AMY BLANKSON
AMY BLANKSON
Authority on Happiness in a Digital Era
Best-Selling author of The Future of Happiness
Twice Awarded Presidential Point of Light
We all face fear, discomfort, and resistance to change, but our actions in the midst of these mindsets are what truly define us. Fearless positivity is not the absence of fear, but the audacious opportunity to move through it by focusing on what matters most. In this inspiring research-based talk, customized to address your audience's current challenges, Amy highlights leaders who have courageously chosen positivity in the midst of adversity. Leveraging learnings from positive psychology and behavioral science, she examines how negative mindsets hold us back, why some fear is actually good for us, and strategies to reframe stress to better serve us.
Amy Blankson is the only person to be named a Point of Light by two Presidents (President Bush and President Clinton). She received a Presidential appointment to serve a five-year term on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National Service, and was one of the youngest delegates to the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future. Amy received her BA from Harvard and MBA from Yale School of Management. She went on to co-found the Future of Philanthropy Conference at Yale University, and in 2007, joined GoodThink on the ground floor to develop and scale the company as it sought to bring the science of happiness to life.
Drawing on over 17 years of management and consulting experience with businesses, foundations, and nonprofits, Amy Blankson brings both passion and practicality to GoodThink. She is currently doing research in partnership with Google to determine how to make positive psychology strategies stick and create sustainable positive change. Amy is the author of the award-winning children’s book Ripple’s Effect, and has three beautiful daughters who teach her about the joy of positivity and the importance of gratitude on a daily basis.
Technology—at least in theory—is improving our productivity, efficiency, and communication. Yet the average mobile user checks their phones more than 150 times per day, and 67% of cell owners find themselves checking their phone even when they don’t notice their phone ringing or vibrating. Mindful attention is a scarce resource. As one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and technology, Amy Blankson unveils five strategies that successful individuals use to find a sense of balance between technology, productivity, and wellbeing in the Digital Age. In this talk, you will learn how to move from partial attention to full intention, how to hack your distractions to achieve maximum productivity and life satisfaction, and how to rid yourself of the tech graveyard in your office drawers to create more mental and physical space to do the things you love. By rethinking when, where, why and how we use technology, we can begin to recapture our focus, deepen engagement, and find flow in our everyday activities and relationships.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Discover the impact of distraction on your productivity and happiness.
Establish positive technology boundaries to shift from a mindset of inattention to one of full intention.
Learn healthy habits for tech use to maximize flow and engagement
Understand how your technology use impacts your perception as a leader.
Increase your flow and engagement by using brain-training techniques.
Happiness is the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy, yet so often it is seen as a luxury at work. However, a decade of research shows that training your brain to be positive at work actually fuels greater success. In fact, 75% of our job success is predicted not by intelligence, but by your optimism, social support network and the ability to manage energy and stress in a positive way. It is time to get strategic about how we can raise happiness levels at our organizations to empower teams to reach their full potential. In this talk, Amy draws on her experiences working as Co-founder of global consulting firm GoodThink to empower teams that happiness is a choice, happiness is a habit, and happiness spreads. She explains how we rethink stress in the midst of change and challenge and how we can lead positive change from any position in the organization.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Learn how the field of positive psychology has changed everything we thought we knew about finding happiness and success.
Understand why happiness is a choice and not a genetic or environmental byproduct.
Discover practical strategies for practicing happiness on a daily basis.
Uncover the power of emotional contagion and use positive social influence to deal with toxic co-workers.
The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity and Well-Being in the Digital Era
Technology, at least in theory, is improving our productivity, efficiency, and communication. The one thing it's not doing is making us happier. We are experiencing historically high levels of depression and dissatisfaction.