Room to Think

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. 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.   ...

You know, I really seem to be on a happiness binge with these TEDtalks--or maybe that's just TED. Either way, here is your TEDtalk for today (I started this at 11pm on Tuesday, it still counts!) This guy's name is Shawn Achor, and he "accidentally" broke his sister's arm when she was five in order to save her from being in the path of an imaginary sniper bullet. He still has yet to be thanked.  =) He also applied to Harvard on a dare...and he got in.  O_O In all seriousness though (kinda?), he has some hugely important messages to share with all of us: "...if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average."--on research it's possible to be a male medical student at Yale named Bobo who has leprosy AND menopause.  (5:54) and most importantly: The formula for success is wrong. (9:11) "If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier....