The Ten Keys to Happier Living | Vanessa King | TEDxStPeterPort

I'm Vanessa King and I'm from the social movement action for happiness and I spend my time reviewing research studies on what makes us happy and helping people put those ideas into practice in their daily lives in their workplaces and in their communities now imagine for a moment if you would a world where everyone knew the ingredients the active ingredients in terms of what made us happier and put those into practice in their daily lives now research shows that not only would they enjoy life more and be less prone to depression but it's likely they'd be physically healthier they'd be more engaged and productive at work they're more likely to volunteer in their communities they're more likely to be financially responsible they even may be more likely to vote now of course many factors influence how happy we are and some we can't change we can't change our genes and our early upbringing though some of us might try some factors we can influence with a bit of effort and like our external circumstances our income levels the environment we live in but once we reach a basic level in those a moderate level of those trying to change those changing those has a relatively small impact on how happy we are but how we think our behavior and our daily actions accounts for a significant proportion of how happy we feel and that's really really really good news because those are the things that are more within our control to change and having a sense of control in our lives is an absolutely fundamental ingredient in happiness so are you up for trying a couple of experiments whoa right experiment 1 think back on your day yesterday and I want you to bring to mind one or two things that you were pleased about I'm more grateful for enjoyed doesn't matter whether they were big or we're really tiny like getting a seat on the bus or somebody giving you a smile has everybody got something in mind great now um how does that feel when you reflect on that thing how's it feel kind of nice in a kind of warm gentle subtle way well it turns out that's not just a nice feeling that's actually having a physiological and a psychological impact because when we're in a pleasant emotional state it broadens our perceptual fields we literally see more we're more open to other people we're more open to ideas or mopin to information we see more options and little by little by little that builds our our psychological capacities we form more connections with other people we learn more we're more flexible and can adapt more easily to change and that builds our resilience and did you invent did anyone invent have to invent something to think of know those good things happen but we often let those things pass us by because in Psychological terms there's a phrase that's called bad is stronger than the good we are hardwired to notice what's wrong and weak and we tend to experience unpleasant emotions much more strongly so what this simple activity is is it's the brain retraining exercise it's enabling us to kind of squeeze more out of those positive moments and when people were asked to do that in this has been repeated in many studies when people were asked to write down at the end of each day each night for a week 3 things that they were enjoyed were pleased about 3 things and maybe a nota too on why they were good maybe took a couple of minutes per day doing that each night for a week increased people's levels of happiness or psychological well-being that lasted for as long as six months not bad for just a tiny moment a time experiment - you might want to close your eyes just for a brief moment and I'm going to ask you to focus on your breath specifically on the air as it comes in through your nose and as it comes out through your nose and just focus on that for a few seconds a few rounds and if your mind wanders don't worry just bring it back when you notice it's gone so just breathing in breathing out how does that feel now how do you feel now you may open your eyes if it's not asleep you may open your eyes I hope you felt a little tiny bit calmer maybe a little bit more relaxed and it's also a taster of what's called mindful awareness and that's when we're in the present moment and we're aware of what's going on inside us perhaps and what's going on around us but we're not getting caught up in those thoughts because our minds wander about 50% of the time and whether those are our minds wandering - something is really pleasant or unpleasant we're less happy when our we tend to be less happy when our minds wander so just by being able to anchor ourselves to our breath not only can it help us become a little bit calm a little happier then that's great for our well-being it can also give us a bit more time in our day what's not to like and I hopefully those two little tiny experiments can show how we have some control over our emotional state even in the space of just a few minutes and they're just a small fraction of what psychological research is showing that we can do to increase our happiness and you may not be aware but in the last two decades there's been an absolute revolution in psychological research historically psychology has focused on the causes and cures of dysfunction which is very important and that continues but in the last two decades there's been a much greater focus on what makes us happier and what enables us to flourish so let's look at a few more a taste of some of the other ideas that this research is revealing firstly and this is a big big big thing for happiness other people matter human beings are social creatures we've evolved to live in social groups so whether we are introvert or extrovert we all need to feel connected to other people and if we don't feel connected if we feel lonely for prolonged periods of time that can actually increase our chances of depression and it can be as bad for our physical health as smoking or obesity and one way a great way of feeling connected to people whether people close to us or complete strangers is actually thinking about what we can do for other people and it turns out when we give to other people in some way not only is it nice for them but it's almost as if some of somebody has done something nice for us because it activates the reward centers in our brain as if we were giving a gift or a ward of some kind it activates those same Center those same centers so giving makes us happier happier people also tend to give more so there's a kind of virtuous circle if I help other people I'm likely to be happier and if I'm happier I like I'm more likely to help others there's a kind of social your oils or social wheels if you like and of course we can give in many ways here we can give money if we've got some to spare we can give time we can give our skills and give a helping hand and we can give a moment of thoughtful attention and these are some times than some of the most powerful ways whether that's helping out a stranger in a the street who's struggling with a heavy bag or having a cup of tea ready when a loved one comes home and you we know they've had a hard day and sometimes those moments of thoughtfulness and were important ways of nurturing our closest relationships because often those are the ones we take most for granted exercise we know it's good for our bodies but what about our minds John Ratey who's a Harvard psychiatrist when one of the world's experts in this area describes aerobic activity as miracle-gro for our brain because when we do get hot and sweaty for 20 minutes or so and it literally stimulates brain cell production we produce something called brain derived neurotrophic growth factor amongst other things that help our brains become healthier kids who do aerobic activity before school have been shown to have improved academic performance it helps adults think more clearly and effectively and I think this for me was a this was really a really really powerful awakening for me because then I was at school I was put off exercise for life because I was always the last person to be picked for the sports teams and it's each week it was like okay I'm being humiliated yet again and and so I didn't do I didn't do any physical activity for years and when I came across this that moving more was good for your minds I just thought I've got to go to try it try this and now it's an absolutely essential part of my my week and to exercise because I know it helps you manage stress and and it I know it makes me think more clearly yeah we can exercise our brains more directly as well because trying new experiences and learning and being curious and following our interests can be a rich source of enjoyment and fulfillment throughout our lives and in fact learning as we get older is a great way of keeping our brains functioning as we age and try new experiences can expand our sense of time and it can also feed our creativity so new ideas come from connecting seemingly disparate things in our minds so the more diversity of stuff we've got in our brains and the more we learn the more we've got to make connections with so it fuels having creative ideas goals goals are how happiness happens or so says Edwin Locke who's a world expert on goals and it's not just achieving goals achieving our goals that actually influences happiness it's the planning and working towards them too can be a sense of fulfillment and it's not just big goals but micro goals matter - there's research by Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School found that the thing that made the biggest difference between the best and the worst days at work were feeling a sense of progress now how good does it feel when you tick something off your to-do list feels good yeah and that's that's an example but in fact making sense of progress is again a really important psychological needs and psychology is also giving us lots of kind of hints and tips in terms of how to make working towards our goals and reaching our goals more likely do you know as well as put being very clear about what you need to do on your to-do list if you visualize where think about where you will be and when you're doing going to do that thing you more than double your chance of reaching that goal pretty good huh blitek resilience now we all have ups and downs in life and being able to cope with those deal with those having ways to do that is an important part of happier living and everything we cover I'm covering today is an ingredient in resilience but our thinking is especially important and Will Shakespeare said there's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so and off it's our thoughts that drive our emotions but we may not realize that the case but it's very often that we'll say I've got he made me so angry oh god it make change but it's not the thing or the person that made us feel that way it's our thought our interpretation of perhaps why that happened or what will happen next and the thing is those interpretations happen so quickly that we may not know they're there and it they can be inaccurate in fact they're often inaccurate and we can fall into habits of thinking that really undermine our resilience very you know for example automatically assuming that everything's our fault or the opposite everything's somebody else's fault or jumping to conclusions or blowing things out of proportion and if we can just pause for a moment when we get an emotional reaction and try and tune into what that interpretation is that we're making about what's happened and just check its accuracy that's the first step to kind of thinking more resilient lis being comfortable with who you are every single person in this room every single one of you has things that you are energized by you engage by you learn quickly you do naturally and you have things that you don't we all have strengths and weaknesses and we're all different and studies show that if we can identify what our strengths are and use those more and in new ways it not only makes us happier it can make us healthier and make us more effective at work and it doesn't mean to say we shouldn't focus on our weaknesses but we only focus on those to the extent they're holding us back from using our strengths because we'll get more energy and more happiness from using our strengths and studies have shown that when people use a strengths in a new way each day for a week that increased their levels of happiness and it grew over a period of six months and decreased their display of depression type symptoms in fact Martin Seligman who's the father of this shift in psychology that's revolution in psychology I talked about describes strengths as our biggest the biggest potential we have to contribute to the world and achieve well-being and contributing feeling that we and what we do contributes to something bigger and beyond ourselves is indeed an important ingredient in happiness having a sense of meaning matters for both well-being and resilience and having several sources of meaning can can help you like you can help with resilience but finding meaning isn't always easy we can start giving by and helping other people is a great place to start if we're struggling without meaning and I like to encourage people to think about their footprint because this can give us real clues as to what meaning means to us in our lives so what footprint do you want to leave today this week the next year for the rest of your life and that gives clean clear includes to what meaning you mean to you so myself and my colleagues are action for happiness have distilled hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of research papers into what we call our ten keys to happy living we've touched on each of these actually throughout this talk it's a menu it's not a prescription what works for each of us is different and we need different things at different times and there'll be things you're already doing so it kind of helps to know what's make a difference so you can maintain those and you may have spotted that the acronym for these is great dream and it's our dream that this framework these ten keys will inspire you to take action for yourself and for other people and our dream goes beyond that our dream is bigger because I believe these 10 keys can help us shape our communities they can help shape our schools they can help shape our workplaces they can help shape the physical environment that we live in they've already been starting to being used at schools and in other ways and I even use them to build a case as to why the local libraries in my area the little community libraries should be kept open when they were threatened with closure and we won we will it helped turn people believe because they these are all over is all evidence-based so I hope you'll share our great dream and take action for yourselves and the world around you and at the end of the day why not start with experiment one and write down your three things that were good from today because that's one step towards this dream thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 152,769

Rating: 4.7440434 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Guernsey, Health, Charter for Compassion, Choice, Cognitive science, Communication, Community, Compassion, Depression, Emotions, Empathy, Happiness, Identity, Life, Life Development, Personal growth, Positive Thinking, Relationships

Id: 7cks__51kdw

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2016