最受歡迎的哈佛心理課：如何不費力地獲得快樂？ #哈佛 #快樂

當我七歲的時候,我妹妹才五歲 我們在牀上玩遊戲 我當時比我妹妹還要大兩歲 雖然我現在比她還要大兩歲 但當時她要做我所想做的一切 我也想參加戰爭 所以我們躺在牀上 我躺在牀上的一邊 我放了我所有的軍人和武器 另一邊我放了我妹妹的馬力歐和鬥牛 我們準備好對抗 那天下午發生了不同的事 但由於我妹妹今天不在 讓我告訴你真實的故事 我妹妹的身體有點不舒服 她的哥哥從來沒有幫她 突然間,Amy消失了 從牀的頂部 我緊張地看著牀的旁邊 看看我妹妹摔倒了什麼 我看到她摔得很痛 她的手和腿都摔在地上 我緊張得 因為我的父母要我 確保我妹妹和我一起玩 儘量保持安靜 我看到我剛好摔斷了Amy的手 一星期前 我充滿了勇氣 把她推開了一枚 來自我夢寐以求的狙擊彈 我還沒有得到感謝 我盡力地嘗試 她根本沒看到 我盡力地嘗試 做出我最好的行為 我看到我妹妹的臉 充滿了痛苦和驚訝的味道 她的嘴巴沉重 所以我只能做 我這輕輕的 7歲的頭腦 能負責的事情 如果有小孩 你們一定有看過 我說Amy 別哭 你摔得怎麼樣 四個都沒有人掉下來 Amy 我覺得這意味著你像一個貓 這就騙人了 我的妹妹 應該比較想像 Amy 是個疼愛小妹妹 而不是一個特別的貓 當然 這是從沒有過的地步 她看得出 or manipulated sister's face conflict as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering surprise she just experienced or contemplating her newfound identity as a unicorn and the latter won out instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn with one broken leg what we stumbled across At this tender age of just five and seven we had no idea at the time was something that was going to be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology which is the reason that I'm here today and the reason that I wake up every morning When I first started to talk about this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph The very first thing I wanted to do is start my talk with a graph This graph looks boring but this graph is the reason that I get excited and wake up every morning And this graph doesn't even mean anything It's fake data What we found is if I got this data back studying you here in the room I would be thrilled because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there and that means that I can get published which is all that really matters The fact that there's one weird red dot that's up above the curve There's one weird in the room You know who you are I saw you earlier That's no problem That's no problem as most of you know because I can just delete that dot I can delete that dot because that's clearly a measurement error and we know that's a measurement error because it's messing up my data So one of the very first things that we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how in a statistically valid way do we eliminate the weirdos how do we eliminate the outliers so that we can find the line of best fit which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking too But if I'm interested in potential if I'm interested in your potential or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science If I ask a question like how fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom scientists change the answer to how fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom and then we tailor the class right towards the average Now if you fall below the average on this curve then psychologists get thrilled because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder or hopefully both We're hoping for both because our business model is if you come into a therapy session with one problem we want to make sure you leave knowing you have ten so you'll keep coming back over and over again We'll go back into your childhood if necessary but eventually what we want to do is to make you normal again But normal is merely average And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average we will remain merely average Then instead of deleting those positive outliers what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and says why Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability athletic ability musical ability creativity energy levels your resiliency in the face of challenge your sense of humor Whatever it is instead of deleting you what I want to do is study you Because maybe we can glean information not just how to move people up to the average but how we can move the entire average up at our companies and schools worldwide The reason this graph is important to me is when I turn on the news it seems like the majority of the information is not positive In fact, it's negative Most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases natural disasters And very quickly my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world What that's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome Which if you know people who have been to medical school during the first year of medical training as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen suddenly you realize you have all of them I have a brother-in-law named Bobo which is a whole other story Bobo married Amy the unicorn Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School From Yale Medical School and Bobo said Sean, I have leprosy Which even at Yale is extraordinarily rare But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause See, what we're finding is not necessarily the reality that shapes us but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality If we can change the lens not only can we change your happiness we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time When I applied to Harvard I applied on a dare I didn't expect to get in and my family had no money for college When I got a military scholarship two weeks later they allowed me to go Suddenly something that wasn't even a possibility became a reality When I went there I assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well That they'd be excited to be there Even if you're in a classroom full of people smarter than you You'd be happy just to be in that classroom which is what I felt But what I found there is while some people experienced that When I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students Harvard asked me to It wasn't that guy But what happened I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school two weeks later their brains were focused not on the privilege of being there nor on their philosophy or their physics Their brain was focused on the competition the workload the hassles the stresses the complaints When I first went in there I walked into the freshman dining hall which is where my friends from Waco, Texas which is where I grew up I know some of you have heard of it When they come to visit me they look around they say this freshman dining hall looks like something out of Hogwarts from the movie Harry Potter which it does This is Hogwarts from the movie Harry Potter And that's Harvard And when they see this they say Sean, why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about? Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels When in reality if I know everything about your external world I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness 90% of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world but by the way your brain processes the world And if we change it if we change our formula for happiness and success what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality What we found is that only 25% of job successes are predicted by IQ 75% of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat I talked to a boarding school up in New England probably the most prestigious boarding school and they said we already know that So every year instead of just teaching our students we also have a wellness week and we're so excited Monday night we have the world's leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression Tuesday night is school violence and bullying Wednesday night is eating disorders Thursday night is illicit drug use and Friday night we're trying to decide between risky sex or happiness I said that's most people's Friday night which I'm glad you like but they did not like that at all Silence on the phone and into the silence I said I'd be happy to speak to your school but just so you know that's not a wellness week that's a sickness week What you've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen but not talked about the positive The absence of disease is not health Here's how we get to health We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success In the past three years I've traveled to 45 different countries working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success which is this If I work harder I'll be more successful And if I'm more successful then I'll be happier That undergirds most of our parenting styles our managing styles the way that we motivate our behavior And the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons First, every time your brain has a success you just change the goal post of what success looks like You got good grades now you have to get better grades You got into a good school now you have to get a better school You got a good job now you have to get a better job You hit your sales target we're going to change your sales target And if happiness is on the opposite side of success your brain never gets there What we've done is we've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society And that's because we think we have to be successful then we'll be happier But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage which is your brain in positive performs significantly better than it does in negative neutral stress Your intelligence rises your creativity rises your energy levels rise In fact, what we found is that every single business outcome improves Your brain in positive is 31% more productive than your brain in negative neutral stress You're 37% better at sales Doctors are 19% faster and more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative neutral stress Which means we can reverse the formula If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of Because dopamine which floods into your system when you're positive has two functions Not only does it make you happier It turns on all the learning centers in your brain Allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way We found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to come more positive In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row We can actually rewire your brain Allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully We've done these things in research now in every single company that I've worked with Getting them to write down three new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row Three new things each day And at the end of it their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative but for the positive first Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once Allows our brains to focus on the task at hand And finally random acts of kindness or conscious acts of kindness We get people when they open up their inbox to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies What we found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success And in doing so not only create ripples of positivity but create a real revolution Thank you very much