A week ago (practically), I suggested you all watch Shawn Achor's TEDtalk on Changing the way we achieve happiness. I also said I was going to put up a Part 2.
He says that we don't pay enough attention to these positive outliers. They're people who are above-average (either IQ, or athletic ability, or musical ability, or happiness level, or etc.) and he wants to know why they are the way they are. He wants to figure out a way to help move people up to the average, and help move up the general community average.
We're surrounded by negative input: the news hardly ever reports on anything positive. As a result, our brains are trained to percieve our reality in a negative way. In other words, we shape our realities based on the input we observe ourselves.
I'm going to extrapolate a little bit here:
I don't watch the news very often. I prefer to read books with happy endings. I also try my best to stay away from horror movies and dark movies that are too terribly close to realism (mostly because I'm a scaredy cat with a very active imagination). But as a result, I'm ignorant of most of the the negative possibilities of the world. Therefore, I find it much easier to have an optimistic lens through which I view life and all its challenges. I feel like I handle stress very well, and still manage to be cheery around people I want to make an effort to be cheery around (my unfortunate roommate has to deal with stressed-out-grumpy-snaps-if-you-get-too-close me most of the time)
Conversely, I have a friend who watches all those scary movies, reads books about the apocalypse, and thrives on pessimism. He's wary of doing nice things for people, because he's acutely aware of all the times that he's done something good for someone else, or had some good luck in his own life, and had to pay for it shortly after. This pattern (though it happens to many people), has caused his lens to be cynical and pessimistic a lot of the time. He starts looking for the bad things to happen after something good. He's not unhappy--but he also rarely lets himself be happy--and as a result, his stress threshold tends to be a bit lower than mine. (at least, this is my biased take. I'm 99% positive he would disagree)
I'm sure those negative inputs aren't directly related to his pessimism, or my positive inputs to my optimism. But I do like to think that my ignorance of the negative inputs helps me remain optimistic, less cynical, and generally happier.
But Shawn says that you can have all those negative inputs and still be happy.
Towards the end of his talk, he says there's a way to train your brain to become more positive. His study included telling people to journal for 2 minutes a day for 21 days, writing down 3 things they were grateful for each of those 21 days. By the end of that time, they had begun to scan the world for the positive things first (because they were expecting to be "tested" on if they could remember 3 things to be grateful for), rather than the negative.
No, I haven't suggested that my friend do this. I thought about it...but decided he wouldn't take to it very well.
Shawn Achor suggests that we can spread random acts of kindness to increase the general happiness of the population. Send a nice email, pay it forward, compliment somebody (in a non-creepy way), and you'll bring up the happiness average of the general population, and bring everyone else UP to the level of that "above-average positive outlier" person.
CirqueDuCloud commented on Part 1, saying that,
I thought it was incredibly interesting that Cirque watched Shawn's talk from the point of view that it's psychological therapy. I thought Shawn's ideas were interesting, but it wasn't until I applied it to my own life (in this post) did I realize that his case studies were functioning with the intention to be used in therapy.
Even my own thought to suggest the journaling strategy to my friend was an effort at therapy.
The trouble with therapy is that is has to be voluntary. It's a form of manipulation, and I think that's what Cirque is getting at. Frankly, I don't know if my friend perceives himself as needing to be happier. I actually don't know if being happier would increase his ability to handle stress. There are a lot of other things that could factor into that. Either way, for me, therapy has to be optional, not manipulative.
I liked Shawn's talk because it helped me understand a different way to achieve happiness. Even as the optimistic person I am, I have my down days (more often than I'd like to admit), and now I have some tricks to bring me out of those sad days. Re-living one happy memory from every day might improve my memory too, in addition to giving me a more positive archive to draw from in the future. =)
You can think of it as a form of therapy, but in this sense, I think I'd rather be happy, and any tricks (be it psychological therapy or chocolate) to help me be happy are gratefully accepted.
Thoughts?
Due to an etiquette dinner, a volleyball game, a career fair, a group project, two days of dressing up professionally, and an incredible amount of lazy time laying in bed, I could not effectively finish this post until now. I sincerely apologize for having a life. =)
But upon refreshing my memory on my last post, it occurred to me that I didn't really do his talk much justice. Here's a better summary, written at a more sensible hour:
Shawn Achor is CEO of Good Think, Inc. where he researches and teaches about positive psychology. Shawn's work concerning positive psychology questions why there are those positive outliers in his psychological research. For Shawn, that dot off in the upper left-hand corner of your graph is an above-average person, not a measurement error.
He says that we don't pay enough attention to these positive outliers. They're people who are above-average (either IQ, or athletic ability, or musical ability, or happiness level, or etc.) and he wants to know why they are the way they are. He wants to figure out a way to help move people up to the average, and help move up the general community average.
"Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you." -Shawn Achor (4:55)
We're surrounded by negative input: the news hardly ever reports on anything positive. As a result, our brains are trained to percieve our reality in a negative way. In other words, we shape our realities based on the input we observe ourselves.
I'm going to extrapolate a little bit here:
I don't watch the news very often. I prefer to read books with happy endings. I also try my best to stay away from horror movies and dark movies that are too terribly close to realism (mostly because I'm a scaredy cat with a very active imagination). But as a result, I'm ignorant of most of the the negative possibilities of the world. Therefore, I find it much easier to have an optimistic lens through which I view life and all its challenges. I feel like I handle stress very well, and still manage to be cheery around people I want to make an effort to be cheery around (my unfortunate roommate has to deal with stressed-out-grumpy-snaps-if-you-get-too-close me most of the time)
Conversely, I have a friend who watches all those scary movies, reads books about the apocalypse, and thrives on pessimism. He's wary of doing nice things for people, because he's acutely aware of all the times that he's done something good for someone else, or had some good luck in his own life, and had to pay for it shortly after. This pattern (though it happens to many people), has caused his lens to be cynical and pessimistic a lot of the time. He starts looking for the bad things to happen after something good. He's not unhappy--but he also rarely lets himself be happy--and as a result, his stress threshold tends to be a bit lower than mine. (at least, this is my biased take. I'm 99% positive he would disagree)
I'm sure those negative inputs aren't directly related to his pessimism, or my positive inputs to my optimism. But I do like to think that my ignorance of the negative inputs helps me remain optimistic, less cynical, and generally happier.
But Shawn says that you can have all those negative inputs and still be happy.
Towards the end of his talk, he says there's a way to train your brain to become more positive. His study included telling people to journal for 2 minutes a day for 21 days, writing down 3 things they were grateful for each of those 21 days. By the end of that time, they had begun to scan the world for the positive things first (because they were expecting to be "tested" on if they could remember 3 things to be grateful for), rather than the negative.
 |
| maybe this is why kids are always so happy... because they have so many things to be thankful for. |
No, I haven't suggested that my friend do this. I thought about it...but decided he wouldn't take to it very well.
Shawn Achor suggests that we can spread random acts of kindness to increase the general happiness of the population. Send a nice email, pay it forward, compliment somebody (in a non-creepy way), and you'll bring up the happiness average of the general population, and bring everyone else UP to the level of that "above-average positive outlier" person.
CirqueDuCloud commented on Part 1, saying that,
"I don't know if I agree with any kinds of psychological therapy, honestly. I think therapy is acting out human nature in all of it's raw honesty. i.e. Doing what you really want. But that's just me."
I thought it was incredibly interesting that Cirque watched Shawn's talk from the point of view that it's psychological therapy. I thought Shawn's ideas were interesting, but it wasn't until I applied it to my own life (in this post) did I realize that his case studies were functioning with the intention to be used in therapy.
Even my own thought to suggest the journaling strategy to my friend was an effort at therapy.
The trouble with therapy is that is has to be voluntary. It's a form of manipulation, and I think that's what Cirque is getting at. Frankly, I don't know if my friend perceives himself as needing to be happier. I actually don't know if being happier would increase his ability to handle stress. There are a lot of other things that could factor into that. Either way, for me, therapy has to be optional, not manipulative.
I liked Shawn's talk because it helped me understand a different way to achieve happiness. Even as the optimistic person I am, I have my down days (more often than I'd like to admit), and now I have some tricks to bring me out of those sad days. Re-living one happy memory from every day might improve my memory too, in addition to giving me a more positive archive to draw from in the future. =)
You can think of it as a form of therapy, but in this sense, I think I'd rather be happy, and any tricks (be it psychological therapy or chocolate) to help me be happy are gratefully accepted.
Thoughts?
tight dawg.
ReplyDeleteYah, I agree Joe/Jack! Brilliant studies Shawn! I tried 'counseling' at the age of 12. I do not think it's better. I left there feeling more frustrated and emotional than when I arrived. I'm all for 'getting it out' however, I believe you will get it out and deal with it on your own and better, as long as you really want to, and with God's help. I did. After a couple of sessions no more for me. The hard work took the same amount of years, plus a few, but ALL of it was worth it because I turned out Beautifully!!! :)
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