The Ultimate List of Happiness & Wellbeing at Work Quotes
If you’re in search of ways to boost your wellbeing and happiness at work, you’re in the right place. Wellbeing workshops? Wellbeing training for managers? At Haptivate, we’ve got it covered.
But sometimes you just want to take mental wellbeing at work into your own hands. And this can often be a little bit overwhelming. Where do you even start?
Sometimes, you just need a little bit of inspiration. So we’ve scoured the web to find the best wellbeing and happiness at work quotes. Ones that are guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing.
So whether you’re looking for a new morning mantra, sourcing food for thought for your next team meeting, or just want to get over a midday slump, check out these words of wisdom from writers, CEOs, scientists, celebrities and more.
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Get access to the exclusive Haptivate Wellbeing Resource Hub and stay up to date with all the latest wellbeing at work research, tools and tips by joining our monthly newsletter. We promise not to share your data or spam you with irrelevant information 🙂
Ultimate List of Wellbeing at Work Quotes
We’ve divided the list up into handy sections so you can quickly find the most helpful quotes for you:
Table of Contents
Wellbeing quotes about the importance of wellbeing at work
1. “If health is the essence of your brand, it all starts with taking the health of your workforce very seriously.” – Marnix Eikenboom (President, Danone)
2. “Good health IS good business” – Paul Drechsler (CEO, Wates Group Limited)
3.“Improving the health and well-being of our employees makes good business sense. As a leading provider of workplace health services, we see every day the difference it can make to a company’s bottom line and the impact it can have on employee morale and motivation. It offers a ”win-win” all round. Employees benefit from better support for their health. Companies benefit from less absence and improved productivity. And society benefits from improved public health.” – Steve Flanagan (Commercial Director, Bupa)
4. “It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between 9 and 5. It’s whether or not our work fulfils us.” – Malcolm Gladwell
5. “Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with their colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.” – Charles Duhigg (Author of The Power of Habit)
6. Our environment is a non-stop triggering mechanism whose impact on our behaviour is too significant to be ignored.” – Marshall Goldsmith (Executive Leadership Coach)
7. “To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.” – Doug Conant
Related workshop: Haptivate 101: The happiness at work toolkit
Discover a host of practical techniques that can boost mood, bust stress and help you to feel happier at work.
Wellbeing quotes about cultivating a positive mindset
8. “A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.” – Byron Katie (Author of The Work)
9. “Each one of us is like that butterfly, the Butterfly Effect. And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organisations, our families and our communities.” – Shawn Achor (Author of The Happiness Advantage)
10. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the aeroplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford (Founder, Ford Motor Company)
11. “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” – Dalai Lama
12. “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
13. “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz (American Football Player)
14. “The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.” – Roy T. Bennett (Author of The Light in the Heart)
15. “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” – Stephen King
16. “Cultivate an optimistic mind, use your imagination, always consider alternatives, and dare to believe that you can make possible what others think is impossible.” – Rodolfo Costa
17. “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey
18. “Optimism is the most important human trait because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.” – Seth Godin
Wellbeing quotes about self-confidence for career progression
19. “Leadership is the ability to facilitate movement in the needed direction and have people feel good about it.” – Tom Smith (Bestselling Author and Co-Founder, Partners In Leadership)
20. “If you want something to happen, you have to make people able and you have to make them want to.” – Dr Steve Kerr (Former Chief Learning Officer of General Electric and Goldman Sachs)
21. “The leader is the person who brings a little magic to the moment.” – Denise Morrison (President & CEO, Campbell Soup)
22. “The secret to amazing performance is empowering talented people to succeed at meaningful work.” – Teresa Amabile (Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School)
23. “If management generally overrides people’s decisions, they quickly lose motivation to make any decision, which severely inhibits progress.” – Teresa Amabile (Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School)
24. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci
25. “If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.” – David Viscott
26. “We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.” – Carol Dweck (Author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
Wellbeing quotes about sharpening focus and unlocking flow
27. “If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” – Albert Einstein
28. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” – Mark Twain
29. “Willpower is what separates us from the animals. It’s the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation – do what’s right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It’s central, in fact, to civilisation.” – Roy Baumeister
30. “Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” – Charles Duhigg (Author of The Power of Habit)
31. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar
32. “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs
Wellbeing quotes about finding meaning, purpose and passion at work
33. “I never went into business just to make money – but I found that if I have fun, the money will come. I often ask myself, is my work fun and does it make me happy? I believe that the answer to that is more important than fame or fortune. If it stops being fun, I ask why? If I can’t fix it, I stop doing it.” – Sir Richard Branson
34. “A great business success was probably never attained by chasing the dollar, but is due to pride in one’s work, the pride that makes business an art.” – Henry Latham Doherty
35. “By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well.” – Richard Branson
36. “If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organisation gets pulled up with you.” – Indra Nooyi (Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo)
37. “This whole level of wholeness is a place where I am able to show up as a full human being with all of my gifts to the table to be a part of this organisation. That leads to a great feeling of inclusiveness because what it allows me then to do is to bring this real, authentic self to the table and to really love the work that I do.” – Kimo Kippen (former CLO at Hilton and Vice President of Learning at Marriott)
38. “No society can work unless its members feel responsibilities as well as rights.” – Richard Layard
39. “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” – Daniel Pink (Author of The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
40. “A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.” – Frank Capra (Film Director)
41. “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
Wellbeing quotes about embracing failure at work
42. “It’s not reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality.” – Shawn Achor (Author of The Happiness Advantage)
43. “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” – Dr Brene Brown
44. “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.” – Teresa Amabile (Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School)
45. “In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. “So rather than thinking, oh I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.” – Carol Dweck (Author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
46. “You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
47. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor E. Frankl
Wellbeing quotes about managing stress and building resilience
48. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl
49. “Modern life, increasingly defined by unpredictability, can be anxiety-provoking, and routines provide an anchor of predictability.” – Marty Nemko
50. “For most of us… the problem is not a lack of goals but rather too many of them.” – Roy Baumeister
51. “If something is wrong, fix it not, but train yourself not to worry. Worry fixes nothing.” – Ernest Hemingway (Writer)
52. “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.” – Fred Rogers
53. “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyper-consciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.” – Frank Herbert
Related workshop: Stress management & building resilience
Explore the science of stress and burnout, the psychology of resilience, and practical techniques you can integrate into your routine to improve your wellbeing and performance.
Wellbeing quotes about overcoming procrastination at work
66. “Procrastination is an emotional regulation problem, not a time management problem.” – Dr Tim Pychyl (Author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle)
67. “When you’re drowning you don’t think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I’m drowning and come and rescue me.” – Jennifer Mossrecognise
68. “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney
69. “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – Benjamin Disraeli (Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
70. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” – Eva Young
Wellbeing quotes about the science of motivation and productivity
54. “Flow is the state of concentration and engagement when completing a task that requires a level of challenge and skill. A complete immersion in the activity.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author and Psychology Professor)
55. “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” – Anne M. Mulcahy
56. “When you think about your purpose, simply consider it to be the strengths and opportunities that you possess, with which you can help others.” – Emily Esfahani Smith (Author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters)
57. “Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.” – Stephen Covey (Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
58. “If you want to feel secure, do what you already know how to do. But if you want to grow, go to the cutting edge of your competence, which means a temporary loss of security. So, whenever you don’t quite know what you are doing – know that you are growing.” – David Viscott (Psychiatrist teaching at University Hospital in Boston)
59. “Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.” – Angela Ahrendts (Senior Vice President, Apple)
60. “Success is best when it’s shared” – Howard Schultz (Chairman & CEO, Starbucks)
61. “The greatest asset of a company is its people.” – Jorge Paulo Lemann (Co-founder, Banco Garantia)
62. “Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.” – Simon Sinek
63. “It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
64. “When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.” – Dolly Parton
65. “The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy.” – Ben Stein
Related workshop: Wellbeing skills training for managers
Up-skill your managers to proactively monitor, support and cultivate the wellbeing and resilience of their teams.
Wellbeing quotes about cultivating a positive mindset
71. “A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.” – Byron Katie (Author of The Work)
72. “Each one of us is like that butterfly, the Butterfly Effect. And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organisations, our families and our communities.” – Shawn Achor (Author of The Happiness Advantage)
73. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the aeroplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford (Founder, Ford Motor Company)
74. “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” – Dalai Lama
75. “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
76. “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz (American Football Player)
77. “The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.” – Roy T. Bennett (Author of The Light in the Heart)
78. “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” – Stephen King
79. “Cultivate an optimistic mind, use your imagination, always consider alternatives, and dare to believe that you can make possible what others think is impossible.” – Rodolfo Costa
80. “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey
81. “Optimism is the most important human trait because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.” – Seth Godin
Wellbeing quotes about health and wellness
82. “What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.” ― Raymond L. Cramer
83. “A healthy attitude is contagious but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.” – Tom Stoppard
84. “A healthy attitude is contagious but don’t wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.” – Tom Stoppard
85. “Wellness is a connection of paths: knowledge and action.” – Joshua Holtz
86. “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” – Abraham Maslow
Wellbeing quotes about good health
87. “Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” -recognise Denis Waitley
88. “To ensure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.” – William Londen
89. “Good health is not something we can buy. However, it can be an extremely valuable savings account.” – Anne Wilson Schaef
90. “Health is not valued until sickness comes.” – Thomas Fuller
91. “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn
92. “Your body holds deep wisdom. Trust in it. Learn from it. Nourish it. Watch your life transform and be healthy.” – Bella Bleue
93. “To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear”. – Buddha
Finally…
What’s your favourite wellbeing at work quote?
We’re always on the lookout for great new quotes. If you’ve got a favourite wellbeing at work quote we’ve not covered in this list, comment, DM or e-mail your suggestions to us. We’d love to hear from you!
Looking for a little extra wellbeing at work help?
Check out Haptivate’s selection of interactive, science-based wellbeing workshops or get in touch with a friendly member of our team to explore how we can help!
Get free access to wellbeing resources, news and research
Get access to the exclusive Haptivate Wellbeing Resource Hub and stay up to date with all the latest wellbeing at work research, tools and tips by joining our monthly newsletter. We promise not to share your data or spam you with irrelevant information 🙂
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Digital Marketing
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