How to be Happier - with Tal Ben-Shahar

a very very warm welcome to everyone to this special event and it's great to see so many of you joining from all around the world already i can see hundreds thousands in fact pouring into this meeting and i'm delighted that we're joined by tal benjahar tal it's lovely to see you again thanks for being here great to be here mark would have been better in person but this will have to do it's lovely to connect and from other sides of the world and to see you again um i think we last met in miami at the world happiness summit so uh seems like a long time ago that we were able to travel all around the world and it's been a joy doing these events with wonderful thinkers like yourself during uh this lockdown period and to have so many people joining as you are this evening to to be part of this so in a moment tell and i will have a conversation on the savings topic how to be happier uh in challenging times let's be honest and we're really keen to also have the lovely engagement from the community that comes up every week when we do these events all your comments uh are so welcome and of course your questions as well so tell i'll be happy to take questions from you once we've talked through some of the key things that uh he's really keen to share with us all this evening so tell i guess a really uh you know interesting starting point is happiness here we are in kind of in the midst of many global crises uh people would argue how on earth is happiness relevant right now given all the troubles that our world is facing yeah you know it's a it's a good question and a tough question for us uh in this field of uh of happiness in fact uh one of my friends recently said to me tal shouldn't we quarantine happiness at least until all this is over and uh you know my answer to this is uh uh absolutely not i think now the science of happiness is more important than ever and uh and here is why you see so you can essentially situate all our experiences on a continuum so we have the you know on the ups on the positive side we have you know joy and success and and fun and gains and on the you know then we have the neutral and then on the negative side we would have pain and sorrow and struggles and anxiety and most people think that dealing with happiness is about dealing with the the upside when things are going well um however happiness the science of happiness can help no less when things are not going well so yeah it can help us go from a five to a seven it can also help us deal with the with the negative five and the negative seven and in order to understand that we need to understand an idea that was introduced just a few years ago by nassim talib nassim khaled is a professor at nyu and he talks about the idea of anti-fragility and what is anti-fragility you know as i've studied it i've come to call it resilience 2.0 so you know so what is resilience 1.0 traditional resilience so to speak actually a term that comes from engineering and it's the ability of material of something to go back to its original form after pressure has been put on it so we have you know a piece of rubber we squish it put pressure on it it's resilient it goes back or we have a ball we drop it it bounces back this is what resilience is about bouncing back anti-fragility takes that a step further so if you put pressure on a system it doesn't just go back to where it was before it goes to a better stronger higher place so you squish material it goes back and becomes bigger you throw a ball it bounces back up higher than it was before now the thing about antifragility is that we see anti-fragile systems all around us you know i'll give you a just one example or two examples one physiological one psychological the physiological example is your muscles your muscular system you go to a gym and you lift weights and you're putting pressure on your uh on on your muscles as a result of that pressure you go once you go twice a week later you go again and again as a result of the pressure that you're putting on the system it doesn't just go back to where it was before you actually get stronger bigger healthier that's potentially an anti-fragile system so this is physiologically psychologically we also see it you know so um most of my students in my classes most not all are psychology majors and i always ask them this question and usually i'm not the first psychology class that they take so i asked them the following question i said put your hand up if you know what ptsd is ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder the overwhelming majority of students psychologists or not put their hand up then i said to them okay great put your hand down i have another question now i'd like you to put your hand up if you know what ptg is now i'm sure many people from this audience know what ptg is the overwhelming majority of my students have no clue ptg post traumatic growth now here is the thing according to the research by tedeschian calhoun ptg is twice as likely to happen as ptsd twice as likely if and this is a very big if first you know about the possibility the existence of ptg so if you don't know about this possibility well then it's unlikely to or less likely to happen the second thing it's to know what conditions you can put in place in order to increase the likelihood of ptg you cannot guarantee pgg sometimes trauma does lead to a to ptsd to disintegration however if you know what conditions to put in place you can increase their likelihood significantly increase the likelihood of growing from trauma as i see it this is the ultimate goal function of the science of happiness what are these conditions and how can we introduce them in our lives so i tell thank you and i'd love to explore some of these conditions i'm also resonating with post-traumatic growth i used to feel as though i'd had a what i call a good life crisis because i had a combination of factors in my life and fortunately didn't lead to a terminal diagnosis or you know anyone you know dying but but it was a traumatic experience that led to me re reevaluating and actually making big shifts and i feel that part of what you've described with post-traumatic growth is it often these difficult circumstances that many of us are going through at the moment are a chance to reflect and refresh but i'm also struck by an aspect of resilience that the brits are particularly bad at which is the sort of stiff upper lip the kind of idea of resilience being pretending it's all fine keep on going uh sort of almost like not lowering our mask and being vulnerable how do we make it authentic uh this quest for sort of uh anti-fragility yeah no so this is this is very important you know anti-fragility or resilience does not mean uh being invulnerable in fact it's the exact opposite so the first condition that i would introduce when talking about it's one of the few but it's the first one that i would introduce when talking about anti-fragility first condition is what i've come to call the permission to be human the idea of the permission to be human is about embracing accepting uh any and all emotions whatever they are you know there's a beautiful uh poem by the uh by the sufi poet rumi from the uh 13th century called the guest house and he talks about in the guesthouse he says how we should invite in like guests any thought any emotion no matter what it is and then he ends the poem by saying because these are messages from the beyond now i don't know if they are or are not messages from the beyond but what i do know is that when we do invite them in as guests those painful emotions they actually do not overstay their welcome you see there is a paradox here that when we reject painful emotions when we say to ourselves me vulnerable of course not or i'm strong you know i'm i'm gonna get over this um when we actually say that and reject the painful emotion that emotion intensifies if i say to myself don't feel anxious or nervous you know you're a happiness expert really what happens immediately anxiety nervousness go up significantly in contrast when i say to myself you know i'm human i'm experiencing this emotion that emotion comes in and it go flows through us the buddhists talk about two levels of suffering the first level of suffering is inevitable you know we all go through it you know if we lose someone grief or if we are concerned about our livelihood or our health or the health of our loved ones this is natural we all have this emotional pain so that's the first level of suffering the second level comes when we reject the first and then it intensifies the first level of suffering is inevitable the second one is a choice the foundation paradoxically the foundation of happiness is first allowing in unhappiness the foundation of anti-fragility is giving ourselves the permission to be human so i wonder tal uh such a powerful point and i know that we have an audience that loves to interact with the ideas being shared i find that idea of sort of almost leaning into the emotions that we tend to reject and just being with them is so powerful i mean personally i know that i try and shut out the feeling of guilt i don't like the idea of me letting someone down and i kind of know that that trick is a feeling of guilty to me but i try and kind of ignore that and pretend it's not there i wonder is there some way that we could ask all of us here who are willing to share on the chat to perhaps think about some of the emotions that we shut out and maybe share them just so we can get a sense of what our human experience is how would you frame that for our community this evening you know i think it's i think it's a great idea you know we all have our uh our uh rejected unacceptable not invited guests you know for some people it could be fear that they say me afraid of course not or for others it could be jealousy oh jealousy you know that that's so immoral which is not or um or anger so what i'd like to to see is what are the emotions that for you personally or what emotion for you personally is most difficult to accept embrace where is it most difficult for you to give yourself the permission to be human so please feel free to share that if you'd like to in the chat i'm already seeing hundreds of these spinning past on the chat tell sadness failure anger guilt shame but also some people feeling that they're sort of pushing away some positive emotions about self-worth and love and so on as well loneliness fear of failure jealousy weakness pride criticism frustration physical pain rejection embarrassment and self-doubt um weakness so a real you know i mean i can f i feel quite emotional i i do too i must say that they're pro we're priming everyone including ourselves right yeah and but you know mark it's important when we look at all these emotions to understand there are no good or bad emotions you know saying that uh jealousy is bad or that anger is bad is like saying the law of gravity is bad why because both are simply part of nature one is physical nature the other is human nature the question is what do we do with these emotions so if i experience jealousy towards my best friend um there's nothing wrong with me it just simply means that i'm human if i act on that jealousy and hurt my friend well that already enters the moral domain and the paradox once again is that when i allow these emotions in i have much more control over them whereas when i reject them they're more likely to overpower me and actually determine my behavior and just on that note that feels like a practice we often learn about those of us who practice and study mindfulness that ability to sort of observe our emotions in order to become less sort of caught up in them is that is that something that you see as part of this skill set do you think yeah very much so you know so there's a great work out of oxford by mark williams almost you uh that um that talks about observing our painful emotions and and mark williams uses a beautiful a beautiful phrase which is he says we need to look at our emotion with friendly curiosity isn't that beautiful with friendly curiosity so if i can you know look at um at my in my jealousy and say oh wow how interesting here it is or or my anxiety oh i'm anxious i'm about to give a talk means that i'm human and simply observe it then that in and of itself gives it permission to exist so this is one way of er of giving it permission there are other ways of course you know shedding a tear you know that our um when we shed tears we release certain chemicals including oxytocin including certain opioids you know the the genius of of nature but in order to tap that genius we need to let it be we mustn't interfere or talking about our emotions or writing about you know all the research on uh on on journaling by jamie pennybaker laura king and others so valuable and all of it boils down to expressing rather than suppressing our emotions allowing ourselves to be vulnerable rather than that stiff upper lip yeah thank you very powerful so that's one of the conditions it's permission to be human so where do we go next in our building blocks for anti-fragility you know so um i just saw research came out and again i don't you know this is one of the things that you don't need research for because it's so obvious but anxiety levels stress levels are higher than than that ever been i mean um probably world war ii was higher but we can measure as well maybe 102 years ago the previous pandemic was as high but we didn't measure as well as we do today so stress levels are incredibly high and the question is what do we do with these uh high stress levels now one way to do to to to deal with it is to say you know stress is a bad thing i'm gonna get rid of it and here is how not helpful not necessary you know in fact stress in and of itself even the kind of stress that we're experiencing now in and of itself is not bad because again i go back to the example i i gave earlier about lifting weights when i lift weights in the gym what am i doing to my muscles i'm stressing them not a bad thing because i lift weights two days after i lift weights again and then i left weights again and i actually grow stronger bigger healthier as a result of the stress why because i have an anti-fragile system the problem begin when i go to the gym and lift weights and a minute later more weights and then a day after more weights and then more and more and more weights that's when i get injured that's when i get weaker rather than stronger so the problem is not the stress stress potentially is good for us the problem rather is the lack of recovery whether it's in the gym physically or in life psychologically in order to create conditions for antifragility whether it's physically or psychologically what we need to do is introduce recovery or periods of recovery into our lives now what do these periods of recovery look like they can look like you know a 15 minute meditation break or a walk around the park or going to work out in the gym exercising or taking three deep breaths that's a form of recovery because we shift from the fight or flight stress response to what herbert benson from harvard medical school calls the relaxation response so having these periods of recovery or um getting a good night's sleep that's an important form of recovery or taking a day off you know even god needed a day off i think there's an important message here for us mere mortals or a vacation so all these are types of recovery that we can should introduce into our lives if we want to grow to experience anti-fragility rather than to disintegrate as a result of the rising levels of stress easier said than done especially in the world today because whereas in the in the past you know in the distance bc before covert we had um in our day we had um breaks today it's just you know one long day one long week after another you know groundhog day so we need to introduce them even if it's super officially yeah well i i i'd love to hear personal stories i find personal stories on these so powerful so i mean you're a busy man you probably like many of us spending a lot of time on zoom at the moment a lot of different pressures and perhaps not as many natural breaks how do you sort of build in that recovery time what's your personal approach to that yeah so i must say i'm um i'm adamant about introducing these recoveries because i just know that i would not survive or even if i do i will survive very poorly without without those breaks sometimes those breaks are introduced in advance for example i have times during the week when i exercise now by the way during during regular times i exercise three times a week these times i exercise five times a week so i've you know when people ask me so what do you do differently two days i do the same things just more often you know so i meditate more than i usually do i express gratitude more than than i usually do the basics just more often so i have periods and i introduce them into my calendar so just like i have you know this was in my calendar you know to 2 p.m eastern you know i'm here with with mark um i also have uh 4 p.m eastern i'm exercising you know on my little trampoline at home so um putting these in place is is important sometimes though there are unplanned breaks so just uh you know a couple of weeks ago i was going through i had a really really tough day or a tough couple of days where i was um you know missing my you know traveling i was more than anything missing my parents i haven't seen for such a long time um and um and we were supposed to as a family watch a movie and i told my kids you know come seven seven p.m i told my kids in my life i said you know i just need uh i need a break i need a time in as opposed to a time out and you know i went into my room at seven shed a few tears wrote in my journal went into bed read something fell asleep earlier than i usually do and woke up the next morning you know not feeling great but feeling a lot better than i did before so it's key again always especially in these times to be attentive to our you know inter to the internal messages and our our emotions our emotions are talking to us all the time we just need to listen the phrase i'm always moved by is this idea that you can't pull from an empty cup and so many here are motivated by kindness and looking after their loved ones and the people they connect with but we can't do that unless we're also getting the basics right for ourselves but that brings me actually on to this idea of connectedness you've done a lot about how we can deal with our own inner state but of course we are relational beings where do relationships fit in your sort of foundations for happiness yeah so you know we we know that relationships are the number one predictor of happiness they also happen to be the number one predictor of physical health and what do you know they're also the number one predictor of ptg post-traumatic growth now the important thing about relationships is to um to understand that it actually doesn't matter who the relationship is with or what kind the of relationship it is meaning it could be with our romantic partner it could be with extended family it could be with friends or colleagues it doesn't matter as long as we have close intimate supportive relationships now mark if we were if we were talking a year ago again bc what um what i would have said at this point is and these relationships have to be um real in the sense meet together you know non-virtual relationships um today saying that is not very helpful you know the distinction of the old world between virtual and real relationships um you know that that doesn't hold water anymore but we need to make create another distinction which is very helpful today and that is the distinction between superficial and deep relationships because even if we have been relegated to you know two-dimensional so to speak interactions uh even though it's just through the phone or through other means other technology we can still cultivate and enjoy deep relationships with other people and that is another thing that we need to do we need to put time aside to cultivate these relationships to have these deep meaningful conversations you know so last uh last semester i taught at colombia and i purposely taught a small seminar because you know you know i love these you know intimate conversations and i love that point in the class where you move from a class a psychology class to to to an intimate conversation and that point came after a month and then um and then the president of the university announces we're all going home it's going to become virtual from now on and i was really upset because i said you know this intimacy is gone and and it did go away but after two weeks it came back and and at the end of the semester you know i looked back and i said wow you know i i would not have guessed that we could have reached such depth in uh through um through zoom and um and and and we did and it's possible it's not ideal and you know as i said at the beginning i can't wait for us to really get together again but um but this is good enough as winnie clark said i mean i i i like you i can't wait to be back with more loved ones and friends in person but this distinction between superficial and deep i think as you say matters whether you're with someone face to face in person or whether you're on a screen whatever and it's that authenticity and i and i'm really conscious that as we look around us so many conversations are about the shopping and the weather and the football and the house prices and the the sort of general noise of life that we often miss that chance to be a bit more authentic i i was struggling i'm really aware of this and try to you know take the mask off and show the real me and i yeah this morning i was going into went past somebody on my way into town and and and i said something like they said how are you and i said oh fine it's a bit chilly today isn't it and i did that classic british thing of saying i'm fine and talking about the weather and it's like well so so what what is what are your tips for helping us go that level deeper in our interactions with others yeah you know this is a this is something that i that that i think about uh a lot and um when i was i was thinking about it and then an idea from uh the 70s actually came and i thought wow this is so relevant today and the idea is of uh the servant leader so back in the 1970s uh robert greenleaf who was an organizational psychologist looked for the extraordinary leaders throughout history and he noticed a certain pattern among them and the pattern was that the real extraordinary leaders our most admired ones are what's common to them is that they are servant leaders so you know going back to um to to to the bible you know when did god choose moses when moses ran after a little lamb and served the flock and he said oh moses now can serve my people jesus came in to serve the people you know fast forward to the 20th century what was gandhi a servant leader think about nelson mandela 27 years on robbins island he comes out of prison among the first words out of his mouth you know all the cameras are on him the whole world is watching the people of south africa have their hope hinged on him what does he say i am your servant look in business anita roddick founder of the body shop you read her book business as unusual she's serving she's serving her employees she's serving her clients she's serving earth it's the leader a servant it's taking the organizational charge and chart and flipping it upside down where you are helping you're supporting your leading these are extraordinary times we need extraordinary leadership and i don't just mean extraordinary leadership in in politics you know intent downing or white house i don't just mean extraordinary leadership in our organizations i mean extraordinary leadership at home with parents among teachers managers friends now the number one characteristic that robert greenleaf and others after him identified for servant leadership listening the ability to truly listen wonderful things happen when we listen first of all the other person is more likely to give him herself the permission to be human the other thing that happens we strengthen the relationship number one predictor of anti-fragility the next thing that happens is that by really listening we're being mindful that's a form of meditation with all the benefits thereof so wherever you look what listening does is open us up to growth to development to anti-fragility now the thing about listening is that it's also contagious so that if we're listening if we are present as a result of our mirror neurons equity theory call it what you want the other side is much more likely to listen to and then we have a relationship of that supports one another where deep conversations take place i i love that that's a really helpful tip towel for deepening and i recognize in myself that i'm often perhaps better in broadcast mode than receive mode and need to be able to be more mindful and tuning in i i maybe what we're we're focusing on with listening is perhaps helping people to feel heard and i think so often what many of us really need is just to feel heard and valued and actually that's a gift we can give others by sort of replaying what we think we've heard them say checking in with them and as you say just being quiet and just paying attention to what they're really trying to say us but both in terms of their words but i think in terms of their body language their emotions their presence as well thank you so how does this fit into a theme that's really on my mind today so uh many of you in the actual happiness community know how much we care about kindness as a as a as a driver of happiness in fact today we've launched the uh the kindness calendar for december which has already taken our website down uh today due to popularity and millions of people have already been using it so um on on that note how does our relationships link into this idea of kindness where does that play into this story yeah so kindness is uh another way of deepening relationships it's another way of uh increasing our levels of well-being you know one of the things that happen when we are kind to other people is that we feel helpful we know that depression is about feeling helpless as a result of feeling helpful we also feel a lot more hopeful and the difference between depression and sadness is that depression is sadness without hope depression is sadness without hope so by being kind by being generous yes we are improving the lives of others we're also improving our lives and once again kindness is contagious whether it's through the mirror neurons through equity theory when we are kind other people are more likely to be kind so you know i talked about the um having those short rituals in uh in in place and um one of the rituals that i hope that everyone in in the world takes up is a very simple one that every day for 15 minutes to be extra kind to go out of your way to be kind now we're all kind sometimes how can you be a little bit more kind now imagine if the people listening here if other people introduce more kindness into their lives it's contagious it means that they're paying it forward or serving it forward and um and then we have more and more and more kindness and we create these upward spirals uh between people with within groups in the world and it strengthens relationships and it improves our physical health and it has all those wonderful benefits for self and for others thank you that's absolutely brilliant i've seen a few people asking about um follow-up resources so just to let the audience know we're filming this event and we'll be sending around a link to the video tomorrow afterwards and also some great resources that that tara can share with us we'll also send around a link to the kindness calendar in case you'd like to put into practice tales tip and find some actions that you can do to to create a bit more kindness over the coming days and before we turn to questions we've already got lots of great questions from the audience tal one of the things that's on my mind that we haven't talked about already it builds on this topic of you know self and others and and kindness which is as well as our day-to-day interactions with each other and these chances to be kind many of us are really frustrated with aspects of modern society it might be about systemic racism it might be about climate change it might be about injustice of all kinds of political polarization how do we take that sense of injustice or anger even and turn that into into something constructive so we can sort of be the change as gandhi would say and do that in a way that promotes happiness and kindness rather than becoming part of the toxic narrative of trolling and critique and anger you know in um when you think about happiness in in really broad brush strokes you can essentially divide the um the schools of thought into two camps one school of thought would say and again i'm using very broad brushstrokes one school of thought would say it's all about achieving a goal it's all about conquering a mountain it's all about making that big difference but we also know from a lot of research that that's not enough for um for happiness because many people who achieve a goal uh initially have that that high but it's just a spike they go back down to where they were before um so the alternative school the other side says no no it's not about the future it's all about the here and now it's all about the present let go of the past let's go for the future and just uh be here roughly speaking the first one is more associated with the west the second more associated with with the east the problem with the second one is that we are goal goal-oriented as human beings that's part of our nature we do think about the future we do want to make the world a better place how do you bring together these two schools of thought you know the future oriented and the present oriented and the answer is that we need to think about a meaningful goal such as you know helping people uh you know who don't have enough food such as you know fixing the political system we need to think about that that is a goal and then we need to ask okay so what can i do about it now and when i think about what i can do about it now then break it down into daily action you know for example if i think um i'll take another a goal you know i want to write a book and you know i want my book to be out by january 1 2022. i have that goal it's out there and then what i do i go and work and i focus on the present and it's about focusing on the present and working towards a goal that we believe is important that is the path not just to happiness it's also the path to a better world for us and for everyone for everyone else so have these lofty goals of course desire to bring about meaningful change in the world and then think how can i translate this into day-to-day action because if i'm just in the future i will not find happiness if i relinquish any connection to the future because it doesn't lead to happiness well in the long term i will not be happy and i'm less likely to make the world a better place have those lofty goals and then focus on day-to-day action just do it yeah that's really powerful thank you and something i've heard you say before tal is that um when people are happier they're more likely to be pro-social and and therefore in many ways self-care isn't selfish when we look after ourselves as you highlighted at the beginning it's not instead of caring about others it's actually the foundation for caring about others how do you see that interplay between sort of self-care and caring for others yeah now you know if if um if you open the thesaurus and look for synonyms for the word selfish what you will find is uh bad evil [Music] inconsiderate uh harmful um no one wants to to be all those things so from a very young age we were taught don't be selfish on the other hand you know when we're talking about becoming happier there is a selfish element to it because i'm thinking about my happiness so how do we reconcile that okay so you go to selfless on the other hand and you open the thesaurus and what are the synonyms good altruistic loving caring considerate moral this distinction that exists in the west between selfishness and selflessness is very unhelpful in fact it's very harmful instead of thinking selfish or selfless what we need to think about is self full self full is about thinking about the self and by extension about others you know when the dalai lama um first came to the west he was really struck by the fact that many westerners don't like themselves in other words low self-esteem and he said how is that possible and he attributed it to the language that we use he didn't use the word selfish selfless but he said when we talk about compassion in the west we're talking about compassion for others whereas he says when in tibetan the word sere which is compassion it's taking care of the self and then by extension taking care of others there are two sides of the same coin part of the same system and i think better captured rather than by selfish or selfless that i'm being self-full taking care of all i love that it's sort of happier kinda together wonderful um back to your point on action tower because of course it's it's in our name action for happiness and i i love how much this community is already taking action so you've shared with us some wonderful insights this evening about looking after ourselves and being able to sort of recognize those emotions we might be pushing away we've talked about kind of our relationship with others we've talked about bigger change we want to see in the world maybe we could ask everyone now to share something they would like to do so an action that we can take either for ourselves or others how would you frame that for the audience what should we ask them to say so think about what's really important to you in the world in life and then find a manageable action that you can take something small tomorrow the next day for the next week that will make the world a better place that will get you closer to your ideal go for the low hanging fruits here that's perfectly fine small big breeze i'm loving what's coming in already listen better kiss my wife start an action happiness group act on child poverty get more sleep make people laugh um pick up litter smile more share food be present listen smile have daily goals eat more veg be kind volunteer reach out to people um comment on people when they're using good manners healing um yeah just you know acknowledging feelings are actually a beautiful mix of the things you should priceless about self about others and about changing the world and i think that's nice to see those things so interconnected isn't it absolutely priceless i'm feeling very moved to see that thank you so much everyone for sharing what you're sharing and really appreciate you um you're doing that so tom we've had lots of great questions and the first one i was going to bring in is you know really brings us back to the challenging times we're in aura has asked it may be normal to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and unhappy but what happens if we're afraid of grieving or of unhappiness how do we deal with the fear of grief and of course many people are grieving for lost loved ones lost jobs lost there's a lot of loss around at the moment how can we lean into that really difficult state yeah you know that so that there's of course a lot of research uh important research on uh on grieving and essentially broad brush strokes again there are two approaches the first approach is the stiff upper lip is i'm going to get through it i'm going to be strong i'm not going to let this bring me down approach number one approach number two is i'm breaking down i'm crying i can't stop talking about it or thinking about it i'm i'm i'm um i'm i'm falling to pieces it seems now when we look at these two from the outside we look at the first one and say wow they're coping so well we look at the second group and we say wow i hope they'll be okay in fact when you look at these two groups a year hence in most cases the second group is doing a lot better than the first group when you look at them five years almost with no exception the second group is doing better than the first group why because the first group allowed themselves to break down again that's the natural process and we mustn't get in the way of nature but what if we're afraid uh of doing it well we need to do it anyway and if we need to fake it initially then that's okay fake it till you make it or is amy cuddy say fake it until you become it uh durley has asked and we get a lot of people who are teachers in this community um i'm a teacher sometimes expressing our emotions is really hard when we're in a classroom how do you think we as teachers should work on expressing our emotions that's a great question i don't know what the answer is yeah no it is an important question and you know it can be also generalized to service providers in general yeah um so you know you're you're in a store and you know someone comes in or used to come in and say hi how are you and you say oh thank you so much for asking i had a most horrendous morning and let me tell you about no you say oh i'm having it's wonderful how are you doing how can i help you you put on a brave smile and that's okay that's okay as long as we have what uh brian little from cambridge calls a restorative niche as long as after we can go home speak to our partner and say you know i'm just feeling awful and i'm feeling down so it's okay initially to put on that face even if it's not the real me in terms of how i'm feeling right now it is the real me in terms of how i want to give service but it's not my real emotion right now it's okay as long as i have an opportunity later on to express emotion so sometimes teachers need to do that at the same time it's also very important for teachers to communicate to the children to show the students that it's okay not to be okay that it's okay to feel down and to struggle this is why personally for me it was so important to tell my children that i'm feeling down because you know if daddy gives himself the permission to be human you know the kids are more likely to do the same so it's perfectly fine for the teachers to to communicate that they're struggling and having a hard time in moderation because they still need to teach and they still need to be there for the children a pillar of support that's very wise and a really wise sort of balance of mindful awareness of when it's appropriate to to to to go a bit deeper and so on um i'm going to come with a question from katie which you have talked about already but i think it's so important and it's a question about post-traumatic growth and she's just asked is there a list of the conditions that you can put in place so you share this idea that you know sometimes we can recover from trauma in a way that actually really helps us grow and many people are facing trauma right now what are the things you mentioned that even just being aware of this is helpful so maybe it's useful just to recap on the foundations so so i'll recap and add um so first awareness that it's a possibility that's in the it's in the realm of possibilities and that is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy second permission to be human really experience the pain that comes with trauma you know it's it's real pain it hurts and that's okay remember the guest house um third give yourself periods of recovery whatever that recovery is for you one of the recoveries that i did talk about is physical exercise now that's okay what's how is physical exercise relevant to trauma well it turns out that when we work out we become physically tougher we also become psychologically tougher so there's actually research reported in the first handbook of positive psychology uh show talking about how physical toughness is associated with mental toughness relationships supportive relationships where we're listened to giving helping that takes us away from helplessness to help fullness from hopelessness to hopefulness giving another condition that i didn't talk about at least not directly is finding a sense of meaning and purpose so when i did talk about the the two schools of thought present and future pleasure and meaning finding a sense of meaning finding a sense of purpose is um is very important for us as as nietzsche says said when there is uh a what for every how becomes possible that's describing he also described post-traumatic growth when he said if he doesn't kill me it makes me stronger it's a it's a it's a very similar idea and finally you know we did talk about about gratitude what gratitude does or any micro moments of uh pleasurable emotions um what it does in the words of barbara fredrickson it broadens and build it helps us see beyond just the um the present hardship to the future and that gives us hope and hope matters hope doesn't matter thank you that's so timely a couple of questions on caring this idea of caring for others that we talked about um cajus asked how can i help somebody else build resilience and get through grief so we've talked about it for ourselves but what happens if we've got a loved one who's in a really difficult emotional state how can we be there for them yeah but here i i go straight to uh to listening there is research on it that people who are listened to develop healthy self-regard self-esteem self-confidence which of course is an important pillar of of growing from hardship so the first thing is listening because through listening what happens to them is um first of all they're more likely to open up to give themselves the permission to be human second the relationship strengthens and they feel supported i'm not alone um back in the 1970s aaron antonovsky who was a sociologist at yale at the time talks about a sense of coherence and how important that is for us to um to attain and how that distinguishes people who break down versus people who build up in other words um fragile versus anti-fragile in more modern language and what is the sense of coherence a sense of coherence comes when we realize that what we are in or what we're dealing with is manageable when we realize that what we're dealing with is comprehensible and when we realize that what we're going through is meaningful now these three elements that are the pillars of a sense of coherence emerge in a deep conversation it gains meaning it suddenly becomes manageable and oh now i understand what i'm going through it's understandable and staying with caring but perhaps looking at it from a different angle there are so many people who spend massive parts of their lives caring for others talent and that becomes quite a burnout risk actually we know that sort of key workers frontline workers have been dealing with very stressful situations for months now and of course always are these amazing heroes that hold much of our the fabric of society together and james just asked a simple question what are your thoughts on compassion fatigue that idea that you might just sort of really burn out in that caring role yes no it's absolutely real and you know again this is why what the dalai lama said is is so important always it's certainly important these days um compassion for self first by extension either put your oxygen mask on first and then help others you know it's become a cliche but sometimes cliche become cliches because they're they're true and they're repeated and and we see them all around um how do we take care of ourselves you know the all the ways that we that we spoke about and that you speak about in as part of action for happiness um but let me just highlight the idea of uh recovery we have to have those periods of recovery create them artificially um where between you know five and six you're in the gym no matter what uh between uh you know um 10 p.m and and 6 a.m you know you're in bed even if you don't fall asleep you are in bed so put this time uh aside for recovery you know i want to quickly refer to the work of adam grant from uh from wharton um and in his amazing book give and take he he talks about three kinds of of uh of people he talks about the givers the takers and the matchers the givers are the nice the nice ones they're the generous one they're kind we like givers uh the takers that's all about me me me taking primarily from the givers who are willing to give them uh and then there are the matchers the matchers are quid pro quo uh you gave me five i'll give you five back you just gave me three that's all you're getting from me that's fair now in every organization uh we have givers takers and matchers and by the way all of us are sometimes this that or the other the question is which is the dominant one and the interesting question is um who are the more successful ones the givers the matchers or the takers we know that given giving contributes to happiness but who is more successful and when they looked at it they divided the organization into top performers mid-level performance and the worst bottom performers and at the top disproportionately represented were the givers who relief so the givers i mean there are also takers and matches were among the most successful but givers are disproportionately represented there in the middle of the organization in terms of performance what do we have the takers and the matchers so what do we have at the bottom which group is disproportionately represented at the bottom the givers now the interesting research question here which has many implications in in the real world is what is the difference between these givers and these givers the bottom and the top and the answer is that the givers at the top also give themselves in other words they would say yes i'd love to help you but i just first need to finish this yes kids i'll be with you in a minute but i'm going to exercise and then i will be with you so it's to put those boundaries to also take care of ourselves because then we can also have much more to give that's very powerful i'm a big fan of adam's work thank you for reminding us of that um a different note again but i think important given the current context edam has asked a question says i i get anxious and worried when i when i accept that i'm facing a difficult situation but also when i accept that it's sort of inevitable that we all have difficult times and that's normal and i kind of reassure myself then actually i i begin to get better and so how do we reconcile that sort of yeah range paradox that you know it's accepting things can be both a source of anxiety and also a source of of of acceptance if you like yeah you know i'm i'm smiling because i can't even tell you how many conversations like that i've had in my head um so uh and i'm sure i'm not the only one here you know the thing about acceptance is that we have to really accept meaning it's not saying okay i accept my painful emotions wink-wink until these emotions go away or so that they go away true acceptance is what eckhart tolle talks about as surrender um what um again this comes from the the buddhist tradition truly surrendering to the pain and if it goes away great if it doesn't go away that's okay too so it's about accepting not so that it will go away it's accepting because it's a fact of nature you know you don't say well i'm accepting the law of gravity uh so that um you know i can build airplanes and overcome the law of gravity you accept the law of gravity because it's there because it exists now as a result of that you also learn how to build airplanes and and and you know create the olympic games which are all based on the law of gravity they won't exist without it however fundamentally you accept it because it's part of nature fundamentally we accept painful emotions because they are part of nature and if that makes you more anxious accept that anxiety too yeah thank you as you say often even if we understand these things it's hard to put them into practice and and on a sort of vaguely related note cassandra's asked about what the steps after being able to be more vulnerable you talked about that um willingness to be human at the beginning and part of that is sort of taking off a bit of our mask and revealing what's really going on for us uh she's just asked are there any steps to the practice of doing that we'd love to learn from you how we can do that and of course people are sometimes afraid of the idea of becoming vulnerable because it does open them up to potential abuse or potential lack of trust situations how do we do that in a way that doesn't put ourselves at risk yeah so you know um being on a first date and opening up about all the pain that you're experiencing and going through that's not a good idea there probably will not be a second date um so when you open up with other people it has to be gradually um it has to be uh over time mutual and i'm not talking about going to a therapist where of course you open up you know that's part of the job description so to speak um but with with other people do it very gradually however there is also writing there's also journaling so jamie pennybaker when he asked people to come into the lab and spend 20 minutes writing about the most difficult experiences that they had traumatic experiences things that maybe they had never talked to anyone else before and just write about it for 20 minutes and then come in the following day and write about it for 20 more minutes and do it for four days that's it 80 minutes total initially and he says that when he did the study he was really concerned because when he measured anxiety levels they went up significantly as a result of this intervention but then they started to come down and they continued to go down further and further and further and then they leveled off at a place that was lower than initial levels of anxiety in other words long-term benefits but there was a price that they paid initial rise in anxiety and were afraid of opening up because of that initial price that's sort of like a you know barrier to entry so to speak and we need to be prepared to overcome that barrier you know the short-term anxiety for longer much longer term relief it's a very good investment so writing is a safe space you know karen hornay um whom i see as one of the grandmothers of the field of positive psychology she was a student of freud and and initially broke off from freud because she said why aren't we also looking at the light why just the dark and she has a wonderful book called self analysis written in you know almost almost a hundred years ago and and it in it's a pure genius where she talks about the powerful impact of uh keeping a journal and how much we can do when we journey in uh on on our own tar thank you so much we've covered such a a lot of territory this evening you've reminded us well introduced actually for many of us this idea of anti-fragility sort of resilience enhanced you've reminded us about you know being able to be human to to deal with stress the importance of relationships and kindness and then how we can be a force for good and take action but that interconnection between self and others and sort of seeing this self-full uh thing that gets between i love that distinction between you know selfish or um you know sort of altruistic and how we don't need that sort of false dichotomy so so much wisdom shared and thank you all on the community for all of the lovely comments the great questions i'm sorry we haven't had a chance to answer all the questions we've got just uh sort of half a minute or so remaining talent is there any one sort of final thought you'd like to leave us with this evening you know peter drucker who's uh considered the father of modern management um towards the end of his life he was too tired too frail to give presentations there wasn't the technology then to to do so but instead of going to give presentations he had people come to him and people would spend weekends with him uh in his place in in california and every weekend on friday you would start like this whether he was talking to a political political leaders or to fortune 500 ceos or teachers he would begin the weekend like this he said on monday when you go back home i don't want you to call me up and tell me how great this weekend was and you can rest assured those weekends were phenomenal he said don't call me up and tell me how great it was call me up and tell me what you're doing differently because peter drucker understood that for real change it's not enough to have an aha moment an insight a eureka experience what we need to do is translate those ideas those inside into action so this is what i'm asking everyone listening watching to do what are you going to do differently that is going to make a difference in your life that is going to make a difference in others life extending outwards rippling outwards and this is why i'm also so grateful mark um that what you're doing is calling for action for happiness so thank you for this and thank you all for being here that's a lovely way to enter we're so grateful for your time and all of your wise advice folks we'll be sending on the video we'll be sending around the chat file we'll be sending links to a fantastic happiness certification program that tal and his academy run and various other resources so thank you for being here it's been lovely to have this vibrant community as always and tao much gratitude keep up the great work and we'll see you again soon thank you

Channel: Action for Happiness

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Length: 60min 12sec (3612 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020