How Do Your Emotions Conflict With Happiness? Explained By Tal Ben Shahar | ASU GSV Summit

[Music] please welcome we're now happiness expert former Harvard lecturer and the best-selling author of joy of leadership and being happy top ben-shahar [Music] [Applause] hi good afternoon it's so wonderful to be here what an honor to be in the same room with a thousand people dedicated to making our present and our future better however I must say I'm less happy about the timeslot I was given you see I'm gonna share a lot of research with you so here is the first study that I'm gonna share with you there's actually research showing what the worst time to give a lecture is anyone want to guess you got that lunch time right why because lunch time we're tired you know we're supposed to sleep especially those of you who came from the the East Coast direction her biological clock shuts down you know it reminds me of a story of a professor who comes to class one day and suddenly he notices that one of his students has fallen asleep it happens so the professor calls this student who was sitting right next to the Sleeping Beauty and he says to him excuse me do you mind waking up your friend to which the student says professor with all due respect you put him to sleep you wake him up but but I promise that I won't wake you up you can sleep away because sleep is important for happiness and it's not always easy being happy you know I got into this field of happiness studies because of my own unhappiness I was an undergraduate at Harvard studying computer science and I found myself in my second year doing very well academically doing well in sports played varsity squash doing okay socially and yet being very unhappy and it didn't make sense to me because looking at my life from the outside things looked great but from the inside it didn't feel that way and I remember waking up on very cold Boston morning going to my academic advisor and telling her that I'm switching majors and she said what to and I said well I'm leaving computer science and moving over to philosophy and psychology and she said why and I said because I have two questions first question is why aren't I happy second question how can I become happier and it's with these two questions that I then went on to get my undergraduate degree then across the Atlantic to the other Cambridge to study education and then back for my PhD at Harvard all the time focusing on how can I help myself individuals couples organizations and communities increased levels of happiness and what I want to do today is share with you what I've learned over the past 25 years being immersed in this field unfortunately I'm only going to give you the tip of the iceberg because we don't have that much time I was told before just coming on stage that we all need to be out of this room by midnight so I'll be very brief so what are some of the lessons that we can learn from research from experience on happiness the first lesson that I want to share with you is what I've come to call the permission to be human I first thought of this idea the first year when I taught a class on positive psychology better I had eight students two of them dropped out which left me with a broken ego and I was having lunch one day in one of the undergraduate dorms and a student comes over and says Tom I'd join you for lunch and I said sure and he said Tom I hear you're teaching a class on happiness and I said yeah positive psychology and he said my roommates are taking your class there were two for the six so I really had to be nice to him and then he said to me but you know Tom now that you're teaching this class you've got to watch out and I said what he said tal you've got to be careful and I said why and he said because if I see you unhappy I'll tell my roommates and actually use that in class the following day when I spoke to - all six of them and I said you know the last thing in the world that I want you to think is that I'm always happy or that you by the end of the semester will experience constant hi there are only two kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions such as sadness or anger or envy or frustration or anxiety two kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions the first kind are the psychopaths psychopaths actually don't experience these kind of emotions the second kind of people are dead exactly so if you experience painful emotions it's actually a good sign means you're not a psychopath and you're alive a good place to start we can build on that the problem in today's culture however is that we do not give ourselves the permission to be human to experience the full range of human emotions and we pay a very high price for it a very high psychological emotional interpersonal as well as organizational price you know the most important lesson that I learned after our first child David was born was from our pediatrician so David was born in Beth Israel Hospital in Boston 14 years ago he was born at 1:00 a.m. at around 7 a.m. the doctor the pediatrician comes into our room he checks up on David checks up on Tommy my wife for some reason he doesn't check up on me they were doing great and then as he's about to leave he says one more thing he says over the next few months you're going to be experiencing every single kind of emotion to the extreme you're going to be experiencing extreme frustration and extreme joy you're going to be anxious and you're going to be happy every single kind of emotion to the extreme and then he said it's fine it's natural we all go through it and then he left best advice that I got for child-rearing let me give you an example of why so after about a month I started to feel some Envy towards David why because for the first time since my wife and I had been together we've been together since the age of 14 for the first time here was someone who was getting more attention than I was no matter how much I cried now normally I would say to myself wow you're a terrible dad how can you love your child you're envious of him but because I had the doctor's voice in my head telling me it's fine it's natural we all go through it essentially giving me the permission to be human I could experience the envy let it flow through me and five minutes later experience the love that I felt and feel towards my child the permission to be human now how does it work research by Viktor Frankl man's search for meaning research by Daniel Wagner the late Harvard professor talks about the existence of a paradox what is the paradox it has two sides to it the first side when we reject painful emotions these emotions intensify they get stronger why because we're rejecting a natural phenomenon let's do a quick experiment I'm a psychologist I like experiments for the next 10 seconds this is easy for the next 10 seconds do not think of a pink elephant do not think of a pink elephant you know like Dumbo big ears five seconds no one think of a pink elephant now what happened pink elephants all around why because when we try to suppress a natural phenomenon that phenomenon intensifies in contrast when we allow painful emotions to just flow through us freely to take their course they go out just as they came in they don't overstay their welcome rejection leads to intensification that's one side of the paradox the second side of the paradox is that when we reject painful emotions we're also inadvertently also rejecting pleasurable ones why because we have one emotional system all emotions pleasurable and painful flow through that same system when we reject painful emotions when we block them or attempt to block them what we're also doing is hindering the natural flow of pleasurable emotions like love or joy or happiness in the words of Golda Meir who was Israeli prime minister in the 1970s those who cannot weep with their whole heart cannot laugh with their whole heart either same emotional system now when I talk about the permission to be human I don't mean resignation okay this is just how I feel there's nothing I can do about it let me sit in front of the TV for three weeks and mope no I'm not talking about resignation rather I'm talking about active acceptance active acceptance is about allowing the emotion in and then choosing the most appropriate course of action and the paradox works here when I accept my emotion doesn't mean act out on it but accept it could be through writing about it by talking to might BFF about it in therapy just crying shedding tears of joy or pain giving myself the permission to be human then allows me to choose the most appropriate course of action it's actually there's a lot of research on this Wenzel Wagner and others when I suppress repress emotion like Envy I'm much more likely to behave malevolently rather than benevolently towards another when I suppress repress anger I'm much more likely to be mean harsh toward other people when I then when I simply give myself the permission to be human I actively accept it and then choose the most appropriate course of action courage courage is not about not having fear courage is about having fear and going ahead anyway we see this the importance of permission to be human in the moral domain in management in relationships in child-rearing in education it is in many ways the first pillar of a happy life because to fulfill our potential for happiness we must first embrace unhappiness that's part of being human moving on to a second pillar of happiness and that is relationships relationships are the number one predictor of happiness the Harvard relationship study where they followed Harvard graduates for 75 years as well as members of their community around Cambridge for 75 years they collected quite literally millions of data points and what did they find the best predictor of both happiness and health relationships now interestingly it didn't matter what relationships meaning it could be relationships with a romantic partner that lasted for 50 years or longer it could be family relationships it could be professional relationships when we're very close with my colleagues or friendships it didn't matter but for these people relationships were key were important were central in their life the happiest countries in the world whether it's some of the some of these Scandinavian countries Latin America the happiest region in the world why why these countries and not others wealthier countries one reason and one reason alone focus on relationships here's the thing though I recently with surah asset management company in Latin America based in Colombia ran a very large study looking at the happiness levels in Latin America comparing it to the rest of the world and what we found was indeed confirmed the data that we knew before happiest region in the world however when we broke down our sample into age-groups we found that the high levels of happiness were as a result of the older generation the young generation 18 to 34 were as happy or as unhappy as the rest of the world why one reason because while they still valued relationships the young generation shifted away from face-to-face interactions to online interactions in other words the relationships in order to contribute to happiness have to be real rather than virtual one thousand friends on social media are no substitute for that one BFF best friend forever we need those face-to-face interactions now don't get me wrong I'm not against social media I'm not against virtual online interaction I think it's amazing it's one where I just met my best friend from when we were 12 our parents moved countries we met on social media I run a year-long certificate program in happiness studies online it's great students lives according to them are transformed as a result I'm able to reach so many more people at the same time it's no substitute because when we met we had a reunion and have reunions on a yearly basis there is no substitute for the joy for the energy that comes out of these face-to-face meetings so relationships to have an impact need to be real rather than virtual one of the best ways of cultivating happiness is through giving the Dali Lama was asked what is the one tip you have for people to increase their level of well-being their levels of happiness and he said make other people happy and there is research on that so I want to share with you a study this was conducted joint study by University of British Columbia in Harvard Business School here is what they did so they brought people into the lab and they measured their levels of happiness we know how to measure happiness today we can do it through brain scans we do it through valid questionnaires so they measured their levels of happiness and then they gave them a nice sum of money and then they told them take this money and go spend it on yourself go buy yourself something and they did and they went out and they bought themselves a gadget or they bought themselves shoes or whatever and then after the shopping spree they went back and they measured their levels of happiness again what do you think they found levels of happiness went up significantly now this is important research this is the first time in recorded history when we have scientific evidence for Carrie Bradshaw's claim from Sex in the City but buying shoes makes you happier I hear some people are laughing others are about to cry permission to be human but there was a another part of this study they came back to the lab a day later and they measured their levels of happiness again what do you think they found after 24 hours right back to where they were before in other words there was the shoppers high it didn't last so what's the conclusion from this research exactly right you need to buy shoes every day again some people are laughing others are sobbing by now permission to be human part two of the same study they bring in a group of people and once again like the first group they give them an the exact same amount of money and once again they measure their levels of happiness and once again they tell them go spend this money only this time they say to them go spend it on someone else and they did and they went out now this was Harvard Square so they could give it to a homeless person they could buy the meals or they could buy their a partner a gift or donate it to their favorite charity whatever you want but spend it on someone else and then they go back to the lab and they measure their levels of happiness again and what do they find levels of happiness go up to the same degree as it went up for the shoppers with one very big difference the day after when they come in happiness levels did go down a little bit but it was still significantly higher than the starting point they could see the impact of giving a week after the intervention after giving to give is to receive research by UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky shows the power of giving and giving he doesn't have to be extreme radical small acts of kindness and Frank once wrote in the 1940s you can always always give something even if it is only kindness you know my mother tongue is not English my mother tongue is Hebrew the language of the Bible my favorite word in Hebrew is the word to give the word to give a biblical word comes from the root not tongue the name nathan is actually in hebrew the in the bible not on this is how it's spelt both in Hebrew and in English you see anything peculiar about this word nuttin to give exactly it's appalling drum symmetrical it reads right to left and left to right this is no coincidence there's a great deal of wisdom in language and this ancient wisdom that when you give you receive today we have the data to show just how true that is now it doesn't have to be radical giving small acts of kindness imagine if each one decides to be extra kind for ten minutes a day what a difference that would make in their lives as well as in our world so relationships cultivating relationships number one predictor of happiness and I will end with one final pillar of happiness and that is gratitude probably what is most talked about in my field of happiness studies in 1999 I started keeping a gratitude journal why not because I read the research there was no research at the time but because Oprah told me to do so so I did three years later research came out by Robert Emmons and Mike Micallef and others showing the impacts of daily or weekly journaling people who keep a gratitude journal every night before going to bed writing down 3 4 5 things for which there are grateful big things or little things family God and ice meal that I had a flower whatever it is these people are happier as a result more optimistic more likely to achieve their goals more successful in other words more generous actually kinder towards others and physically healthier it actually strengthens our immune system when we express gratitude on a regular basis how long does take two minutes three minutes even doing it once a week has value we as a family we get together every Friday night and we get together and the whole family goes around the table and from the little one all the way up until recently my grandmother who passed away at the age of 92 would say what are we grateful for the little ones would say what was fun for me this week it's a wonderful way to start a meal now some of you are thinking you know that that's nice but I have teenagers at home so I want to share important research with you there is research I mean this is cross-cultural cross-cultural research showing that teenagers are human beings too now keep this in mind because they don't have to do the exercise if they don't want to don't force them but they here they absorb the ideas and what a difference that can make in a person's life when they have this anchor of gratitude there's more research on writing a gratitude letter this is an idea that was proposed by Marty Seligman considered the father of positive psychology he introduced it in his class where students would write a gratitude letter and then go to the person and read it to them if they can and he said in his 40 years of teaching never had he encountered such great impact on students as this simple exercise so he ran research on its and indeed the impact is hard to fathom so every year when I teach I do this with my students they write a gratitude letter and if they can they read it if they can face-to-face to the person they rotted you it could be true a roommate it could be to a parent it could be to a friend it could be to a teacher so let me share with you one example of many so this is Mike Mike would always come into my class and he would always sit all the way in the back and the reason why I noticed him there were a thousand students in the class by that time the reason why I did notice him was because Mike was a giant he played on the Harvard football team and every time I would see this very quiet gentle giant walking in sitting down at the end of the class he walked out until one particular a week it was a week after I gave the exercise of writing a gratitude letter when Mike instead of getting up and going out started walking towards the stage at this moment I had to make a very important decision do I stay or do I run all my teachers went through my head and I reflected and I thought what do I do and then I thought wait a minute courage is not about not having fear it's about having fear and going ahead anyway so I stayed so Mike walked up the stage towards me and then he said professor and I said yes no I said yes and he said professor may I come to your office hours and I said yes of course that's what office hours are for following day he comes to my office hours walks in quietly sits down and then he says professor this is my first time since I came to Harvard this was his third year was a junior first time then I go into a professor's office hours and the reason I'm here was because I wanted to share with you what I the gratitude letter that I wrote this week he said I wrote it to my dad and I went home this weekend he lived just outside of Boston I went home this weekend and I read my letter I read my dad the letter and then he looked down and a few seconds later he looked up and there was a small tear in his big eye and he said I read my dad the letter and afterwards my dad hugged me for the first time since I was 8 years old he got up said thank you left didn't come to any more office hours every class in and out another a student read it to her elementary school basketball coach good long retired she said she looked 10 years younger after the impact that it has on relationships that impact that it hasn't the person writing it reading it and the person receiving it is beyond just about every other intervention now how long does it take 15 minutes 20 minutes and what if we did it on a regular basis just like with kindness small changes make a big difference if and this is a big if implemented regularly it's not just about the past that we can express gratitude it's also about the future Dena near one of my colleagues did research showing the people who write every morning when they wake up three things that they're looking forward to during the day are actually not happier or more optimistic but they are more resilient and less pessimistic once again one minute two minutes is all it takes these are great habits to introduce these are also habits that we can introduce and promote online and what a difference they make you know I mentioned that my favorite word in Hebrew is the word not tongue well I also have a favorite word in English my favorite word in English is the word appreciate I love that word the word appreciate has two meanings the first meaning of the word appreciate is to say thank you for something and that's a nice thing to do Cicero called gratitude the mother of all virtues every religion has gratitude as a central precept but there's a second meaning to the word appreciate and that is to grow in value and the two meanings of the word appreciate to say thank you and to growing value are related how because when you appreciate the good the good appreciates when you appreciate the good in your life you have more of it whether it's in your relationships whether it's at work whether it's in the world unfortunately the opposite is also the case when you do not appreciate the good when you take the good for granted the good depreciates Irvine yalom Stanford professor said that did research on terminally ill patients these are people who are about to die and one of the things that he said that he heard most often from these individuals terminally ill patients was the following for the first time in my life or for the first time in a very long time I truly appreciate my wonderful family friends or this world or a good meal and the question is do we need to wait do we need to wait for something external extraordinary very often tragic to happen for us to appreciate what's inside us and all around us the answer is no and there are very simple techniques that we can introduce as rituals into our lives that can make a big difference give yourself the permission to be human give to others cultivate relationships face-to-face relationships and give thanks tonight as every night I'm going to be writing down the things for which I'm grateful and one of the things that are most certainly going to write down is the privilege and the honor of spending lunch with you thank you very much you

Channel: Global Silicon Valley

Views: 9,761

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Keywords: ASU, GSV, Summit, Conference, Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Happiness, Emotion, Psychology, positive psychology, asu gsv summit, tal ben sharhar

Id: DfEzPbxmHcg

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019