presentation looks more serious. To sum up, he is certainly one of the greatest
speaker that I have listened to, the only one mistake I have notices is that he could
change topics to rapidly, and for me - person to whom English language is not mother
tongue, it was way too hard sometimes.