e [Music] [Music] hi welcome I'm delighted to have the opportunity today to share with you some ideas from positive psychology the scientific study of optimal human functioning the science of happiness I first started thinking about happiness When I Was An undergraduate at Harvard I was a computer science major doing well academically I was doing well socially I was a varsity squash athlete and I wasn't happy and it didn't make sense to me because looking at my life from the outside I should have been happy everything externally was going well but internally it wasn't I remember one day during my sophomore year waking up and walking straight to my academic advisor and telling him I'm switching my major I switched from computer science to philosophy and psychology I actually did become happier taking some of these classes and then went on to graduate studies in the area of positive psychology and after completing my PhD I wanted to share what I've learned with others and that's when I started to teach that first year when I taught I had eight students in my positive psychology class two of them dropped out the next year through Word of Mouth the class grew slightly and I had over 300 students and then the third year I taught it I had close to 900 students making it at that point the largest course at Harvard and at that point the media became interested why because they wanted to understand how it is there is a class that's larger than introduction to economics so I was invited for newspapers radio television and in these interviews I started to notice a certain pattern so I would walk into the interview would have the interview and subsequently the interviewer or the producer would walk me out and say something to the effect of T thank you for doing the interview but you know I expected you to be different and I would ask as non chalantly as I could of course as as if I didn't care how different and he or she would say well I expected you to be a more outgoing next interview same thing thank you T for doing the interview but you know I expected you to be different and once again nonchalantly of course I would ask how different and they would say well a more uh more extroverted next interview same thing how different well um let's shy you know I get nervous in interviews I am shy next interview same thing how different well less introverted more extroverted more outgoing more cheerful and on and on interview after interview but here is the best one so this is an interview in one of the local uh Boston channels we have the interview which was quite long and I actually thought was quite good but at the end of the interview the interviewer walks me out and as I'm about to leave the usual comes t thank you for doing the interview with us but you know I expected you to be different now just so that you understand by this time my self-esteem is shot but still still with some semblance of nonchalance I ask how different and the interviewer looks at me and he says I don't know tall I expected you to be taller [Laughter] taller what 5 seven or okay 5 six and a half is not enough to teach happiness and I thought about these responses and this pattern and I think I understand why they expect someone different you see they had to explain to themselves their viewers their listeners a certain phenomenon here is a class that's larger than introduction to economics so how do you explain this phenomenon of course by looking the teacher who must be extremely outgoing very cheerful unbelievably charismatic and Tall right otherwise why would the students attend the class the problem though is that they were looking in the wrong place they were looking at the messenger where they needed to look at was at the message positive psychology is being taken up by hundreds of organizations globally why is it so popular because essentially for the first time we have a science of Happiness until very recently this whole realm of Happiness of well-being has been dominated by the self-help movement what do we have in the self-help Movement we have books hundreds and thousands of books coming out each year they're interesting they're accessible we have thousands of workshops being offered every week around the world but many of these workshops many of these books not all all but many lack substance overpromise and under deliver on the other hand we have Academia what do we have in Academia a lot of rigor a lot of substance things are analyzed reanalyzed and meta analyzed things that work good stuff but not accessible to most people in fact the head of my PhD program once estimated that the average academic Journal article is read by seven people and that includes the the author's mother I say it in just but I'm an academic I want that stuff to be read good stuff important stuff not accessible and this is where positive psychology comes in positive psychology explicitly tries to bring the rigor from academ and merge it with the accessibility of the self-help movement and this explains its popularity so what I want to do today today is introduce you to the greatest hits of positive psychology the first topic is what I've come to call the permission to be human I was having lunch one day in Leverett house one of the undergraduate dorms when a student came over and asked tal may I join you and I said sure please sit down mat brought over his tray and said to me tal I hear you're teaching a class on happiness I said said yes I'm teaching a class on positive psychology he said you know my roommates are taking your class there were two of the six students so I had to be nice to him so I said to him that's wonderful and he said but you know T you've got to watch out now and I said why mat and he said t you've got to be careful now and I said why and he said because if I see you unhappy I'll tell them and actually used that as a teaching opportunity the next day in class and I told my students the last thing in the world that I want you to think is that I experience this constant high or that you by the end of the semester or year will experience this constant High there are two kinds of people who don't experience painful emotions disappointment or anger or Envy or sadness first the Psychopaths the second group of people are dead exactly so if you experience these painful emotions it's actually a good sign it means that you're not a psychopath and you're alive and yet in our culture today we think well there must be something wrong with me when in fact there is something wrong with us if we don't experience these emotions at times the problem is that when we don't give ourselves the permission to be human when we don't allow ourselves to experience the full Myriad of human emotions we're preventing ourselves from also experiencing the positive emotions you see all emotions flow through through the same emotional Pipeline and when we block the flow of one set of emotions we're inadvertently also blocking the other sets of emotions the positive ones when we block the painful emotions they simply intensify as children we give ourselves the permission to be human but then we get to a certain age when the facade kicks in and when we say okay I can't show these emotions something bad we ignore it we suppress it and we pay a price I want to show you a quick video clip of someone who gives himself the permission to be human [Music] [Music] okay so I'm not saying we need to look like this but what I am saying is that we need a space a place in our lives for unconditional acceptance a place where we give ourselves the permission to be human you know the best advice that Tommy my wife and I got after having our first kid David was about 5 years ago was from our pediatrician he says to us over the next few months you're going to be experiencing every single kind of emotion to the extreme you're going to experience extreme joy Bliss and you're going to experience frustration and fatigue it's normal it's natural we all go through it so after about a month I started to feel some Envy toward David why because for the first time since Tommy and I had been together here is someone who's getting more attention than I was no matter how much I cried but then 5 minutes later I would experience this most intense love toward David now normally I would say to myself what a hypocrite how is this possible but because I had our pediatrician's voice in the back of my mind giving me the permission to be human I said to myself oh it's natural it's normal I experienced the emotion that I didn't like and then was able to fully experience the wonderful emotion of intense love you see there is a paradox at play here the Paradox is that when we suppress these painful emotions they intensify they become stronger they prevent us often from experiencing positive emotions when we give ourselves the freedom to experience the full range of human emotions we're being fully human let's do a quick experiment so I'm a psychologist I like doing experiments this is an easy one don't worry for the next 10 seconds do not think of a pink elephant you know the one I'm talking about you know from Dumbo with the big ears do not think of a pink elephant for the next two seconds and I'm sure nobody thought of a pink elephant right easy well not really why because when we try to suppress a natural phenomenon such as thinking about the word that we utter the phenomenon intensifies same with painful emotions that are a natural phenomenon when we try to suppress them they just intensify the Paradox is when we accept them that's when they weaken when I started to teach the biggest challenge that I had to face was my introversion the fact that I am shy that I get very nervous standing in front of a large audience and for me a large audience is anything above five that first year when I taught the class was a real stretch for me but I managed and at the beginning when I started to teach I would give myself you know positive mental attitude talk okay tall you can do it no anxiety today no nervousness today come on tall and what happened pink elephants all around the anxiety the nervousness just intensified but after reading research by hover Professor Daniel Wagner on ironic processing or reading Victor Frankle the author of man search for meaning on paradoxical intentions and now because I give myself the permission to be human allow the anxiety and the nervousness to flow through me it goes away after as little as 3 hours which is why we're staying here till midnight but no it doesn't go away but it's manageable it's excitement now as oppos to a debilitating form of anxiety imagine this imagine waking up every morning and saying to yourself I refuse to accept the law of gravity you know this law of gravity I've had enough of it it would be so much nicer so much more graceful to get up in the morning and just float to work instead of walking down the stairs and then walking up the stairs so clumsy imagine leading that kind of Life refusing to accept the law of gravity well for one you may not survive for long if you truly refuse to accept the fact that things people being no exception fall when left in midair but even if you did survive even if you did survive what kind of Life Would You Lead a life of constant frustration instead what do we do with the law of gravity we accept it we may not like it but we accept it more than that we even create games around the law of gravity imagine the Olympics without the law of gravity imagine a baseball game without the law of gravity meaningless so we play with it not so for painful emotions painful emotions are as much part of human nature as the law of gravity is part of physical nature and yet yet we accept the letter and reject the former and we pay a very high price for it when I talk about unconditional acceptance when I talk about the permission to be human I'm not talking about passive resignation I'm not talking about saying okay so I'm jealous or I'm anxious and there's nothing I can or want to do about it rather what I'm talking about is active acceptance accepting the painful emotion and then choosing the most appropriate course of action there's nothing wrong with feeling Envy there may be something wrong with my behavior following on that Envy there's nothing wrong with feeling fear nothing cowardly about it in fact courage is not about not having fear courage is about having fear and then going ahead anyway when we suppress these emotions they control us and if I don't accept that I sometimes get angry or am sometimes envious I begin to see envy and anger all around even though it is not there and here is the question that we need to ask ourselves do we give ourselves and others whether it's our children whether it's our colleagues whether it's our friends our partners do we give ourselves and others the permission to be human this to my mind is the foundation the most important pillar of a happy fulfilling life I want to move on now to a second topic another of positive psychology's Greatest Hits dealing with stress stress has become a global epidemic our college students are suffering from this epidemic let me share with you a quick excerpt from an interview with Dr Richard cadison who's the head of mental health services at Harvard University here he's talking about a national survey of mental health there's a national survey called the uh National College Health assessment and in the survey year after year 45% roughly of students report being depressed to the point that it's difficult to function and I think 80% feel overwhelmed now not everyone is clinically depressed but you know if there's that many people in distress things need to be done about that and uh most campuses don't have enough resources to reach out to those students and they also don't want to come in because there's lots of stigma attached this is troubling 80% feeling overwhelmed 45% depressed to the point of not functioning so what is going on there you know when I was a resident tutor one of my roles with undergraduates was to look over the resumés to help them get a better job and one of the things that initially really impressed me was that each year these resumés became more impressive the fonts became smaller the margins became narrower the titles became more grandiose and it really impressed me until I realized the price that these students were paying for these narrower margins and smaller fonts these students were overwhelmed they were stressed they had too much to do trying to do more and more things in less and less time here is how it works when we have too much to do naturally we feel stressed and then over time if this stress persists and there's a lot of research showing this it leads to depression or can potentially lead to depression and it doesn't start in college it starts much earlier you know that in the 1960s the average age for the onset of Depression was 29 today the average age for the onset of depression is 14 why because the stress begins so much earlier there's also the physical cost ask any doctor one of the primary causes of physical ailment is stress why because our immune system weakens it's no coincidence that very often after a very stressful period at work or in school or in a relationship we become sick people lose their levels of creativity as a result of stress thinking narrowly as opposed to broadly when we're more relaxed being overwhelmed having too much to do is so prevalent some of our comedians even use it as part of their routine I believe that someday sitcoms will be 30 seconds long cuz that's all we'll need and that's all our attention span can take because our attention span is shot we've all got attention deficit disorder add or OCD or one of the disorders with three letters because we don't have the time in patience to pronounce the entire disorder that should be disorder right there TBD too busy disorder I'm looking at the Pop-Tarts box and I noticed they have uh directions on there microwave directions listen if you need to zap fry your Pop-Tarts before you head out the door you might want to loosen up your schedule so what do we do about this stress thing what do we do about it on the personal level what do we do about it as a culture as a community the first thing we need to do is simplify we need to do less rather than more let me share with you some research done in this area so this is a study done by Professor Daniel conman from Princeton he's also a Nobel Prize winner in economics what kanaman did was wanting to understand the emotional experiences of women the study the results apply as much to men so he valued women's emotional experiences when they were at work when they were having lunch when they were with their romantic Partners when they were with their children when they were shopping working Leisure the most surprising result of that study was that these women did not particularly enjoy spending time with their children this was very surprising so they probed further and what they found was that it wasn't the fact that these women did not love their kids for most of these women their children were the most important most meaningful part of their lives it was that these women were not really with their kids they were physically there they were physically present but at the same time they were on the phone or doing email or thinking about what they did earlier or what they have to do later so while they were physically present they were not really there now individually discreetly they may have really enjoyed being on the phone with a friend or doing work or thinking about work or thinking about home may have really enjoyed all these things separately but when all these things came together it was too much of a good thing quantity affected quality think about the following analogy think about your favorite piece of music you're listening to Whitney Houston's and I will always love you it really is my favorite piece of music and then you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and you give it a straight 10 and then you listen to your second most favorite piece of music the chorus piece from Beethoven's Ninth and once again you rate it on a scale of one to 10 and it's not quite and I will always love you but it's a 9 and a half it's pretty good and then for maximal effect you play them together and what do you get a 19 and a half right no not a 10 not even a five it's noise that's Modern Life for you simplify we pay a very high price for trying to do too much quantity affects quality nothing will happen if when we come home in the evening we switch of our cell phone for a few hours when we spend time with our family and friends this also applies in the workplace now in the workplace today it's impossible unrealistic to eliminate multitasking but it's certainly at times possible to reduce it how many of you have your email on while you're doing other work that requires concentration just a quick show of hands it's most people in our culture I used to do that too until I heard about this study this study was run at the University of London and what they found was that people who had their email on while doing work that requires concentration it is the equivalent of losing 10 IQ points now I don't know about you but I can't afford 10 IQ points it's a lot just to give you a sense of how much it is if you haven't slept for 36 hours you've been up all night you lose 10 IQ points another point of comparison if you smoke marijuana grass you lose four IQ points but don't inhale we pay a very high price for it Leslie PLO professor at Harvard Business School showed that knowledge workers who took as little as an hour and a half a day off focus time time without distractions not only were happier at work work they were also more creative and more productive overall so it's a win-win all around there's a lot to be gained for the individual as well as for the organization if we introduce that as a ritual there's a lot of research showing the relationship between money and happiness and what we know is that money is a very poor predictor of well-being except for at the extremes so of course if you have a person who is homeless and that person suddenly gets an extra $2,000 a month of course it will affect their levels of well-being but once basic needs are met the need for shelter for education for food additional money makes very little difference to our overall well-being what does make a difference to our well-being time affluence this is simply the feeling that we're not constantly chasing something running away from something it's the feeling that knowledge that we have time to savor to enjoy to appreciate the things in our lives whether it's work whether it's our family and friends family and friends the number one predictor of well-being the number one predictor of what I call the ultimate currency the currency of Happiness time we spend with people we care about and who care about us do we take that time to say favor to appreciate to love and to be loved how basic how simple how important and how missing from our culture today growing up in Israel I remember my parents having their friends over they would laugh a lot and they would talk a lot they'd have a swell of a time it looks very different from even the way my generation visits friends so when we visit friends we're on the phone or doing our email distracted not savoring not enjoying not making the most of the number one source of the ultimate currency let me show you a clip with one of the leading positive psychologists in the world professor of psychology Sonia lubiri from UC Riverside friends and family is incredibly important um in fact many researchers I think if you ask them they would say that social relationships are the biggest factor in happiness well-being um uh and social support has been shown to be important in coping with loss coping with illness with negative events um and also just with anything with achieving goals you know having having supportive friends or family that kind of um you know that inspire you that cheer you um that motivate you um that give you tangible support your most important source of Happiness may be sitting next to you right now right here do you appreciate that person do you make the most of that source of the ultimate currency to my mind the most surprising result in the area of stress research is that stress is not the problem what psychologists have shown is that stress is often good for us it makes us tougher stronger more resilient and more receptive to happiness to well-being think about the following analogy on the physical level so what happens to your muscles when you go to the gym and lift weights you're stressing your muscles what happens to the muscles as you're doing it the muscles actually break down when they stress but is that a bad thing it's not a bad thing because if you lift weights and then the following day you lift the same weights again and then you lift the same weights again and again day after day after 6 months and then a year year and then after 2 years of lifting weights and working hard you begin to look like me more or less well hopefully a little bit more so it's not a bad thing stress is actually good for us when do the problems begin the problems begin when we lift weights and then a minute later we lift the same weights again and then again and again and again that's when we get injured that's when we get overtrained that's when we get enervated rather than energized so the problem is not the stress the problem is the lack of recovery on the physical level as well as on the psychological emotional level people who are successful who Thrive and who are also happy are not people who don't experience stress especially in the 21st century stress is part of being alive they ritualize their recoveries throughout the day throughout the week throughout the year throughout lifetime what we need if we are to thrive in this fastpaced world is to strategically place recoveries on a few levels first of all on the micro level what we need to do is introduce 15minute breaks after an hour or two hours of work that could be talking to our loved one it could be meditating for 15 minutes it could be having lunch with our phone off and email off these mini recoveries make a big difference to our well-being as well as to productivity and creativity it's a win-win we need these recoveries on the Meto mid level a good night sleep is a very good investment a lot of research tying good sleep to well-being lower levels of depression higher levels of happiness as well as to creativity and productivity it's a good investment to sleep or taking a day off during the week even God needed a day off people who take a day off or two days off a week actually report being more productive not to mention happier and then we also need those macro level breaks those vacations the month off the week off every few months JP Morgan one of the leading entrepreneurs in the history of American Business once said I can do the work of a year in 9 months but not in 12 now most of us don't have the luxury of taking 3 months off but the point is that we need that time off it is no coincidence that there is an eological connection between the word create and recreate we need to engage in Recreation if we want to be at our best so introduce these rituals into your life those 15minute breaks that our gym a few times during the week that quiet lunch where you Savor a friend or the meal itself get a good night's sleep take a day off take those vacations without taking your computer along or being on the phone constantly because that's not a real vacation that's just more stress this time about being on vacation the next point that I want to introduce is the Mind Body Connection the connection for mental health between the mind and the body over the last few decades there has literally been an explosion of research in this area where psychologists are realizing more and more how important it is to think about what happens neck down the first topic that I'd like to discuss is the importance of physical exercise so this is a study done by Michael babak and his colleagues out at Duke Medical School what they did was bring in a group of 156 patients with major depression I mean these are people who are really struggling many of them have insomnia Eating Disorders many of them suicidal very difficult challenges that they're facing so he brings in a group of 156 individuals with major depression and divides them randomly into three groups the first first group the exercise group three times a week 30 minutes of aerobic exercise second group are put on psychiatric medication third group gets the exercise and the medication he looks at these three groups over four months and what they find is that all three groups improve to the same extent over 60% of participants get better there is no significant difference among the three groups now this does not mean that we can or should do away with psychiatric medication for people who are experiencing major depression it often takes medication to get them to the point where they can start exercising what this study and many others show is that we need to start taking exercise seriously as a psychiatric intervention because it works the was a followup to this study so after 4 months they looked for six more months what happens later what happens after they stop taking the medication what happens after they stop pushing the participants to exercise this one more time this week and they were interested in the relapse rates so how many people went back to being depressed from those who improved and what they found was that in the medication group there was relapse rates of 38% so 38% of the 60 plus% who got better went back to being depressed in the exercise and medication group relapse rates of 31% in the exercise only group relapse rates were 9% these are remarkable results there are hundreds and thousands of studies showing the effect of exercise when dealing with depression when dealing with anxiety helping with ADD and ADHD when I first heard of this study I thought to myself wow this is incredible this is amazing so exercising is like taking an anti-depressant but when I thought about it some more I realized it's not that exercise is like taking an anti-depressant it's rather that not exercising is like taking a depressant and this is more than just a semantic difference because we weren't made to be sedentary we weren't made to sit in front of the computer all day long or to just engage in discussions all day long in meetings we were made to run after an antelope for lunch or run away from a lion so that we don't become lunch and yet today we're mostly sedentary you know that our for parents used to walk more than eight miles a day on average how many miles a day do we walk today well that depends where we parked our car it has become a need to exercise we've all got a god-given or genes given level of well-being that we can work on and improve or it can go down so if my god-given or genes given level of happiness is here if I don't exercise what happens it goes down it's like taking a depressant when I exercise I simply am raising my level of well-being to where it is supposed to be to its natural level now I'm not a therapist I don't work one-on-one with clients but if I were a therapist one of the things that I would focus on first would be to get my clients to start exercising I want to work with nature and build on it as Francis Bacon the British philosopher once said nature to be commanded did must be obeyed and our nature dictates that we need the movement we need the exercise we are so sedentary we are so lazy our comedians make fun of us there's no physical activity attached to anything anymore even the garage door opener we used to have to get out of the car and open up the garage door now there's a button you push you know and the the car window this became too much this I don't want to churn butter I just want fresh air I just prefer the easy way in life I do I see an escalator I get excited I'm like sweet all I got to do is keep my balance we're lazy and to combat that what we need is nothing short of an exercise revolution in his wonderful new book spark Harvard psychiatrist John Ry talks about the research that shows the benefits of exercise so let me give you some examples this is research done in schools in school districts so schools that introduced regular daily exercise 30 minutes 45 minutes a day of exercise showed a market decrease in obesity so if levels of obesity are around 30% national average in high school these schools dropped to 3% now imagine the ramifications the benefits in the long term as well what they found surprisingly to some people their academic performance improved significantly and this was true for schools who were performing below average as well as for the top schools who performed better when they introduced regular physical exercise why today we know why exercise actually changes the functioning of our brain it helps us form more Connections in our brain so it has the cognitive benefit benefits as well what they also found is that regular exercise significantly reduced bullying and levels of violence in schools now think about it how much money do we as a society spend on trying to reduce bullying and violence and increase school performance and here we have an intervention so accessible so easily used with so many benefits do we use it do we use it enough the benefits of exercise are not just for the young for our kids in schools the benefits of exercise are for all ages here is John Ry talking about some of these benefits for the older population we know for instance if you're middle Ag and you haven't been exercising if you begin to exercise 30 to 40 minutes a day for four to 5 days a week you can push back cognitive decline by 10 to 15 years and some studies show that you can cut the incidence of Alzheimer's Disease by 50% even if you haven't begun yet in many ways exercise can be looked at as the unsung hero of psychological interventions let me quote you from John Ry about the effects of exercise and how it works in a way exercise can be thought of as a psychiatrists dream treatment it works on anxiety on panic disorders and on stress in general which has a lot to do with depression it generates the release of neurotransmitters neopine serotonin and dopamine these are the brains feel-good chemicals very similar to our most important psychiat atric medicine having a bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of proac and a little bit of rellin right where it is supposed to go without the side effects or rather with positive side effects the next intervention that I'd like to talk about is something that has been researched for the last few decades but has been practiced primarily in the East for thousands of years and that is mindfulness meditation the benefits of meditation are immense and when we talk about meditation it can be yoga or sitting meditation just deep breathing Mantra meditation repeating the same word over and over again prayer with focus is a form of meditation tai chi chi Kong and on and on basically there are three components that one can say are common to just about all forms of meditation the first component is the one pointedness focusing on one thing focusing on the breathing going in and out focusing on that Mantra on that word focusing on the posture on the movement on the prayer whatever it is the second component of most meditative practices is the deep breathing this is the belly breathing breathing all the way into our stomach and then slowly breathing out and repeating that over and over again common to most meditative practices and finally the third common component of meditation is that there is no good or bad meditation meditation is about giving ourselves the permission to be human so if I'm focusing on a word and lose my concentration all I do is gently calmly bring it back to focus if I lose my concentration again I bring it back to focus again there is no good or bad meditation there simply is meditation the permission to be human in practice let me share with you some of the fascinating studies done on quote unquote professional meditators these are people who have been meditating for decades have been doing it for hours each day and what psychologist were interested in was using modern technology whether it's EEG or fmri looking at their brains so they brought in some of the Dal llamas right-hand men and scanned their brains and what they found was remarkable so one of the things that they looked at was the left to right prefrontal cortex ratio what that means is that they were looking at the ratio of activation between this side of the brain the left side and the right side of the brain the front part people who have more activation on the front side of the left brain brain tend to be happier in contrast people who have more activation on the right side prefrontal cortex compared to the left side tend to be more Broody more depressed we've known this for many years we've known this long before there were fmis or eegs how did we know it well doctors noticed that sometimes when people experience brain damage they got a blow to their brain when the blow was to the left side very often with other side effects they also became more depressed whereas where people got a blow to the right side along with other side effects they very often became more cheerful happier now I don't recommend that as an intervention so don't use it at home without a doctor however if you happen to walk in the street and fall down it's always better to fall this way rather than this way but other than that don't use it now when we look at the population as a whole we can create a bell curve most people somewhere in the middle about equal ratio between left and right prefrontal cortex the happier people more activation on the left less happy people more activation on the right when they brought these meditators in and looked at their brain what they found was that they were quite literal Al off the chart extremely high ratio between left to right prefrontal cortex suggesting High suceptibility to positive emotion and extreme resilience in the face of painful emotions they studied some more things for example they studied the startle response the startle response when there is a loud bang we Flinch even marks men and women in the military who shoot guns every day still Flinch slightly ever so slightly when the gun goes off impossible to suppress it or so they thought when they brought in these meditators and they asked them to keep complete calm complete peace and then they startled them it didn't affect them at all Lama oer and many other meditators were able to suppress their startle response first time in recorded history when someone was able to do that and that says a lot here is a quote from Daniel Goldman's wonderful book destructive emotions given that the larger someone's startle the more intensely that person tends to experience upsetting emotions ous performance had tantalizing implications suggesting a remarkable level of emotional Equanimity now some of you may not be sure what the startle response is so let me demon demonstrate don't worry I'm not going to startle you but here are a few clips of the startle response in action wi wipe so this is great this is remarkable results but how does it help me how does it help most of us are you prepared to go off to the Himalayas and meditate for 30 years maybe most people are not fortunately we don't have to introduce radical change into our lives in order to benefit from meditation some very important work done by people like Herbert Benson and John kidin shows the benefits of meditation of meditating for as little as 15 minutes a day let me share with you a study done by John Zin and Richie Davidson so what they did was they brought in a group who was interested in a course on meditation they randomly divided them into two subgroups the first group got an 8-week meditation course where they were asked to meditate for 45 minutes a day the second group the control group was waiting for their course and they compared the two the first thing that they found was that the group that meditated enjoyed enjoyed far lower levels of anxiety than the control group second their mood improved significantly they actually became happier as a result of that 8-week program so this is great but they went a step further they went deeper and they actually scanned their brains and what they found was that after eight weeks their brains actually changed their brains were quite literally transformed they had higher levels of activation on the left side compared to the right side this is amazing especially given the fact that until about 10 years ago we thought that the brain doesn't change after the age of 3 or so now we know that it changes until the day we die and one of the ways of positively changing our brain is through meditation then they injected participants in both groups with called bacteria they wanted to see how their immune system would react and what they found was that those who meditated their immune system was a lot stronger so we become more resilient physically as well as psychologically we become happier and healthier through meditation here is a clip by Dr John kabid Zin one of the people most responsible for bringing meditation to our part of the world one of the the take- home messages of our study is that you do not actually have to be a Buddhist monk and move to the Himalayas in order to uh in order to benefit from these kinds of very very powerful meditative practices that it can be done in the workplace on you know uh in a regular life and uh that one's brain will actually change in response to it one's immune system will actually change in response to it however not everyone feels comfortable doing yoga or taking the time to meditate but here is one thing that I recommend something that is very very important that you all breathe don't stop breathing it's very important but of course what I mean is the deep breathing breathing like a baby does all the way into our belly and then exhaling slowly and gently we don't do that enough in our culture and we pay a price what we know is that when we're stressed when we're anxious our breathing actually becomes shallower it stops here and then when our breathing stops here we become even more stressed and anxious making our breathing yet shallower and so on and so on in a downward spiral or what psychologists call the fight or flight response something that we experience so much of the day in our modern 21st century world fortunately though what psychologists and physiologists have shown is that it's quite simple to reverse the fight or flight response and create instead what Herbert Benson calls the relaxation response and sometimes it takes as little as three deep breaths to reverse the cycle because what we also know is that when we're feeling good our breathing is deeper and when our breathing is deeper we feel even better leading to deeper breathing and on and on in an upward spiral of well-being there's a wonderful book AR by Tomas scrum called three deep breaths where he talks about the importance of introducing the practice of three deep breaths throughout the day as a ritual so the first thing when you wake up in the morning take those breaths first thing as you walk into your office and sit down take three deep breaths just after coming back from lunch or just as you about to enter home in the evening three deep breaths he recommends that each time we get to a red light we take three deep breaths now I learned how to drive in two places Israel and in Boston yep now the Israeli drivers and the Bostonian drivers are not world-renowned for their calm and peacefulness on their Road I'm sad to say no exception so each time I used to get to a red light I used to really get anxious especially if I just missed the green light whereas now I see it as an opportunity for deep breathing imagine if everyone use that as an opportunity for deep breathing everyone especially in Israel in Boston use it as an opportunity we'd have better drivers calmer drivers less road rage perhaps introducing these three deep breaths throughout the day can transform our day because in many ways these breaths are a form of a Min recovery in fact one of the leading mindbody practitioners doctors researchers in the area Dr Andrew W has this to say about breathing if I had to Lim MIT my advice on healthier living to just one tip it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly so breathe the nice thing about breathing is that you can do it anywhere anytime even while you're listening to a lecture so we talked about the permission to be human we talked about ways of dealing with stress and we talked about some Mind Body interventions the last thing that I want to to talk about is considered one of the central pillars of positive psychology and that is quite simply focusing on the positive we have Treasures of Happiness all around us and within us one of the problems is that very often we fail to appreciate these Treasures appreciate think of the word it has two meanings the first meaning of the word appreciate is to say thank you for something and saying thank you for something something being grateful for something appreciating it is a nice thing to do Cicero called gratitude the highest of Virtues but there is also a second meaning to appreciate and the second meaning is to increase in value it doesn't just happen to material things it also happens to spiritual things so when we appreciate the good in our life the good appreciates unfortunately the opposite is also the case meaning when we don't appreciate the good in our life when we take it for granted the good depreciates and that unfortunately is what very often happens in our lives in our relationships in our schools in our country Irvin yalom a Stanford psychiatrist has conducted research on terminally ill patients these are people who have 3 to 6 months to live and one of the things that found time and again was that these individuals would say something to the effect of for the first time in my life I feel that I'm alive for the first time in my life I feel that I'm alive why because For the First Time they're appreciating a breath for the first time in their lives they're appreciating a walk in the park the people whom they care about and who care about them and they finally feel that they're alive so the question is do we need to wait do we need to wait for something extraordinary external usually tragic to happen for us to appreciate the ordinary for us to appreciate the treasures of happiness that are all around us and within us and the answer is no we don't need to wait if we cultivate the habit of gratitude there's a lot of wonderful research done in the this area of gratitude lot of it by Robert Emmons and Mike mccul what they did in one seminal study was bring in a group of people and randomly divide them into four subgroups the first group was asked every night before going to sleep to write down at least five things for which they're grateful they can be big things or little things second group every night before going to sleep was asked to write about at least five hassles in their lives five bad things that happened to them the third group every night before going to sleep had to write at least five things at which they were better than others at Superior to others and the fourth group the control group had to write any five things that happened to them during the day they looked at the following measures the following variables they looked at how happy they were over the period of the study they looked at how optimistic they were they looked at How likely they were to achieve their goals how successful they were during that period they looked at how physically healthy they were during that time and finally they looked at how generous and benevolent these people were what they found was that the group that performed the worse was the group that every night wrote five hassles in their lives the group that performed the best the group that was happiest most optimistic most likely to achieve their goals most generous and benevolent toward others and healthiest was the group that every night before going to bed wrote at least five things for which they're grateful what effects and how simple I mean how long does it take 2 minutes 3 minutes with such remarkable results I've been doing this exercise regularly religiously every night since the 19th of September 1999 3 years before the actual study was published I started doing it after Oprah on one of her programs told me to do it and I've been doing it ever since it works and now we also have the scientific basis to show that it works I also do it with my son David every night before he goes to sleep I ask him David what was fun for you today and then he asked me ABA Daddy what was fun for you today and I tell him my wife and I do it on a regular basis where we tell one another what we appreciate about each other the beginning when we started doing it I naturally initiated it she thought it was weird but she said well you know I knew what I was getting into when when I married the guy so she put up with me and now it comes natural to us why because it's about not taking for granted the most important things in our lives when we appreciate the good the good appreciates so there are both psychological as well as physical benefits to doing this very simple exercise the key though when doing this exercise is to maintain freshness by being mindful of what we are writing down because one of the things that tend to happen after we've done it many times is that we begin to take this exercise for granted which of course defeats the purpose so when writing down for example mom to really think about mom when writing down a meal experience or re-experience that meal it's to experience what Barbara Frederickson calls in her book positivity heartfelt positivity let me share with you what I wrote last night so I have this little notebook that I write down and every once in a while I transcribe it to a file on my computer and it's terrific to go back and look at the things I was grateful for back in 99 or 2005 so here is what I wrote last night God tush tamy my wife David shirel elav my three children Udi and Jeff two friends I met yesterday and a salmon dish I had a wonderful salmon last night big things little things things that repeat themselves every day and things that are peculiar unique to that day it makes a big difference here is another clip by Sonia lubiri about the importance of gratitude the importance of appreciation gratitude is really critical um was one of the critical strategies uh to being happy and maintaining happiness and gratitude is really uh thankfulness or appreciation or even kind of a Wonder at life um but there's different kinds of gratitude and there different ways to Express gratitude so for example um being grateful for a particular individual in your life so I in in my is one type of expression of gratitude so in my studies I've had people write gratitude letters as a way as a kind of a technique to make themselves happier um counting your blessings as another is another way to Express gratitude like which is basically listing either writing down or telling someone else the things in your life that you're grateful for but also just just savoring and appreciating your life sort of as it happens you know when you're with your kids are you really just sort of savoring that positive experience with them or you you know thinking about something else so take these few extra minutes to savor to appreciate the treasures of Happiness many of the things that I talked about today are common sensical of course we know how important it is to give our our elves and others the permission to be human for us to take time to recover we know how good we feel after we go for a walk or a run we know that we feel great when we take in a deep breath and we know how important it is not to take for granted the things that are so important for us in life we know all these things it's common sense but as the French philosopher once said common sense is not that common especially when it comes to application so this is what I ask you today to make Common Sense more common Peter Ducker who is considered by many to be the father of modern management studies worked with hundreds and thousands of leaders around the world in the education sector in the business sector in government and he used to go to organizations and give talks or give public lectures but toward the end of his life he was too weak and too frail to go out and teach so we had those leaders come to him and spend the weekend and here is how he would start every weekend on a Friday he would tell the participant whoever it was the following on Monday I don't want you to tell me how great it was how great this weekend was on Monday I want you to tell me what you're doing differently why because Peter drer with his 60 or more years of experience knew what change is about he knew that real change does not come from experiencing a high or from being inspired that real change comes only with action so this is what I'm asking you now introduce these ideas ideas in your life create a circle around you friends family where you give one another the permission to be human give yourselves time to recover the 15minute recovery the good night sleep the vacation start a training regime tomorrow morning don't wait three times a week of 30 minutes it's not a lot it has consequences for your entire life it's a good investment go to a meditation class class start yoga see if it works for you and breathe throughout the day especially when you get to that red light and finally Savor appreciate there are so many Treasures all around us within us and if we appreciate them we'll have even more tonight as every night I'm going to be writing down the five things or more for which I'm grateful and one thing which I'm certainly going to write down tonight is the opportunity and the privilege of having spent time with you so thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] this program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you we are PBS