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Positive Psychology – Lecture 1 Tal Ben-Shahar Hi Good morning.It's wonderful to be back here.Wonderful to see you here.I'm teaching this cla because I wish a cla like this had been taught when I was sitting in your seat as an undergrad here.This does not mean it is a cla you wish to be taught, nor does it mean that it is the right cla for you.But I hope to doing the next couple of lectures is giving you an idea what this cla is about so that you can decide whether or not it is for you.I came here in 1992 And then I had a mini epiphany half way through my sophomore year.I realized that I was in a wonderful place with wonderful students around me, wonderful teachers.I was doing well academically.I was doing well in athletics.I was playing squash at that time.I was doing well socially.Everything was going well.Except for the fact.That I was unhappy.And I didn't understand why.It was then in a matter of moments, that I decided that I had to find out why and become happier.And that was when I switched my concentration from computer science to philosophy and psychology with a single question: how can I become happier? Over time I did become happier.What contributed most to my happine was when I encountered a new emerging field But eentially research that falls under or within the field of positive psychology.Positive psychology, studying it, applying the ideas to my life has made me significantly happier.It continues to make me happier.And it was when I realized the impact that it had on me that I decided to share it with others.That's when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher and teach in this field.So this is positive psychology, psychology 1504.And we'll be exploring this new, relatively new and fascinating field.And hopefully, we will be exploring more than the field ourselves.When I first taught this cla that was back in 2002, I taught it at a seminar and had eight students.Two dropped out.That left me with six.The year after, the cla became slightly larger.I had over three hundred students.And then third year when I taught it which was the last time, I had 850 students in the cla, making it at that point the largest course at Harvard.And that's when the media became interested.Because they wanted to understand why.They wanted to understand this phenomenon that “here you have a cla, that's larger than Introduction to Economics”.How could that be? So I was invited by the media for interviews, whether it was newspapers, radio, television.And I started to notice a pattern during those interviews.So I would walk into the interview.We would have the interview.And afterwards, the producer or the interviewer would walk me out and say something to the effects of “well thank you Tal for the interview.But you know I expected you to be different”.And I would ask, as nonchalant as I could of course.I didn't really care but had to ask anyway, “how different?” And they would say, “Well you know, we expected you to be more outgoing.” Next interview, the end of the interview, same thing.“Thank you for doing the interview.But you know Tal, I expected you to be different.” And once again, nonchalant of course.“Well you know, we expected you to be le, le introversit.” Next interview, same thing.“How different?”“Well, you know, more extroverted.More outgoing.” Next interview.“Well, you know, le shy.” Coz I get very nervous in interviews.Interview after interview, literally dozens.More outgoing, more cheerful.Le introverted, more extroverted.And on and on.But here is the best one.So this is one of the local channels here around Boston.I was going to the interview.We had a quite long interview, which I thought was actually pretty good.And at the end of the interview, the interviewer is a very jolly guy.He walks me out and puts his hands on my shoulder, and says, “thank you very much for doing the interview.” And then the usual comes.“But you know Tal, I expected you to be different.” And I said, “How different?” Just so you understand, by this time, my self-esteem is short.But still with some resemblance of nonchalance I asked, “how different?” And he looks at me and says, “Well I don't know Tal.I expected you to be taller.” Taller? What? Five seven, well ok five six and a half is not enough to teach happine? And I thought about it.I thought about it a lot.The whole pattern from the beginning.And I think I understand why they expected someone different.You see they had to explain to themselves as well as the audience, “how come this lecture is larger than the Introduction to Economics?” And the way to explain it must be that the teacher is very outgoing, extremely charismatic, very cheerful and extrovert and of course, tall.Well, there is one L miing there.cannot wait.In that case, please just put your hand up.Coz it's just like when you have to go to the bathroom.Just can't stop.Can't wait.And when you gotta go, you gotta go.So we'll take a positive psychology break for that.And just stop me half way through and I'll answer any question.All the power points, as well as the videos of the claes will be online.Will be available within couple of days.Well the power points will be available before, say for this lecture it will be before so that you can use them in cla.The videos, unfortunately, cannot be made available before.We tried.Couldn't figure it out.So it will be available within a day or two after.And the reason why they are up there.First of all, I do prefer that you attend lecture.I do prefer that you are physically here.You get things in the energy of the room with so many students so you wouldn't just get from your computer.The reason why I do put them up is so that you have the opportunity if you want to see it again or if you have to mi a cla.That's perfectly fine.And also because, and this is also the reason why the power points are always available, I want you to be engaged in the material.I want you to be engaged in whatever it is that we are discuing in cla.Not necearily thinking about getting down every word that I say on paper, remembering everything, memorizing everything.I want you to take rather than paive notes of writing down what is on the power point or every word that I say.I'd like you to take active notes.And that means being engaged with the material.For example, if you heard something and idea and you say, “Oh, that's interesting.” Star it.Write it down.Or “Ok I think I'll start applying this.” Write it down.“Or I want to tell my mom about this later.” Or “I want to talk to my roommates or my team about this idea.” Write it down.Active note-taking is opposed to paive note-taking for two reasons.First of all, as I said, this cla is a cla about making a difference in people's lives.I would not be teaching the cla just for its academic beauty, although there is a lot of academic beauty in this field.So write down if you have an idea that you think you can apply.The second reason why we should that is because you'll remember more.Better attention, better understanding of the material if you are actively engaged, as opposed to just taking down paive notes.Throughout the cla, starting next week, we'll take what I called, “time-ins” as opposed to “time-outs”.it's like a time-out.It's the time where we stop the cla and you look inward.And this is literally a time of silence in a cla.I will stop for a minute or two.And you'll have a chance either to just stare at me or anyone else, or think about what we've just discued, or have a guiding question that I will provide you that you'll addre during the cla.The reason why I have “Time-ins”...This is something that I am introducing this year for the first time.We didn't have it last time.It's because over the last two years since I last taught it, I've done a lot work in the area of silence.I've read a lot of research in this area about the importance of quiet times whether it's in a cla, in a lecture, whether it is at home, whether it is for a leader in the busine, for relationship, for children starting from pre-schools.Now many of you, as you are going through these “time-ins” if you decide to take this cla may think, “Well, is this what I'm paying 40,000 dollars a year for? To sit a cla and be quiet?” First of all, it will only be a minute or two at a time, maybe once or twice a lecture.But second, it is maybe the most important thing you'll take from this cla.The notion of embracing stillne.Let me read to you an excerpt from a study that was run by two MIT profeors.By the way, all the names that I read and that are not on the power points, you don't need to remember or write down.This is just for your edification.So David Foster and Matthew Wilson.Both of them are from MIT.Indeed the following study that I think confirms the importance of “time-in”, time to look inside.What they did is they scanned the brains of rats while they were in a maze and after they went through the maze.And here's what they found.“What the results suggest is that while there certainly is some record of your experience as it is occurring.in other words when they were doing the maze, when you try to figure out: 'What was important? What should I keep and throw away?' during periods of quiet wakeful introspection.What they show was rats who went through the maze and went through the maze again and again, learned far le than rats who took time aside, chilled out a little bit after a maze, had more margarita.Experience, embrace stillne.This has implications and they showed implications to human beings as well.Not only those of the rat race, all human beings.So what they say is that ”replay might constitute a general mechanism of learning and memory“.Both learning, understanding, as

People like Carl Rogers.And more than anyone, Abraham Maslow.Was the American Psychological Aociation President.Was the profeor just down the road here at Brandeis(Brandeis University).And he introduced this humanistic psychology in 1954.He wrote a chapter, called ”Toward the Positive Psychology“.1954.In it he said we need to also research kindne, goodne and happine and optimism.In many ways it was way ahead of his time.Then if Maslow is the grandfather, then Karen Horney is the grandmother.Initially a psychoanalyst, trained through the works of Freud, she realized the focuses had been too much on the negative--on neurosis, on psychosis and said we also, not only but also have to focus on what is working on human organism.We have to work and look at the fine qualities and cultivate those.Because part of being human is being those things as well.In many ways, brought about the movement toward humanistic psychology and through that--positive psychology.Aaron Antonovsky, the third person I would consider the grandfather, brought in the idea of focusing on health.He has a new concept.Or he introduced a new concept.I'm still here.Don't worry.He introduced a new concept, which he called--his own neologism, ”salutogenesis“.Salutogenesis: saluto--(which is)health;geneis(which is)origin.The origin of health.And this was an alternative model, to the conventional ways model of pathologies.So instead of just studying pathologies whether it's in physical health or psychological health, we should also study the origin of health.In many ways that is what prevented medicine is about.So this was a novel idea back in 1970s when he introduced it.And we'll talk a lot about Aaron Antonovsky.Now the parents.Martin Seligman, considered the father of the positive psychology, network of scholars, started the field in 1998.Like Maslow, he too, was the President of American Psychological Aociation.And as his mandate, during his presidency, he had two aims: the first aim--to make academic psychology more acceible,--in other words--bridge Ivory tower and mainstreet.This was the first aim of his presidency.The second aim was introduce a positive psychology.A psychology that will look at also things that work, that were not just study--depreion, anxiety, schizophrenia and neurosis.A psychology a network of scholars who will focus on--love, relationships, self-esteem, motivation, resilience and well-being.And he introduced these ideas and it's all been literally uphill from then.Before Martin Seligman, this all happened in 1998 and we'll talk about it a little bit more next time.This all happened in 1998.Long before 1998, our very own profeor Ellen Langer did research in all these areas, bringing the humanistic spirit and combining it with the academic scientific rigor.We'll be talking probably more than any other scholar about her work in this cla.And another person from Harvard, one of the parents of positive psychology was Philip Stone, who paed away two years ago, yesterday.Both Langer and Stone were my physicist advisors, introduced me to the field of positive psychology into this research.In 1998 when I had the first positive psychology summit, Profeor Stone took me along with him.I was a graduate student.In 1999 he taught the first positive psychology cla at Harvard, one of the first in the world.I was his teaching fellow.A couple of years later, he taught it again.Again I was his teaching fellow.And then when I graduated, he suggested I take over his cla.And here we are today.So this is 1504.Let me give you a sense of, in the next half an hour and so, a sense of what you expect in this cla.The first thing is this cla is not just about information, it is also explicitly about transformation.What do I mean by that? You see most of education today is about information.What is information? So we have a container, which is our mind.And information is about taking data, taking science, taking information and putting it inside the form.That is information.Now when this form is filled, that's when we are educated.More information, more data, better.Not enough.Because it's not just information that determines our wellbeing, our succe, our self-esteem, our motivational level, the relationship and the quality of our relationships.It's much more than information.Transformation is about taking this form and changing it.Trans,(which is)change, form,(which is)shape.Change the form.This is transformation.This is the distinction that I learned first from at the school.Profeor Robert Kegan who taught about this.Information in and of itself is not enough.Think about this example.You go for an athletic meet.Your aim is to get into the top three--to be a medalist.You come in number eight.What's the analysis? What's the interpretation?--Terrible.I just failed.You feel deflated.Enervated.On the other hand, the exact same

over-not-transformation emperor, the emperor of quick fixes has no clothes.It doesn't exist.it's over-promising and under-delivering.A life, a fulfilling life, a rich life includes ups and downs, includes pain and getting up again, includes failure and getting up again.It includes succe and celebrating it.Victories and loes, ups and downs, as we'll talk about next week.It's not about this one secret.One Wow to the good life.And many of the things you will learn in this cla, you've heard of before.Probably nothing new to you.You already know it inside of you.And you are going to say, ”Well, it is common sense.“ And yes, a lot of it is common sense.However, it is Voltaire once said, ”Common sense is not that common.“ And this especially applies to application.So the aim of this cla is to make common sense more common, especially in the real world application.At the end of the cla, here's what I am hoping for, at the end of the cla, if you decide to take it.At the end of the semester, I don't think—I am not expecting you to come and tell me, ”Wow!Thank you for teaching me so many new things.“ That's not what I amexpecting.I don't think that is what will happen.What I hope will happen is for you to come and say, rather than ”thank you for teaching me“, something you would say ”thank you for reminding me of something that I've already known“.And this is what this cla is about.It's constant reminder, twice a week.Constant reminder of what you already know, of what is inside you.The David that is inside you.And what this cla will hopefully do is to help you chip away some of these limitations, whether it's limitation, cognitive limitations that prevent you from seeing what you already knew, emotional limitations that are preventing you from deriving the benefits of what you already know, or behavioral limitations.The ABC: affect, behavior, and cognition that we'll talk about during the change week.So I'm making common sense more common.Information in and of itself is simply not enough.It's not enough and what we need in addition to our information highway is a transformation highway.Transformation high way, or transformation back roads, to come through the fast increasing pace.Because as we'll talk about next time, rates of depreion are on the rise, rates of anxiety are on the rise, not just in this country, globally.It's literally global epidemic.And to deal with it, more information will just not do.Just not enough.Here is Archibald MacLeish.He was a poet, was a Harvard profeor, ”What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science--information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance.What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world.It won't.“ Just adding it and filling up our containers with more and more stuff.More and more information, more and more data.It's just not enough.We need more than that.This cla will take a humanistic approach.Let me read you a quick excerpt by Abraham Maslow who talks about this approach, ”If one took a course or picked up a book on the psychology of learning, most of it, in my opinion, would be beside the pointimportance of idealism and maintaining idealism if we are to introduce personal change, inter-personal change, or community or society change.This cla is not about providing answers, concerning the good life and happine.It is about identifying the right questions.“Ask and ye shall you receive”, say the Scripture.This cla is what I think education is all about, which is that the quest for information and transformation must begin with the question.Quest, question, there is no coincidence that there is an etymological link between the two.In this cla we'll be asking, you'll be asked many questions, questions that as you'll see, create reality.We'll talk about it already next time.The importance of the questions you ask of yourselves first and foremost, of your partner, of your students, of your parents, of your employees in the future, teammates and so on.Questions make a difference.Peter Drucker, ―The most common source of mistakes in management decisions Peter Drucker, considered the most important management scholar of 20th century, just recently paed away, saying the biggest mistake is not asking the right questions.As we'll see next time, this is the biggest mistake in research potentially.This is the biggest mistake in application.Not asking the right questions as well, whether it's in managing organizations, whether it's managing our lives.Now.When I said that questions are important and answers matter le, I am not coming from a point of relativism.I'm not a relativist.I think they are...To some questions definitive answers that are important to know.However, what I'm saying is that it's important, not le important to focus on questions when it comes to education.The educator, Neil Postman once said, “The kids enter schools as question marks and they leave as periods.” My hope in this cla is to bring up many more question marks than periods.Once again, it's about chipping away the exce stone because as kids, we are always asking questions.We are always curious.Let me show you a quick excerpt from a video of one of my favorite psychologists, actually the comedian, Seinfeld.We will watch a lot of excerpts throughout the semester.Talking about what we were like as kids.See is this in your way “So, the first couple of years I made my own costumes which of course sucked: the ghost, the hobo...Then, finally, the third year, begging the parents, I got the Superman Halloween costume.Not surprisingly.Cardboard box, self-made top, mask included.Remember the rubber band on the back of that mask? That was a quality item there, wasn't it?That was good for about 10 seconds before it snapped out of that cheap little staple they put it in there with.You go to your first house: ”Trick or...“ Snap!” It broke.I don't believe it!“”Wait up you guys!I gotta fix it!Hey wait up!Wait up!“ Kids don't say ”wait“.They say ”wait up!Hey wait up!“ Coz when you are little your life is up.Your future is up.Everything you want is up.”Wait up!Hold up!Shut up!Momma, clean up!Let me stay up!“ Parents of course are just the opposite.Everything is down.”Just calm down!Slow down!Calm down here!Sit down.Put that down!“ So again this curiosity, this looking up, this opening up is opposed to closing down that kids have.This notion.This is what I hope will happen in this cla.The one real objective of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.So here is a longitudinal study that was done by John Carter.John Carter, profeor of leadership management of the busine school acro the river, came to Harvard in 1972, joined the faculty and started to follow Harvard cla, MBA cla of 1973 and followed them through 20 years.And what he was interested in was to find all the information he could about this cla.What he found 20 years later, early 90s when this study ended was these students were extremely succeful, Or ex-students were extremely succeful, students were extremely succeful, very wealthy, having a lot of impact, whether it's on the organizations, on the community.They did extremely well.But within the large group of highly succeful Harvard MBAs, he found a small group that was extraordinarily succeful, more succeful than the rest of group, whether in terms of income, whether in terms of impact, whether in terms of overall quality of life.Extraordinarily succeful.What he wanted to identify was why--what distinguishes this small group from the rest of the pack: very succeful, but not quite as succeful as that small group.And he found only two things.It was not their IQs that made no difference whatsoever to their long-term succe.It was not where they came from, pre-MBA, what they did had nothing to do with it.Two and two things along mattered in terms of determining who will be the extraordinarily succeful and the rest: the first thing was the extraordinarily succeful groups really believe in

event and it was held in India asked him what's wrong, Dalai Lama said that he was not comfortable with talking and emphasizing so much cultural differences.You can say many things about Dalai Lama.One thing you cannot say about him is that he's culturally insensitive, arguably one of the most sensitive people alive.And yet he said we are focusing too much on cultural differences and he added not because there are no cultural differences.Of course there are and they are important.But there are many more similarities than differences.And we shouldn't ignore those similarities.Daniel Goleman about the Dalai Lama, ”We were a little bit surprised by the Dalai Lama's seeming resistance to the notion of cultural differences.So I am willing to introduce these ideas but A, because it's not my training and people who are focusing on cultural differences will do a much better job than I do;and second, because what I hope to look into is the universal, things are common acro cultures.So we'll study research in this area.But even more than that, we'll become even more particular than just talking about psychology in this part of the world.We'll study yourselves.We are going to go that particular.Now why? When I put this cla together, I didn't think to myself, “Ok, so what are the things that I need to introduce in order to please the participants in the cla, the students?”That's not what I thought.What I thought about was “what was the cla that I would have wanted to take as an undergraduate here? What would help me become happier if I were sitting there?” In other words, thinking from my perspective from very personal perspective.In this cla I am going to encourage you.about large sample sizes.But I'm going to encourage you more than anything to look inside yourselves.To study yourselves.Whether it's through response papers that will be due weekly starting in 2 weeks;whether it's in your final project that will be a presentation that you won't have to give but you'll have to write out--a presentation about your favorite topic or the topic that matters most to you;whether it's in sections that you'll be talking about how can I apply these ideas to my life.The time-ins are about thinking about how can I take in the ideas and use them.It's about studying ourselves.Because as Carl Rogers says, “What is most personal is most general.”“What is most personal is most general.” And as Maslow adds, “We must remember that knowledge of one's own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.” When we understand ourselves better, when we identify ourselves, we are better able to identify with others.In fact, this is in many ways the source of empathy, of the healthy empathy.And there are some studies showing that people who know themselves, who study themselves, who are self-reflective, display le egregious behavior, le immoral behavior toward others.Behavior that would fall under say, racism.And it's counter-intuitive to some extent.“Wait.Don't you first need to study the other so that you can be more sensitive to others?” Yes, that too.But it's not enough.It is important to also study ourselves, because when we see our deep nature, what we encounter there is part of the universal nature, the similarities among us all, regardle of where we are from.And this was what Dalai Lama was talking about: not stop cro-cultural.Do it.Important.But at the same time, not ignore the self.Not ignore the universal within each one of us.C.S.Lewis, “There is one thing and only one in the whole universe which we know about that we could learn from external observation.That one thing is ourselves.We have, so to speak, inside information;we are in the know.” Now there are of course biases when we study ourselves which is why it's not enough to just study the self.It's important to counter it, to add to it, academic work, studying others.That's why we'll do some research or study research as well as do some search--searching inside us.Both are important.We shouldn't, just because there are biases and mistakes that potentially can be made, it doesn't mean we need to throw out the baby with the bath water and stop studying ourselves.So we'll do that or rather you'll do that probably more than any other cla on campus.Finally this may be news to you, but this is not English 10A or Math 55, meaning you'll not have to read as much as you will read for 10A or for a history cla, and this cla is not as difficult as Math 55 so you rest.I'm sure there are some people here who took the cla.This cla at the same time is about rigorous fun.Fun...because it's fun to study ourselves.Sometimes it hurts and sometimes we see things that we may not like, but overall it's fun.It's interesting.And at the same time it's rigorous, based on research.Now many of the ideas that you'll encounter in this cla are very simple, very acceible.Common sense.However they are simple, not simplistic.And here is the

0us to share this moment with them.And I'm really excited about it.Last time we taught this cla, we did a survey to find out what type of people were sitting in this room--they are just like yourselves--and find out why you'll be taking this cla.Coz the comment that we get so often about this cla is why would Harvard students poibly be unhappy? what do they have to be unhappy about? They thought everyone who'd be taking this cla would be taking it because they are already really happy and they want to study about how amazing they are.And they'd like to learn things that they can tell the roommates so clearly that(?)themselves.But it turns out actually over a third of people who took this cla last year took the cla because they felt depreed.And they were trying to learn about the research about positive psychology.And another third because they wanted to learn about optimism.Another third did it for completely different reasons.I think.Additional third this year did it because Tal was on the Jon Stewart Daily Show.I am absolutely thrilled about this cla.The syllabus which Tal is about to tell you about is..Actually we learned a couple of other things about you guys.Did you know that of people who take positive psychology, 75% of you are officers of club, 35% of you are the highest ranking officers of club, which means that you think there are about 2000 clubs at Harvard, you are in club of three, and you happen to be the president.We learned other reasons why you are not happy.we learned that the average number of romantic relationships for people to take positive psychology in 4 years is between zero and one.Zero and one.(Tal: No!I don't believe it.)Don't leave.from you? Alright.So let me just say--one second finishing words.I am very excited to be back here.My families are very excited to be back here.Looking forward to a meaningful, pleasurable, enjoyable and happier semester with you.Thank you.Positive Psychology – Lecture 2

Hi.Good morning.I'm so glad that you came.I was worried that no one would show up in this weather.I'm glad you are Ok.Just a couple of announcements.Questions that I received via email.A few things before we jump into the material.First of all, I was asked,‖ who is this cla for? Is it for people--you know it's positive psychology--people that are very unhappy? Is it only for people who are depreed? Who is this cla for?“ Well, the cla is for anyone who is interested in Positive psychology and anyone who wants to be happier.If you are extremely happy, you can still be happier.If you are very unhappy, you can still be happier.So the cla eentially is for anyone who's interested in the material.And I would add someone who is really interested to work, to put the kind of effort that we talked about last time.Just not the kind of effort that we would require you to wreck your head about understanding certain concept, but it is effort in terms of applying these ideas to your lives.Now you may want to take this cla, because you are interested on academic level in positive psychology that's perfectly fine.And you'll get many--we'll talk about numerous studies in every lecture, starting next time.We'll talk about study after study after study, so you'll get that element as well.However, if you are thinking about taking positive psychology for personal benefits, you need to put the effort in.And I'll talk more about that today.So the cla is for everyone.Anyone who's extremely happy and wants to be happier and anyone who's not happy and wants to be happier.Pa/fail--perfectly fine.Again the idea about this cla is first and foremost for you.So I would urge you if you do take pa and fail to put in the work, and that's why the one element of pa/fail is not negotiable is that all the response papers have to be submitted.Now the response papers, as you know, are not graded.They are basically reflection papers.Will you reflect about the ideas about things that can be applied to your life? But they are

3through the cla.I taught the Thursday cla.That started 2 years ago.It started on Tuesday.So I taught on Tuesday.Somehow Thursday, completely drugged.This lecture I made it through somehow.And I went to home and I couldn't fall asleep.I was in real pain.I went to the doctors.That was on Friday afternoon, just saying ”you know I have to go.The medication I took didn't help.“ Went to the doctors.Had some blood tests.And finally after days I couldn't sleep because of pain, fell asleep.This was Friday night.In the midnight, there was a phone call.I don't hear it.I am fast asleep.My wife picks it up.Tommy picks it up.It's the doctor.And the doctor says to Tommy, ”the test results just came in.And Tal should get to the hospital now.“ She said to the doctor, ”He just fell asleep.He hasn't slept for days.Can it wait till tomorrow morning?“

And the doctor said,‖ No.And he has to go to Beth Israel, because they have the best labs for what he needs right now.” And she doesn't elaborate it any more.Tommy wakes me up, retells me the story of what's happening.Somehow I get up.She can't take me to the hospital because David, at that time one year old, is asleep.We don't want to wake him up.So we get a cab to take me to Beth Israel.On the way--so this was the year after I was no longer resident tutors in Leverett.We were(?), driving down the Charles River.Up and drive and then next to Harvard.I look at Harvard.I look at the beautiful river.It's very quiet.Not many cars just after midnight after a Friday night.And I can't help myself but think, “what if there's something really terrible going on?” I mean, why would they call me midnight to the hospital--Beth Israel, insisting on just one specific hospital? There must be something really wrong.And my mind begins to wander.And I say, “what if I only have a year left? What would I do in that year?” I become very sad because I think I won't see David grow up.I won't see--I won't have any future children.Be careful up there.And I become very wistful and sad.And then I ask myself,“ Ok so profeionally, what would I want to do in that last year?” So I know personally exactly what I'll do.I'll spend all the time that I can with my family.But profeionally what do I want to accomplish in this year? And my immediate response was I want to leave behind a coherent body of work, a coherent course introducing people to positive psychology.While I arrived at the hospital, I had some more checks.It ends up being nothing too serious.They put me on antibiotics.And within a couple of days I am on the way to recovery.I want to share with you today though why.Why is it the most important thing for me at that time and still today, is to leave behind a coherent body of work about positive psychology, to introduce you to this wonderful field? Why positive psychology? Why is it? Its own field? Why is it not--well, just study happine, wellbeing as part of social psychology or clinical psychology? Why have so many scholars around the world united around

this concept of positive psychology? So this is what I want to do today.In the year of 2000,a research was done by David Myers.Davis Myers, from Hope College--some of you who've studied social psychology may have read his textbook, did research, looking at psychological abstracts.What he looked at was the ratio between “negative research” and“positive research”.Here is what he found.From 1967 to year of 2000-this was around the time when positive psychology started, what he found in the 33 years are over 5000 articles on anger, 5000 research articles on anger.He found over 41000 research articles on anxiety and over 50000articles on depreion.And then he looked at the positive words, positive research.He

looked for research on joy.And he found staggering 415 studies.It does get better.He looked at research on happine and he found close to 2000 articles on happine in 33 years.Life satisfaction came on top: over 2500 studies.Still, if you look at that, the negative studies versus the positive studies, the ratio that you get is 21 to 1.For every one article on some positive aspect, some positive element of life, wellbeing, satisfaction, joy, happine, you get 21 articles on depreion, anxiety, schizophrenia, neurosis and so on.Ratio of 21 to 1.Very depreing ratio, I must admit.In fact, it made me very angry and anxious.Studies focus on, primarily on what doesn't work, mostly on what doesn't work.And this is not a new phenomenon.5

We see it around campuses.This is not peculiar to Harvard.Not at all peculiar to Harvard.Richard Kadison, who is the head of mental health services here, in the New England Journal of Medicine--probably the leading journal in the field of Medicine, recently published an article, where he talked about a survey that was done among 13500 college students nationwide, different kinds of colleges, universities, states schools, private schools.And what they found in this very significant study was that 45% of college students nationwide over the past year have experienced depreion to the point of not functioning.So The Harvard Crimson found 47;nationwide, it was 45--eentially identical, no significant difference among the two.This is a nationwide phenomenon.In this study, 94% of college students nationwide feel overwhelmed and streed by everything that they have to do.94% I mean these are supposed to be the best four years of our lives.Something is going on here.Now this is not unique to United States.I just recently came back from a tour.I was in--spent time in Europe--in the UK, France;spent a lot of time in China and some time in Australia.In every one of these places, the governments are really concerned;university presidents are very concerned about the growing level of depreion, anxiety and general mental disorder, rise of suicide rates in all of these countries that I mentioned.So we have a global epidemic here.And once again going back so: Is it the 21:1 ratio good? Is it important? Shouldn't it be increased? How can we even think about studying happine and well-being and love and joy? Shouldn't we first deal with the real preing problem of depreion, anxiety, neurosis and so on?

Some truth to that, but again what I'm going to argue for in this cla is that we do need to also, not only, not exclusively, not even necearily primarily;we need to also focus on the positive.I am going to talk about three reasons why we should do that.The first reason is that it is important to focus on what works, because what works or what we focus on rather creates reality.If we focus on what is working, we'll have more working in our world, more working in ourselves, more working in our relationships.The second reason why positive psychology as an independent field of study as a course in and of itself is important is that being happy is not just the negation of happine.It doesn't mean just get rid of depreion or anxiety that I am experiencing, I spontaneously become happy.That's not the case.That's not how it works.And finally, prevention which is very important today, the most effective way of preventing hardship,--whether it's depreion, whether it's anxiety,--is actually by focusing on and cultivating the positive.Now I will share with you some studies about this.So for these three reasons, we need positive psychology.Let me begin with the importance of focusing on what works.In the introduction to the Handbook of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman who we talked about last time, considered the father of positive psychology, network of scholars, says this: “The aim of positive psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.” Note that he says also.He doesn't say exclusively or even primarily.It's important to focus on what works,--whether it is in our relationship, whether it's in ourselves, whether it's in others, whether it's in Harvard, whether it's in United States or the world--in order to have more what works.Now the question is “how do we focus on what works?” And the answer to this question is through the questions that we ask.Let me illustrate through a case study.Psychologists, starting in the late 1940s, studied at-risk population.More and more money--government money, university money, philanthropist money--went into study in the cities or places where generally the kids were considered at risk--more prone to dropping out of school, more prone to later-on crime, teen pregnancy and so on.So this study they put in a lot of money, a lot of effort into this.The question that the psychologists asked was “why do these individuals fail? why does such a high percentage of students in that as-risk population end up dropping out of school? Getting pregnant? Crime?”--And we'll talk about the statistics later on next week.“Why do so many of these individuals fail?” Now an important question, good intentions of the psychologists, smart people, lot of

7learned.that I'll mention here is that they can all be taught;In many ways, this cla is about that.And when the psychologists identified these, they started to teach them and the individuals started to learn and that made all the difference.In addition to the faith andsense of meaning, pro-social behavior, helping other people, shifting from helplene to helpfulne, they were significant.One of the things that we'll talk about is how meaningful it is to help other people.And how much it doesn't just only help others, it also helps us.And we enter an upward spiral between self-help and other-help.Because when we help others, we are helping ourselves.When we help ourselves, we help others.And so on and so on.So they were pro-social.They were helping other people.They focused on their strength rather than primarily deficiencies.They did not ignore their weaknees, but they asked, “what am I good at? What am I really, really good at?” And again, part of this course, you'll identify your strength, whether it's through online test, whether it's through reflection papers, whether it's in section.You'll think about it whether it's through your readings.Identify the strength.What are they good at? They set goals for themselves.They were future-oriented, not just thinking about how bad things are today perhaps, but also thinking about “this is where I wanna be 5 years or 10 years from now.” We are going to devote three claes to goal setting, very significant part of resilience.They had a role model.Someone who they said about “I want to be like her;I want to be like him.” It could be a teacher.It could be a parent, sibling, and friend.Sometimes, it was a historical figure or a fictional character, someone that they want to emulate, to be like.That gave them strength.That gave them sense of direction.And finally, most significantly, they did not bowl alone.They had social support.They did not say : “well I am tough enough to do it by myself.” Rather they said:“I'm tough enough to reach out for help.” Because that does require certain toughne.The strength to admit weaknees as well, the strength to admit a need.Now think about these: do you have

these things here for yourself at Harvard in life? And if not, you can cultivate all of these things, whether it's a social support--and it doesn't have to be a hundred people whom you talk to everyday;it can be one or two close friends, mom, dad, roommates--makes a big difference.No.1 contributor to resilience.Now the important thing about social support is identifying the right people.People who, when you reach out to them, will reach back to you and will be able to give back.I want to show you an example now of a not so good role model for social support.And that is an interaction between Grace and Karen from Will and Grace.Will and Grace(From Episode 309)

SALESMAN: This video game makes a nice birthday gift.Do you think your stepson would like that?

KAREN: I don't know, honey.Can he eat it or rub up against it?

SALESMAN: Let's come at this a different way.What are his interests? KAREN: Ham.SALESMAN: Why don't I just let you browse awhile?

KAREN: Yeah.Thanks.Ooh, and, uh, do you think there's anything you could do about all these kids in here?

SALESMAN: Ma'am, it's a toy store.KAREN: Yeah.See what you can do.Move it, Shorty.GRACE: Hi, Karen.Um...I can't help you shop today.I've got to go.KAREN: What's going on? What's happening? What's with the geisha hand? GRACE: Nothing.I just had something zapped at the dermatologist's, and it looks kinda funky, and I just don't want anyone to see it right now.KAREN: Grace, I'm sure it's not nearly as bad as you think it is.It's probably

9you,(that is what is working)is a radically new question, which provides the impetus for formulating a new paradigm to help us understand health and illne.It has serious implications for researcher and clinician, biological and social scientist alike.“ It was that question that eentially created the field of positive psychology as well as positive sociology.He was a sociologist by training as well as many other fields.Questions make a difference.Questions create reality.I want to do an exercise with you now.We'll do quite a few exercises in cla.Here's the first one.To illustrate the importance of question, now I'm going to ask you to count the number of geometric shapes that you see on the screen--no, not this screen, the next screen.And you are Harvard students.It's fine.The next screen, I am going to ask you to count the number of geometric shapes that you see on the screen.It's a very difficult question.I've given it to people around the world.I've given it to mathematicians, to artists who are very visual.And the challenge here is you are only going to have 30 seconds in which to do it, 30 seconds to tell me how many geometric shapes you see on the screen.Ready? 30 seconds.How many geometric shapes do you see on the screen? Go.Ok.So that's 31 seconds.So there should be no problem.Now if you haven't done-I know a couple of you have done this exercise before, but if you haven't done-this exercise before,--and that's most of you, I'd like you to participate.So how many geometric shapes could you count on the screen? Throw out the numbers.6 8 48 58 44 36 110 38N6.8.48.58.44.36.110.38.How many? Up there? You have a good perspective.8.Anyone more than 110? Yeah, how many? 300?

200.Anyone more than 200 or le than 6?

Ok.So quite a range.But I grant you that it's a tough question.By the way if you have it on your power points that you downloaded, I took it off on the later downloading, but if you downloaded it, don't look at it now please.So we have the rate between 6 and 200.Now it's a tough question.In fact, it is so tough that I have no idea how many geometric shapes there are on the screen.But I have another question for you.Now if you know the answer to this question, just put your hand up--and if you haven't done this exercise before,--just put your hand up.Don't shout it out.If

you know the answer, put your hand up: what time was it on the clock? If you know the answer, put your hand up.If you think you know the answer, half way up.Maybe, quarter.And the rest of you may leave now.Ok, so we have a few halves.So out of the room,--how many were there--probably 600,700 students here, out of 700 Harvard students, five and a half people can read the time on the clock.But I understand, we all have digital watches today.It's difficult.So let me ask you an easier question.If you know the answer, just put your hand up.That's right!How many kids were visible on the bus? If you know the answer, put your hand up.If you think you know, half way up.Maybe, quarter.Yeah, most of you think,‖ what bus?!” You know.“What kids?” Well it was there.So out of a room of--again--700 Harvard students, there are approximately 11 and 3/4.Who can count? But that's Ok.That's not my 55(Math 55 course in Harvard)here.I understand.Another question.A little bit easier.What was the color of, the dominant color of the left-most geometric shape on the screen? Not the big one on screen, but the left-most geometric shape on the screen.What was the dominant color? If you know the answer, hand right up.If you think you know, half way.Ok.So that's about 12 1/4 people.According to my estimated research, there are probably between 5 and 7 people in this room who are color blind.Really--according to the statistics.The rest of you have

Questions create reality.The questions we ask very often determine the quest that we will pursue, the path that we will take, the life that we will lead, whether it's individually, whether it's interpersonally, whether it's organizationally.What is the question? Many of you I know are going into consulting.What's the question that most consultants ask, Either explicit question or implicit question, the first time when they meet a client?--“What's wrong? What can we improve? What are the weaknees that we need to strengthen them?” Again, important questions to ask.But if you only ask these questions, then you are ignoring the strengths, the virtues of the organization.And what you are doing, you are enervating, you are weakening the organization over time.It is as important, if not more important, to also appreciate what is working, organizationally, interpersonally, as well as individually.It is important to appreciate what is good.I mean, look at the word, and ―appreciate Two meanings: first meaning--to say thank you for something, not to take it for granted.And that's a nice thing to do.We shouldn't take for granted our virtues, our succees.We shouldn't take for granted others.That's a nice thing to do.But appreciate has a second meaning, which is to grow.Money appreciates in the bank.The economy hopefully appreciates.When we appreciate the good, the good appreciates--the good grows.Unfortunately, the other side of the same coin applies as well.When we don't appreciate the good, when we take it for granted, the good depreciates.And that's what happens in most relationships after the honeymoon phase.That's what happens to most people, especially to very driven people who want to improve, who want to get better.And that's good thing, if that is what makes you happy.At the same time, it's equally important to also appreciate what is good inside me what my strengths, what my virtues are.And we are going to do a lot of that in the course.And again, not to go to the point of narciism.If anything narciism--and we'll talk about it in the second last lecture in the semester-narciism is not about self-confidence, about self-esteem.It's exactly the opposite.We are talking about grounded self-confidence.Grounded, generous, benevolent happine.In order to lead that kind of life, we need to also appreciate what is working, to also focus on, metaphorically speaking, the children on a bus.Stavros and Torres in the wonderful book on relationships, “We see what we look for and we mi much of what we are not looking for even though it is there.Our experience of the world is heavily influenced by where we place our attention.”

Questions very often create reality.The first important thing to understand about questions is that we need to understand the questions.And here I want to defer to a very important philosopher, a 20th and 21st century philosopher, who illustrates the importance of understanding questions--Homer Simpson.If you can just turn down the voice, the sound a little bit, because this is very loud.Thank you.The Simpsons SCULLY: Now we're gonna run a few tests.This is a simple lie detector.I'll ask you a few yes or no questions and you just answer truthfully.Do you understand? HOMER: Yes.Love it.Love it.So the first step is really understanding the question.But once we understand it, it is also important to know what questions are we going to ask.I mentioned earlier that one of the most important things in cultivating resilience is

3changes overnight.A producer, from the television CBS program “60 Minutes” finds out about Marva Collins and creates a 15 minutes segment on her.Overnight she becomes famous.November,1980, new

President elect Ronald Reagan calls up Marva Collins.offers her to be his secretary of Education.So I gue her father was right.Marva Collins turns his offers down and says, “I love to teach too much.My place is in the claroom.8 years later almost to the day, new president elect George Bush Sr.calls Marva Collins once again, offering her to be his secretary of education.Once again,‖ I love to teach too much.” My place is in the claroom.In 1995,a wealthy philanthropist donates tens of millions of dollars to Marva Collins.Now there are Marva Collins schools all over the country where thousands of students learn, where hundreds of teachers from all over the world come and see the miracle of Marva Collins.Today there are Marva Collins graduates who are politicians, busine people, lawyers, doctors, and more than anything, teachers.Because they know what their teacher has done for them.I want to show you a brief excerpt of this extraordinary woman.You can turn the volume up a little bit please.This is soft.Marva Collins “Positive Learning” I think I did pretty wonderful.I think I'm bright.I think I am unique.And I'll teach every child of me to think that.When they misbehave, their punishment is they have to write 100 reasons why they are too wonderful to do what they are doing.And they have to be alpha order.I am adorable.I am beautiful.I am courageous.I give them the first ones until they get the hang out of it.I am delightful.I am effervescent.I am fabulous.I am heavenly.I am idolized.I am just wonderful.I am a kindred spirit.I am lovable.I am momentous.I am never,never under line.And it goes on to z.And if they do it again, then they have to use another synonym.They can't use adorable any more.Now the children will say to a new student, I know why you don't behave.Coz I'm tired of telling Ms.Collins how wonderful I am.Now she is wonderful.Here is her book.Now for all those--I know that there are quite a few of you who are interested in teaching, and there's one book you want to read.It's this.For all those of you who are interested in leadership and there's one book you want to read.It's this.For all those of you who are or are interested in the future of becoming parents, and there's one book you want to read.It's this.For all the rest of you, if there's one book you want to read.So what's her meage? First of all, she herself is the meage as a role model.And she studied with her kids, role models.They read fiction books.They read historical books.They read books about heroes and talk about heroes.They all identify role models.They identify role models in their neighborhood, in their families, constantly doing that, which is exactly what you need to cultivate resilience.First and foremost, she herself is the role model.She has high expectations.We are going to do a lot of believing in ourselves.We are going to do well, succeed.She expects a lot.She sees the potential.She appreciates that potential in each individual.Stop blaming others.Take responsibility for your life.Marva Collins is no push-over.If you see her in the claroom, she is tough.She is demanding.At the same time, she respects each individual.She is not one of the Pollyannaish “feel-good”, “let's make them all feel good” at all cost.Not at all.She believes in them.She respects them.And she is tough and demanding--important combination for leadership.It's why I mentioned earlier in the context of great leadership book.There are many very nice ex-CEOs whose primary aim was to be nice and to be liked, the keys to get the job done, to get the work done, while being respectful.Sense of optimism.You can do well.You are going to do well, helping them set goals for themselves and for community.And finally, from focusing on deficiencies to focusing on strength.Howard Gardner from the ED(Education)school here talks about multiple intelligences, says that we need to stop asking whether or not a student is smart.What we need to ask is what is the student smart at.And when we identify what that student is smart at, strong at, virtuous at, good at, then

5you in every way that you need.However, ultimately, it's your responsibility to do it in section.It's your responsibility to make it.One of the first questions that you'll be asking question in section next week when they start to meet is “how can you make this an excellent section?”“What can you do?”“what can you bring? What strength can you bring into the section so that it's an excellent section?” As opposed to blaming, other students, TF, Bush, Clinton, whoever Taking responsibility for it.There is a wonderful story about responsibility in the book by Nathaniel Branden.We are going to read some stuff by Nathaniel Branden when we talk about self-esteem.Nathaniel Branden talks about six pillars six important pillars in self-esteem.One of those pillars is self-responsibility.People who have high self-esteem take responsibility.People who want to cultivate high self-esteem and create confidence, take responsibility for their lives and so on.So in his workshop, one of the main things that he says there in his book is that understanding that you have to take responsibility for your life is recognizing understanding that no one is coming.No one is coming to--the knight in shining armour who will take you to the happily-after land.No one is coming to make your life better for you.No one is coming.You are responsible for your life, for your self-confidence, for your self-esteem, for your happine.No one is coming.So he was talking about this in one of his workshops that's a three-day workshop.And this was already on the third day and the workshop was going well.The participants were getting a lot out of it.And he said, he told them about this idea that no one is coming.And one of the participants raises his hand and says, “Dr.Branden, that's not true.” And Nathaniel Branden asks him,‖ What do you mean?“ And he says, ”Dr.Branden, you came‖, to which Branden responded, “Yes, I came.But I came to tell you that no one is coming.” No one is coming.It's up to you to make the most out of this experience, 1504,your sections, your Harvard experiences and beyond.And we, as the teaching staff, can't wait to create the right conditions for that to happen.See you on Thursday.Positive Psychology – Lecture 3 Good morning, everyone.This semester has started, officially today.Glad to see you here.Just a couple of announcement and also hi to the extension school students.Last time we say hi to New Zealand.Today we are saying hi to Ireland.In terms of sectioning for the undergrads and graduate students here, you'll get an email from Sean Achor tomorrow.And you'll put in your section preference.We are sectioning this weekend.So it will be important that you submit your top preferences.And next week we are starting.Last time, if you remember the question that we ask, the guiding question was “why positive psychology?” And I mentioned three reasons, Why we need it as an independent field as opposed to just being “well, let’s do some studies on happine, on relationships” as it is always being done? The reason why we need positive psychology is to shift the pendulum from the 21:1 ratio that we have today: for every one study on depreion or anxiety, we have 21 studies on--sorry, for one study on happine or wellbeing, we have 21 studies on depreion and anxiety.We want to shift the pendulum slightly.And I mentioned three reason why we want to shift this pendulum despite the fact that there are rising levels of depreion around the world, that anxiety has become epidemic globally— on college campuses in United States, China, Australia, UK.Despite that fact, I argue that we need to shift the pendulum and do more “positive research‖, or in other words, research that focuses on what works.And the reason is— the first reason that we gave and we are just finishing up is because the question that we ask, whether it's the research questions that we ask, or the questions that we ask of ourselves, or our partners, matter.And if our only questions, or primarily our

7why already in the 1940s, David Henry Thoreau(should be Henry David Thoreau), wrote that most men lead lives of quiet desperation.It's Ok.There's nothing really wrong.But it's just somewhere there in the words of Pink Floyd ”people are comfortably numb“.Comfortably numb.Not enough.How can we get beyond that ”comfortably numb“? How can we get beyond that ”quiet desperation“? To excitement, to joy, to happine? In order to do that, we need to cultivate these traits.Once again, they don't spontaneously emerge once the painful experiences go away.And that is why we need positive psychology.Positive psychology eentially focuses on the health model, Salutogenesis.What is the source of health, physical, psychological, emotional? How do we get people to flourish, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, interpersonally, intra-personally? How do we get them to thrive beyond just getting rid of what is not working in their lives?And under that model we see, to extremes on many levels.Here, the first level: do we focus on weaknees, which is the disease model, say let's get rid of weaknees? Or do we focus on strength? While you ask people this question, and this was done by the Gallup organization.A poll--global poll, whether it's in Japan, China, United States or Europe: most people think that it's more important to focus on their weaknees if they are to succeed.Big mistake.The people who focus primarily, not only--remember the ”also“— who shift the pendulum, who focus more on their strength, are not only happier, they are also, on the long run, more succeful.It applies to leadership as well.Positive psychology says let's focus also on our strength at least as much.In an organization, as well as on the individual level, are we focusing most on overcoming deficiencies or building the competencies— what we are good at--and getting better at it? What our natural inclination, individually or organizationally— do we focus on that and then build on that? Again, tie to succe as well as wellbeing, if we are more toward the positive side.How do we live our lives? Running away from painful experiences? Or actively seeking pleasure? Running away from unhappine? Or adhering to the Declaration(Declaration of Independence)and pursuing happine?Now that may look quite similar--for example, someone may be working 80 hours a week, running away from something--running away from iues at home, running away from dealing intra-personal iues and then may look exactly the same as the person who works 80 hours a week and who's extremely paionate about what she does.May look the same but from the inside, they feel very different.One is the disease model: let's run away from what is not working.The other is the health model: let's pursue my paions, what I love to do.The disease model, the optimum level is the zero: let's just be Ok;let's just not hurt.And again, that’s important to get rid of hurt.It's important to get rid of depreion.But with the health model, they are saying that's not enough;let's go beyond that.Let's go to the excitement, to the fun.Because the ideal is not just a tensionle state.It is the creative tension.We'll talk about it.We'll read about it.When we do ”flow“.Flow is the state where we are excited, where we are engaging what we are doing, where it's much more than being ”comfortably numb“.In fact, it’s a little bit uncomfortable.It's being outside of our comfort zone.It's being in our stretch zone— not the panic zone, where it hurts--the stretch zone, where there is excitement, where there's some nervousne.There is also growth there.So what do you want? Where do you want to go? What do you want to pursue? Do you want to run away from pleasure--run away from pain? Do you want to run away from unhappine? Or do you want to pursue happine and pleasure? Do you want to focus primarily on your deficiencies or your weaknees? Or your strength? What is the optimum? what is the ideal? Is there a gla ceiling--the zero? Or can it go on and on— more excitement, more enjoyment, more paion? Now there's something frightening about the health model.Because there is no limit and there is le prescription there certainly today than in the disease model.Positive psychology, the field of health psychology is in infancy.There's much more research, much more advice on how to get rid of depreion and how do I pursue my strength.But fortunately, again, this is why positive psychology as a network of scholars applying themselves to these ideas and ideals.It's so important because today you'll see throughout the semester that there are so many more tools that we can apply to our lives, to go beyond the zero.That's not all.So I said there are three reasons.It's about where we focus, focus creates reality;it's about happine is not just a negation of unhappine;the third reason why positive psychology

9have largely come from a perspective focused on systematically building competency, not correcting weakne.” In other words, the health model: let's work on competencies.Let's work on strength.Let's work on relationship.Let's help them identify something meaningful in their life, their paion.And that's how we will, over time, also help what comes off on the negative side.Health model versus the disease model that goes directly to deal with the disease.Now again, Seligman is not saying “to the exclusion of”;he's saying “also”.He continues, “We have discovered that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illne: courage, future-mindedne, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight, to name several.We've shown that learning optimism prevents depreion and anxiety in children and adults, roughly halving their incidence over the next 2 years.Similarly, I believe that if we wish to prevent drug abuse in teenagers who grow up in a neighborhood that puts them at risk, the effective prevention is not remedial.Rather, it consists of identifying and amplifying the strengths that these teens already have.” It's exactly what Marva Collins did: focused on the health and cultivated it, watered it and shed a light to it, realized it.We'll talk about all these ideas throughout the course.What health model does— this is the theme we go through all the course is cultivate capacity.It cultivates the capacity to deal with the negatives when these arrive— whether it's negative and painful experiences in relationships, or in ourselves.What does that mean?Let me draw two analogies.Cultivating capacity is about creating a strong psychological immune system.These are the words of Nathaniel Branden.Psychological immune system.What happens when we have a strong physical immune system? Does it mean we don't get ill? Of course not.We do.But it means that we get ill le often and when we do get sick, we recover more promptly.This is exactly what cultivating strength, optimism, sense of purpose, meaning, mindfulne— this is exactly what these characteristics do.They enlarge transform— the way we see, the way we experience the world, enlarge the capacity of the form and that's we are better able to deal the inevitable difficulties.And there are inevitable difficulties.No life is completely immune to those.So it strengthens our immune system.And another analogy we can use is of an engine.If we have a small engine, and we have to pull the car up a steep hill, a difficult hill, the engine is more likely to collapse, to blow up.Whereas If our engine is large, we are much more likely to get up that hill, and to do it gracefully with relative ease.So what we are doing: we cultivate the positive;we are strengthening our, metaphorically speaking, psychological “engine”;and we are better able to deal with the negative to zero, not to mention the fact that we are also able to become happier.Because happine does not just come spontaneously when we negate unhappine.I want to go back to our local village.So remember last time I put up the article by the Crimson(Harvard Crimson magazine)that was unfortunately I couldn't find a more recent one--that was 2004? But the situation is rather similar today.And one of the things that the Crimson article said is that we need to put more resources into mental health at Harvard.And that's important, I agree.However, it’s only part of the picture.in some different places as well--not only, as well.Because it's just not enough to put these resources in places that help us deal with our depreion and anxiety and unhappine directly.It is also important to put these resources in places that help us cultivate capacity, the capacity to deal with these difficulties and hardships when they arise and they will arise.In other words, there has to be more resources put in places such as helping students identify their paions when they come here, helping students identify their sense of meaning in life, helping students identify what they really, really, really want to do, helping students overcome the pull, the external pull that is often there, taking them away from their core, helping them chip away those limitations, those voices, helping students identify who they really are, helping students identify their strengths and pursuing those while here at Harvard.All these capabilities, all these skills or skills that are mostly— and I'm not just talking about Harvard— globally--not taught in schools.And we need to teach them.This is not to say that what is going at Harvard with numerous resources that we do have here is not important.It is very important.Just take a small example: the Bureau of Study Counsel.I don't know how many of you have used that resource.I've used it as an undergrad.I still use it now, doing some work with them.I did some work with them last year.And they are wonderful.And at the same time, we also need

1unhappine that you may experience thinking about that.Again, more on that next time.So let me begin with bridge building.Here I am going back to what I talked about right at the very beginning of the first lecture.The idea of bridging Ivory tower and Main Street.There are many people in academia, outside academia, who divide the world eentially into two.They talked about the real world that is outside, that is dirty, impure, profane versus academia, which is lofty, idealistic, sacred.Sacred versus the profane.This distinction hurts.It hurts academia and hurts people who are outside of academia.Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher: “The careful shielding of a university from the activities of the world around us is the best way to chill interest and to defeat progre.Celibacy does not suit a university.It must mate itself with action.‖ This is very important for university.Talked about a second psychology.He said second psychology is a psychology that leaves the labs that draws on the research done in the labs that is important and meaningful, however, doesn’t only focus on that.It goes out to the outside world, interacts, gets its hand and mind dirty, does work outside and then applies its work and learns from ”the dirty experiences“ and brings it back to the lab and so on and so on in an upward spiral.He called it the important second psychology, which is what Alfred North Whitehead is also talking about.Now you may be sitting here and most of you aren't going to academia.And you are thinking to yourself, ”Ok, fine.So university, academia must make itself with action.What does it have to do with me? How is relevant to me?“ Not only is it relevant to you, it has everything to do with you.And here's why.What the world needs, more than anything else, are practical idealists.For 6 years, I was a resident tutor in Leverets House when I was a graduate student and then I also started to teach.And what struck me most about conversations that I had, either in Leverett or other houses, were students is their sense of miion, your sense of miion, your desire to do good, to make the world a better place.And as I followed many of the students after they graduate, whether the students who work with me here as undergrads or students who I tutored, when I followed the path, it wasn't just empty words.These students went ahead and did wonderful things, whether it was right out of college, whether it was once they established themselves, but there was always this, the back of their mind, very often fore of their minds, ”How can I make this world a better place?“ Paionate.Idealistic.Good--in the deep sense, good.This desire to make a difference come into just about all students.There are many people who talk about this generation as the ”ME“ generation: all I care about, all this generation cares about is ”well, let me just make more money“, ”let me just get a bigger house“, ”let me just be more succeful and accrue more eclats, more prestige“.This is a false stereotype.Yes, eclats, prestige, money is important.It's important to most people in the world.A big deal.But were these people who have these stereotypes— were they(?)is that they see just that? And they don't see the desire to make a difference.1800 students at Harvard each year, about 1800 students are members of PBHA(Phillips Brooks House Aociation).That's not all.There are other students who outside PBHA and who volunteer.Just about every single one of you.At least if we look at the statistics, just about every single one of you, very soon, after you leave Harvard, will join an organization, whether--it could be your primary job or not— an organization that is a social enterprise, not for profit, something to better the world.You'll be on boards of such organizations.You'll donate money to such organizations.Harvard grads are generous with their time, with their money, with their efforts, whether the busine school, the law school, college, Med school, Ed school— you give a lot, because you care.Again whether it's money, whether it's time--usually both.False stereotypes.There are also false stereotypes about Americans.Americans, empirically speaking— just empirically speaking about the Harvard students, looking the trends and statistics--empirically speaking, Americans are the most generous people in the world.Not just because they have more money to give, yes, Americans have more money to give and they give a lot more money, whether it's in food, whether it's in medical aid.Americans also spend the most time--this is a research done(?)— Americans spend the most time out of any other people in the world volunteering in average four hours a week, volunteering outside their job which may also have a social objective more than any other people in the world.Once again, false stereotypes about this wonderful country.And this is wonderful.This is wonderful to see, wonderful to be here，3week for 30 minutes.How many psychologists or psychiatrists prescribe ”run three times a week and see me in the morning“? Not enough.That's practical idealism coupled together.How are in conflict resolution, the dominant theme of most people with good intentions want to resolve conflict is let's get the people together, let's get them to talk, and they and we will live happily ever after.Well we have research from 1954— those of you who take social psych—Muzafer sheriff, showing that the contact hypothesis which is just get people to talk to one another, doesn't work;in fact very often it worsens the situation— very often the conflict actually gets worse as a result of just getting together and talking, that the contact is not enough, that what you need, in the words of Muzafer sheriff and later elaborated on by Elliot Aronson— what you need is a super ordinate goal— a goal that you have carry out together, that you cannot do by yourself— carry out together with a conflicting group.And that's how over time you resolve conflicts, not just bring people together.Now as you can imagine, this is very close to home for me.Because there were many people on both sides of the Arab/Israeli conflict who wanted to end it, many people in this country who wanted to end it.So what did they do? Let's just get them together.Let's get them in a room, whether it was in Camp David, whether it was in Oslo or in Egypt.Let's just get them together to talk, to resolve their conflict and their iue and then we will all live happily ever after.What happened? The situation worsened.Now we've known that.Muzafer sheriff showed that in 1954 that it is the most likelihood outcome of just contact hypothesis, just getting them to be together.And there were many people trying to resolve the conflict, not just in the Middle East, else in the world, with very good intentions but very often making inadvertently the matters worse.Idealism and good intentions are not enough.We need to merge, to mate the research with the practice.And this is where you come in, taking it seriously.Now when I take it seriously, there is a problem here because sometimes research doesn't deliver good news.It would be much easier and nicer if we could just simply get Israelis and Arabs together and the conflict would end.It would be much nicer and easier, smoother, it would be much easier, if we could just cultivate children self-esteem by giving them positive feedback— telling them how wonderful they are.It's easy to do, right? It feels good.They feel good.We feel good.But in the long run, it doesn't help, if it's only that.Much easier.And research very often delivers bad news, saying it's not enough--the contact;it's not enough to praise.And then people choose subconsciously, not consciously to ignore the research and go with her heart.And that's important to go with your heart.But it's important to with the heart and the mind.Imagine if an aeronautics engineer woke up in the morning and said, ”you know, the Law of Gravity thing really makes things difficult for me.It's a pain.Things would be so much easier without the law of gravity.The design would be simpler.“ And he designs airplane and he ignores the law of gravity.What kind of airplane machine would he or she design? A failure.Aeronautics engineer takes into consideration of reality.And reality--there's Law of Gravity.We deal with that.Similarly, what research shows us is reality: what's out there, what’s working and what's not working.And we need to conform to it.Take it into consideration.And it's up to you, to take responsibility, to bridge the Ivory tower and Main Street.You are being exposed in 32 claes fraught your Harvard career to the most rigorous thinking on different topics have you take it and apply it, whether it's psychology, whether it's in economics, obviously in engineering or computer science, where it's done much more readily than in social sciences and humanities.It's important to take responsibilities, because no one else is going to do it for you.No one is coming.Premise 2: To be a practical idealist, the foundation of it has to be the belief that change is poible.Because if the change was not poible on the individual level, on the society level, why am I doing what I am doing? Why would I spend time? Let me just be a hedonist, trying to enjoy my life as much as poible.Now for many of you,when you look at this you may say, ”Well, Ok, yes, change is poible.I believe that and why do we need to have it as a basic premise of the course, as opposed to change is illusive?“ Well, in the context of a psychology course, it's anything but trivial that change is poible.Let me share with you one study to illustrate what I mean.The Minnesota Twin study, one of the most famous studies in the field of psychology, was done by Lykken and Tellegen, two prominent psychologists.And what they did was they wanted

5miserable as an 8 year old.And she says to herself, ”That's it.That's my lot in life.I was born unlucky.“ And that, very often, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.And she remains unhappy.Sometimes it even makes her le happy than she was before.Because now she's also helple.Change is poible.You know I often say that I am the right the person to teach positive psychology.Why? Because I wasn't born with ”happy genes“.I was born with, genetically speaking, relatively high level of anxiety, inclination toward rumination, over-examination— we'll talk about that later in the course.I went into the positive psychology, into the field of psychology, as I mentioned in the first lecture, because I was unhappy here.And over time, as a result of many of these studies, result of examination result of asking also the right questions, I have become happier.So on a personal level, I know it's poible to become happier.Now I am happier today than I was fifteen years ago when I started.I hope to be happier 15 years from today than I am today.It's a life-long proce.But it is poible.And many people show that it's poible.And those who argue it's not poible and use science to argue for that, very often, are hurting more than helping the field.Now by the way Lykken and Tellegen were interviewed recently in TIME magazine iue of happine.Let me quote to you what they said.This is in 2005--Lykken: ”I made a dumb statement.It is clear that we can change happine levels, up or down.“ So they went back on their statement.It was a sensational statement at the time.It certainly is poible.So how do we do research that's more responsible, that does not lead to detrimental results?And at the same time, true.We don't want to invent research.Research is about identifying things that really occur/happen in reality.So one of the first things that I'll argue for in terms of healthy research is ”let's also focus on what is working“.That's first thing that we discued in the past lecture.The second thing that I will argue for in addition to studying what works is also to study the best.What do I mean by best? Let's not just study what makes people happy.Let's not just study happy people.Let's not just study happy relationships and good relationships.Let's study the happiest people.Let's study the most succeful relationships and learn from that.That is a radically different approach than studying just the average.Because what I am saying here is ”let's not study the average“, let's study the top five percent so that we can understand the phenomenon better.The person who talks about this is Abraham Maslow.When he talked about ”growing-tip“ statistics.Let me read to you--this is taken from his book: ”What this kind of research design means is a change in our conception of statistics, and especially of sampling theory.What I am frankly espousing here is what I have been calling “growing-tip statistics,” taking my title from the fact that it is at the growing tip of a plant that the greatest genetic action takes place.“ What he's saying is that ”let's study the sages, the saints, the extraordinary people, the arrowhead“ so that we can understand and realize the potential in all people.Let me quote him in greater length.This is very important, which is why I am doing it: ”If we want to know how fast a human being can run, then it is no use to average out the speed of a “good sample” of the population;it is far better to collect Olympic gold medal winners and see how well they can do.If we want to know the poibilities for spiritual growth, value growth or moral development in human being, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people.On the whole I think it fair to say that human history is a record of the ways in which human nature has been sold short.The highest poibilities of human nature have practically always been underrated.Certainly it seems more and more clear that what we call “normal” in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily.“You see, the implications of what he's saying here? Eentially what he's saying is ”let's not just study why do most individuals fail;let's also study why do some--not many— but why do some individuals succeed despite the circumstances“.Let's not study just the average that says that people can't really change.Let's study those people who have changed, who have literally transformed their lives and those lives around them.This is a radical approach to research.This is a radical approach to the search, to studying ourselves as well.Because very often, if we only study the average, we only see the average, we only see the geometric shapes and completely mied the

7from these experiences in ourselves, the question is no longer whether or not it's poible to experience it more and more in our lives.The question is ”how is it poible to experience it“.Alright.So we talked about changing ourselves, how it's poible the ”growing-tip“ statistics which is the second significant idea within research in positive psychology: first significant idea is ”let's study what works“ the second significant idea is ”let's study what works best“.But this is about individual change.How about societal change? I want to share with you at the end today a study, one of the most famous studies in the field called ”the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study psychology“.This was the study that was run, starting in the 1930s right here between Harvard and MIT, were the best minds— psychological minds, philosophical minds, psychiatrists— got together and said, ”let's create the Rolls-Royce—there wasn't a Rolls-Royce then— but best intervention program that we can think of.“ There was no limit in terms of how much money was put into it.As much as they needed, they got and they chose 250 kids from an at-risk population.And the intervention is not a quick fix, overnight change,” we can“ seminar--five-year intervention.And here is what they got.Twice a month, case workers visited them, helped them deal with the conflicts in the family, helped them deal with iues in their lives.Half of them had academic tutoring, those who needed it— got help, academic help.Psychiatric attention— all those who needed it, they were there.No limits on how much you needed it.Whatever you needed, you got from the best minds in the field.They joined the boy scouts, YMCA, other youth movements, benefited a great deal, supposedly from these experiences.They got everything.This would be a dream treatment— not just in the 1930s, today as well.This is what psychologists dream about at night.Just introduce this.And then measuring outcomes was as serious as the program itself.There was a random aignment— there were 250 kids who got nothing, who were also studied, just like the kids who got the five-year intervention were studied— 250 kids in the control group.40 years follow-up.This was not just about today, tomorrow for the five years;they followed them through much of their lives.This was serious study.This was serious intervention.And the results were shocking.Even though all those who participated in this study— whether it was the mental health workers, whether it was the philosophers, psychologists, the profeors and the psychiatrists— praise the program as the best, as highly effective, when they looked at the raw objective data, the results were shocking.Juvenile offenses: control group versus intervention group--no difference.Over a third had official records and 20 more percent had unofficial records for misdemeanors.No difference in juvenile offenses.Adult offenses later on in their lives.Again, no difference.Over 20 percent offenses— whether against property or against person— in both groups: the 250 here versus 250 here, which is significant sample size.No difference whatsoever.other measures: physical health and mental health—no difference whatsoever.But finally, there was a significant difference on alcoholism, the number of people who became alcoholic later on in life as well as job status— how many people were able to getting to do ”the white collar“ jobs.So at least there are results there.At least they found statistically significant results when they came to that.That's good, right? Not at all.Because these results were ”in the wrong direction“, meaning there were alcoholics in the intervention group than in the control group;there were more people in the control group making it at work ”raising their status at work“ than in the intervention group.In other words, intervention did more harm than good.Idealism, good intention, a lot of money wasn't practical.Now many people who look at this study— this is a seminal study—very few studies in the history of psychology that were that serious.They say, ”Well, societal change is probably not poible“.Give me one minute and I'll finish.Societal change is not poible, they say.Is it? First of all, there are exceptions and we have exceptions that prove the rule--there are programs that actually work, whether it's the work again of Karen Reivich and Martin Seligman from U Penn,” resilience program“, whether it's Marva Collins who's certainly an exception, who shows how interventions work.And it's interesting to think about the difference of what Marva Collins does, or she doesn't give the students in sense of entitlement, or she praises them but she gives them hard love as opposed to free lunch, or she doesn't label them as needy and the study perhaps labeled these kids as needy.There are many differences.But the keys to study this exception and for practical idea is to come together and to say ”what is

9difficult change is.We talked about the Twin studies that illustrate that what Lykken and Tellegen said--maybe changing our happine level is as difficult as--and futile--as trying to change our height.And we talked about the error of the average and the mistake that these researchers are making, misunderstanding the nature of change.Because if someone changes, the question is no longer “is it poible to change” but rather “how is it poible to change”.And then we talked about the Somerville Cambridge study that show that literally the Rolls-Royce of interventions failed--5 years with the leading scientists, researchers, psychiatrists, psychologists from Cambridge, Harvard and MIT, putting their minds and hearts for good intentions to bring about change--failure.Not only they have failed in bringing about positive change, they actually brought about negative change.Remember?--Alcoholism rates went up for the intervention group, compared to the control group.The control group that joined no intervention actually were more luckily to advance in their workplace 20, 30 years later.So change is difficult, but then we went over and said, “Well, Marva Collins creates change.So it is poible.Programs by Martin Seligmen and Karen Reivich and numerous others succeeding in bringing about change”.And the challenge then is, for us, if our goal is to become practical idealists is to understand what it is that brings about change and then do it.Spread the word.Spread the word about the research.Even if the research doesn't always communicate good news, it's about communicating what works, what is real, as opposed to our dreams , our desires, our hopes, our wishes--that's not enough.Good will, idealism, good intentions are not enough.We need to be grounded in research.And this is very much what Maslow has in mind when he talked about the analogous Manhattan Project, where scientists, positive psychologists or that time psychologists, social scientists would get together and pick out the tip of the stem--the few ideas, the few programs that work and then replicate them.Study the best and as one of the students here, Mariam--came to me after the cla and she said, “the tip of the stem is actually about democratizing excellence.” I love that phrase.Democratizing excellence--studying the best and applying it to the rest of us.Ok, so we have this grand scheme, grand idea by Maslow to create a Manhattan-type Project.But what if I'm not interested in going into one of these projects? What if I'm not even interested in becoming an academic? Just want to do things on my own: Can I make a difference? And the answer is absolutely yes.One of the most significant barriers to people doing things in the world, to actually introducing change is that they underestimate their ability to bring about change.There is a lot of research in psychology.Primarily the people who started are Emerson and Moscovici and many others who have done research showing how minority--very often one person can make a big difference, can make a significant difference.Ralph Waldo Emerson: “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one, ”--a lot to backed that up in social science research.Margaret Mead, the anthropologist: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” All change begins in the mind of single person or a small group.“ And then it expands.Now the question is ”how does it expand“ and ”why is it so difficult for us to understand, accept, aimilate and live according to the fact that we can make a difference, if we understand that what we need to understand is how change happens.Change happens exponentially.Our connection to other people and their connection to others and so and so create an exponential function which explains for an example--that those of you are familiar with--“butterfly effect” how a butterfly flapping its wings in Singapore can theoretically cause a tornado in Florida.Because on particle hits another and another and another.It also explains the phenomenal 6 degrees of separation: how we are all connected and interconnected in a web potentially of goodne.To illustrate the exponential nature of human networks, let's look at smiles.What do we know from research is that smiles are contagious.Someone smiles--makes you smile.You smile--you make someone smile.And so on and so on.You know, even some goes pa you on the street and you don't smile ostensibly you don't smile--there are certain micro-muscles in your face that are moving that actually make you feel better.So smiles are contagious.Now if you smiled to--or make three people smile, and these three people--

1The final project for this course, as you know is a presentation that you'll give whether it's for the(?)students or the extension school students.You'll be giving a lecture to other people.And when we put together the cla, this is precisely what we thought about: how you affect change and those people whom you change will hopefully influence others and so on and so on.In many ways, the idea was taken from the film “Pay it Forward”.What I want to do now is show you a quick excerpt--just the coming soon of “Pay it Forward”, for those of you who haven't seen it.Because in “Pay it Forward”, they capture this very idea of human networks as exponential functions.We underestinmate our capacity to effect change because we underestimate the growth of an exponential function What if the world is just a big disappointment? Unle you take the things that you don't like about this world and you flip them upside down and you can start that today.That's me.And that's three people.And I'm going to help them.And they do it for three other people.And they do it for three more.It has to be something really big.Something they can do by themselves.is it poible let one idea to change the world Lost your car? That's a keen observation.I can help you.You are giving me a brand new Jaguar and you don't want anything.Call it generosity between two strangers.What did you tell my son to make him bring homele man into my house? I've got a story, Ok? A senior partner of Chandling and Mo is giving away new cars? Just pay it forward.Three big favors for three other people.You can't just put two people together and make them like each other.It's the one.Pay it forward.Pay it forward.Just like the idea.You could fix a person.Do you want to come in and stay?Come in.Supposed to be something hard.I don't care about your burns, Eugene, if that's even what they are.Is that what they are? I can't.So sorry.Don't tell me how sorry you are for me.Maybe you are scared to get rejected;well, I can't reject you, you're too quick for me!Are you still going to pay it forward? Give her another chance for me.You will mi!I wanna wear the(?)dre.No, you smell good!Yeah, yeah!Pay it forward is a movement in LA, Mrs.McKenney.Come on!decision: so either they were going to get the tenure or not.And he asked them, “How happy are you going to be, if you get the tenure?” And they said, “Ecstatic!This is something I've working on for many years and this will be it.This will be a dream come true.” And--“How happy are you going to stay for?” And they said, “For the rest of our lives.Because this is something we've been working for very long time.It will make everything so much easier.I can get off the publish-or-parish race.I can enjoy my work much more.This is going to transform my life.” And he asked them, “What happens if you don't get tenure? If you are rejected?” And they said, “We are going to be devastated.This is something we've been working for many, many years.” And--“How long are you going to be devastated for?”“Probably until we get tenure somewhere else.But even then, that may not be enough.”--Because once you don't get tenure in one place, you don't go up in terms of the ranking of the school--you very often would get tenure but elsewhere, school that is not considered as good as the one where you were rejected.So it will be devastating for a very long time.And Gilbert went to them at the moment when they got the tenure decision.Some of them got them.Others did not.“How are you feeling?” He asked.Those who got it, “Ecstatic!Happiest we've ever been.” And--“How long are you going to stay happy for?”“For the rest of our lives.We've made it.” And then he went to those who didn't get tenure and asked them, “How are you feeling?” They were devastated.And they were sure that they were going to remain devastated for a very long time.And he went back to see them three months later, six months later.And what Gilbert and his colleagues found was that almost to the person, those who got tenure or did not get tenure went back to their previous level of wellbeing: If they were happy before, they were happy six months hence;if they were unhappy before, regardle whether they get tenure or not, they were not happy.In other words, it looks like this and went back to base level or;it looks like this and back to base level.They did the same with lottery winners.“What if you really win ten million dollars, will it actually make you happier?” Yes--for a while, but not for long.Philip Brickman，Northwestern University did this research.After within 6 months, people go back to their base level of wellbeing.People in serious accidents with their paralysis as the result of the accident, very often, usually--again, this is all the average--go back to their base level of happine: if they are happy before, they will be happy one year after;if they are unhappy, they will remain unhappy.Extreme circumstances make very little difference to our wellbeing.University of Illinois profeor Ed Diener does a lot of research on happine levels.He has been doing it since the 1970s.What he shows--he and others including Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winner--show is that wealth matters very little to our levels of wellbeing.Just like the lottery would make a very little difference to our wellbeing.Now this does not mean that a person who doesn't have enough food, someone who is homele on the streets here, gets an extra thousand or two thousand dollars a month--that of course will make him or her much happier.But beyond the basic needs, once our basic needs are met and that means food, shelter, basic education.Once those needs are met, income makes very little difference.No change acro generations.Our generation is much wealthier than our parents, much, much wealthier than our grandparents' generation.We are not happier.And that is global whether it's China, whether it's in the UK or Australia, or the United States.Levels of happine are eentially static;and anxiety levels and depreion levels, as we talked about in the first cla have gone up significantly.So income levels make very little difference.In general, external circumstances make very little difference.I mean, think about your own experience: how did you feel--go back, just transport yourself to experience of getting into Harvard, getting this big package in the mail which said “You were accepted” on April 1 or the end of December, when you got this pack--how did you feel? Probably ecstatic.Probably one of your highlights.And that moment, if you are like me, you thought, “This is it.I'm really going to be happy for a very long time.Cos I really struggled in high school--a lot of it was difficult;a lot of it was painful, but it was all worth it.I made it.” And you went along with that feeling the next day, because in school they started to talk about how you got in.And you felt fantastic about it, right? And you felt great probably for the rest of the senior year--I

4wellbeing is if we have right vs.wrong expectations.It is wrong expectation to expect that getting into a certain place, getting a raise, finding our dream partner, is responsible for our happine.Moving to California or to(Forts Heimer?).That in and of itself will not make us happier.That's wrong expectation.The right expectation is to believe in change from within.So these things will not make us happy.In fact, our readine and potential to experience happine is mostly depended on our state of mind, not on our status, or the states of our bank account.It's about changing our perception--state of mind.It's about changing our interpretation of the world, of what's happening to us, of our achievements, of our failures.It's about what we choose to perceive, what we choose to focus on.It's about transformation, as opposed to the external information or the external succe.1504--this whole course, is about this transformation, as I mentioned during the first leon.I want to move on to the fourth premise, one of the most important premises in this course.And in many ways, we can understand human intellectual history just based on this idea: should we accept human nature? Or can we perfect it? And can it change? This work relies on--or these ideas rely on the work of Thomas Sowell.Thomas Sowell, Harvard cla of 58, now at Stanford, the Hoover Institute, one of my intellectual heroes.And what he does and what his work does is basically explain why people choose to back one political party versus the other;why they choose to live one kind of life versus the other.This single book helped me understand myself better as well as other people better--whether it's politically, whether it's psychologically, whether it's philosophically.Those of you who are interested in politics and there is one book you want to read, after you read Marva Collins of course, it's this.So what does Thomas Sowell say? Eentially what he does is divide people into two camps those who hold constrained vision, the limited vision;and those who hold the unconstrained, the unlimited vision of human nature.People who hold constrained vision of human nature, believe that human nature cannot be changed;it's immutable--we have certain instincts, we have certain inclinations.They are fixed.This is it.What you see is what you get.What you are born with or were born with, as species, is all we have.The flaws that are out there are inevitable--they cannot be changed.We need to accept them for what they are.That's the only thing we can do with these flaws.And people who have the constrained vision think that our instincts, our inclinations, our basic nature is immutable, accepted.And then what they do, rather than resign, they channel it.How do they channel it? By building certain political institutions that would channel the flawed, imperfect human nature toward the good.Philosophers and psychologists who fall under the constrained vision create them, philosophies and psychologies and institutions and systems to channel our flawed and imperfect nature.People who fall under the constrained vision in the history of ideas, are people such as Alexander Hamilton, Adam Smith--those of you are taking or will take EC 10, ?, Fredrick Kayak.These are people who say, “our nature is constrained.It's limited.” Edmund Burke--another one.What captures this idea best--the words of Francis Bacon, considered the father of the scientific movement, was a philosopher in 1600s: “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.” Whether it's physical nature, or human nature.We need to obey it.It is what it is.Now we have the unconstrained vision.Perhaps you are a little bit more optimistic, a little bit more utopian--human nature can be improved.It can be changed.It is up to us to do so.It is perfectable.We don't need to accept these flaws as inevitable.We can perfect it.There are solutions to these flaws, to these imperfections and our role--the goal of institutions, whether it's political institutions, educational institutions, of systems, organizations, individual philosophers, psychologists, the role is to change our nature, to perfect it, to better it.Philosophers who help this position: people like Thomas Jefferson, people like Jean-Jacques Roueau, George Bernard Shaw, Ronald Dworkin and other leading thinkers.And what Thomas Sowell did was map the entire intellectual history of world showing how people who held this view versus that view, that two radically different political prescriptions.The person who best captures the unconstrained view, Benjamin Constant, French philosopher and politician, “It is for self-perfectioning that destiny

6back to the baby's scene, we give ourselves the permiion to be human, we know that it's natural.We don't even think about it in fact, to experience the high and then the low and high and then low.And later on, when we stop giving ourselves the permiion to be human when the(?)become so important, we begin to realize that other people are watching us and evaluating us constantly and we think they do so much more than they actually do.That's when we stop giving ourselves the permiion to be human, and we pay a price, in terms of our energy levels, of our wellbeing, of our happine, of our creativity, and ultimately also our succe.Let me give an example of someone who does give himself the permiion to be human.The Permiion to be Human Now I'm saying we should look like this.But what I am saying is that we all need a space, a place in our own lives where we give ourselves the permiion to be human, whether it's with close friends, people we care about, whether it's first and foremost with ourselves when we write a journal, where we do give ourselves the permiion to be, to cry, to be joyous--because if we don't, we pay a price.We need a space of unconditional acceptance.The best advice that I got, or that we got--my wife and I got when David, our first son was born from our pediatrician, Dr.Tok Shapiro--and David was born at 1 AM in the morning and around 8 AM in the morning, he came in to see, to check up on my wife, to check up on the baby, for some reason, he didn't check up on me.And everything was fine.As he is leaving the room, he turned around and said, ” Just one more thing.over the next few months, you are going to be experiencing every single kind of emotion to the extreme and that's fine.It's natural.We all go through it.“ And he walked out.It was the best advice that my wife and I got regarding child-rearing.Why? Let me give you an example.So after about a month, I started to, once in a while, experience some envy toward David.Because here he was for the first time in--well, since my wife and I were together--someone else is getting much more attention than I was, no matter how much I cried.And I felt envy toward him and five minutes later, I experienced this most intense love toward him--the emotion that I haven't felt before.Now normally I would think, ”what a hypocritic!It's just something is wrong: one minute you are envious and the next minute you experience love?“ There is nothing wrong.There is everything right.It's part of being human.And because I had Dr.Shapiro's voice at back of my mind--permiion to be human, that helped me a great deal--experience the envy when I experienced it, accept it;and then enjoy and celebrate it--the positive emotions that I experienced toward David.Permiion to be human.You see, there is actually a paradox playing--this is work done by our very own Daniel Wegner on ironic proceing.When we suppre a natural phenomenon, that phenomenon only strengthens.Let me illustrate through an experiment.So for the next ten seconds, do not think of a pink elephant.For the next ten seconds, do not think of a pink elephant.You know the one that I am talking about? With the big ears, Dumbo? Do not think of a pink elephant for the next three seconds and I am sure no one thought of a pink elephant right? What happened?--Most people thought of a pink elephant.Because when we try to suppre a natural phenomenon such as having a visual of the word when we say it, that thing just intensifies.The same applies to the painful emotions that are natural.And when we try to suppre them, they strengthen.When I started to teach after hearing about Marva Collins and deciding teaching is my calling, I knew that I had to deal with the problem--the problem is that I am introvert, I get very nervous in front of audiences and large audiences for me is anything but five.But I had to deal with it and I knew I would have to deal with it.So I would go on in front of audience and before that I would say to myself, ”Tal, don't be nervous.Don't be anxious.No anxiety today.Don't be nervous.Don't be nervous.Don't!“ And what happened?--Pink elephants all around.Instead after especially reading about paradoxical intentions by Victor Frankl, I started to give myself the permiion to be human.And now when I go into a lecture, the nervousne--because I give myself the permiion to be human--goes away within as little as three hours into the lecture.But no, it's managable.I still get nervous before every single lecture, which is actually a good thing.But it's managable.I can deal with it.I can handle it.Permiion to be human.8maybe the Dalai Lama--but other than that, who does not experience envy toward other people.And if it is true about the Dalai Lama, that is because he's worked on it for decades.Envy is part of human nature--nothing good or bad about the envy.Nothing good or bad about experiencing the anger.Nothing good or bad about experiencing the depreion or anxiety.It's part of human nature.However, the question is, how do I choose to behave, to act as a result of it? That is where the moral domain enters.That's where I can have moral or immoral behavior toward my best friend or baby, or other people in general.I can still experience envy toward my best friend and choose to behave generously and benevolently toward him.The same with cognition and we will talk a lot about it when we talk about CBT--Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.I can feel it certain way.But it doesn't mean that I need to resign to my thoughts about that feeling.Rumination is one of the things that we'll talk about a lot actually not that helpful--to ruminate about painful emotions.It's much helpful to write about them.To talk to other people about them, rather than just be thinking constantly about how miserable I am because my girlfriend just left.I haven't found anyone in Pinocchio's.So rumination doesn't help.So I don't necearily accept all my irrational thoughts and again, we'll talk about it much more next week of how we can cognitively reframe what we were thinking.But the emotion--that affect is the emotion, it is what it is.And the key is to be true to reality, which is also one of the main themes in the course.In many ways, this course should not be called ”Positive Psychology“.But I am telling you this after you already signed up for the cla so it is too late to leave.This is actually not a course on positive psychology.It's a course in reality psychology.Because positive psychology may mean that we are only focusing on the positive and what works, ignoring all the rest that are not.Overdoing this cla is shifting the pendulum.So there is more even playing field instead of the 21:1 ratio, we are doing much more, focusing on the positive.And at the same time, accepting the painful emotions are as much part of human nature as the wonderful emotions.And sooner we accept it, the better.That won't mean at the end of the course of 1504 or 100 or 100 other courses in the workshop and sold the books that you read, it's not that you will not have painful emotions anymore.It's simply your psychological immune system will become stronger, hopefully already by the end of this semester.Psychological immune system will become stronger.And that means not that we don't get ill.It means we get ill le often and when we do get sick, we'll recover more promptly.The difference between the extremely happy people and extremely unhappy people is not that one gets sad, of upset, or anxious, or depreed;and the other does not.Both groups do.It's how quickly, how promptly we can recover from these painful emotions--in other words, how strong our psychological immune system is.And our psychological immune system strengthens when we give ourselves the permiion to be human.Many of you've probably read this, come acro this, but I think this captures so well the foundation of what it means to be actively accepting.This has become the official mantra in many ways of the AA movement: ”God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;the courage to change the things I can change;and wisdom to know the difference." The wisdom to know the difference--fortunately, a lot of this wisdom can come from studies, from research, from deep introspection that you will do throughout the semester.What I want to do now is an exercise.I want to do a group meditation.Trying to understand, not just on the cognitive level of the research, but also to experience on the visceral emotional level, what it really means to give ourselves the permiion to be human.Those of you who don't feel comfortable doing it, you don't have to do it.Those who feel comfortable to do it, do it.If it's a stretch for you, I still recommend that you do it.If you never meditate before, this is a wonderful opportunity to do it for the first time.One thing I do ask you: If you are not doing it, if you don't participate, simply just keep quiet.Other than that, I really do recommend that you join us.What I want to do together now is enter the realm of unconditional acceptance.Se?or, just sit up straight as much as poible.If poible, your back relaxing against the back rest.Plant your feet comfortably on the floor.If you feel comfortable, close your eyes.Shift the focus of your breath.Shift the focus of your thoughts to your breathing.0-