You Need to Foster the Power of Joy | James Goebel | TEDxTraverseCity

please welcome to the stage James Gobbo hi slides excellent I'm here to talk about joy you might be surprised to find out that there's a fictional character that reminds my friends of me anybody care to guess who that is you aren't together he gets a little carsick and we walk around a lot so put him down notice he has a TEDx t-shirt so he came prepared there's an interesting challenge when you talk about joy I believe it's because people have preconceived notions but which way is and I want to draw clear distinct difference between happiness and joy because I think the dictionary is wrong happiness most people associate with pleasant feelings so it's what I want in your head Pleasant joy is about meaningfulness when something's meaningful the joy that is created is far different than the happiness that people feel so explore some options so you be here run 5ks 10ks marathons do you know somebody who does my daughter doesn't quite look this way but she's about to run her second 5k and if you stand at the finish line you're gonna have a hard time convincing me that most people who run find this Pleasant I don't see why this is a happy thing they're in pain but there's something very odd about this it's joyful this is very fulfilling for most people who do it otherwise I have no idea why they would choose to but they've overcome something big something challenging they've applied courage in a way that's meaningful in their lives you know overcome something and usually oddly enough they all run together on the same day right there's a camaraderie in this this phenomenon happens in lots of different places in our lives were pleasant and joy or meaning are distinct three times in my life I was blessed to be there when my wife gave birth this is not a pleasant experience mirrors I could talk I think there are endorphins involved that help make it go away afterwards I didn't experience any of those but this is probably three of the most joyful days in our lives that we will remember forever women trade stories about this kind of thing and they're not talking about the pleasant part why why do they share these stories they're reexamining the joy in their lives through a really interesting moment that led to meaning in their lives we see the same thing at work or at school when we take on a project that's bigger more difficult than we thought we would when we are forced sometimes to work with somebody unpleasant like me sitting side by side locked in a room working really hard it's not always pleasant but when you achieve something bigger than yourself and you can look back on it it's amazing how people tell these stories about how they enjoyed working with these people they don't like why it's the joy of the accomplishment of achieving something bigger than themselves that's not pleasant except in retrospect so let's apply this in our community how many times do we make a choice to put our own personal satisfaction aside our immediate happiness our pleasant feelings in order to serve others why do we do that in most cases I would argue it's because of the lasting joy the bigger picture the meaning that it gives right it can be incredibly fulfilling it's just not always fun when you're doing this with your relatives right or others that you know because not everybody is going to be super excited to see you they're not like that with that large guy with the tail that bounces across the stage friend of my friend right but when we look back at where we spent meaningful time with somebody else it doesn't always have to come wrapped in a box with a bow and pretty unicorns in the background and rainbows right sometimes it's the quiet times so when we look at this I really want to contrast Pleasant with meaning I talk about joy this is a little weird for somebody whose nickname is Eeyore and I talked about it in the context of work in our world we believe joy powers teams of people to work together to achieve extraordinary outcomes even when the work is not pleasant we've built an office with no offices in the walls why to build community to build connection between the human beings to make them behave differently and the problem is it's not always convenient one of the weird things we do is imagine you're in the third grade it's been a long semester some interesting dynamics have filled the room teacher decides I want to change the energy so they decide to move everybody around many of you have been seated in the same seat all day long I want you to look to your left here right find a partner find your bag of stuff because that's going with you you're gonna stand up and swap positions if that if you're if that's possible if it's inconvenient that's okay but no everybody stand up yes he is that crazy swap positions with somebody and sit down in the new chair can you feel the energy in the room change now the curmudgeons like me are gonna go well that's pointless but there's a couple of people are sitting this feels really kind of weird I also did just move over like two seats and I feel different the experience different I changed something in our environment everybody on average changes their seat in the office once a week to sit by somebody different it's inconvenient joy is not always convenient in order to encourage people to work together two people work on the same task at the same time on the same computer we build social connections this is also one of the advantages of trading partners once a week because everybody eventually partners with everyone we have a stand-up meeting everybody stands you know if it happens if you have a meeting without chairs it goes much faster and yes there are dogs in the office and babies but everybody announces to everybody else a hundred people in the room will take us 13 minutes what are you gonna get done today we plan things with paper folded index cards multi-million dollar projects some of these are medical devices what's interesting is when you plan with paper people stand up and move things around they collaborate because community is what gets things gets things done and unfortunately it's not always pleasant there are difficult decisions to be made there will be people who are unhappy but joy comes out of producing something that's meaningful turns out there's another context to which this applies and that's education one of my favorite educators told me once doesn't matter what happens at school you are still the primary educator of your children so my wife and I have three pupils that we teach these are my children along with my wife and I have found all the things that I teach about work environments apply at home just Thickhead it takes me a while so I want to tell you two stories this is our eldest child at one point she struggled with math many years ago in my mind the problem we talked about it we encouraged homework we did this we did that it all failed we hit upon a really interesting idea what if we made math interesting to her and the problem is interesting to her does not match the story problems that comes in the books we had to come up with a project that was actually interesting to her that involved math and so we thought about it we struggled we tried a couple attempts we failed eventually we hit upon it let's build a battle house I pulled this photo out my daughter was like that's so awesome that's that dollhouse we bought dope no it's not that math project we did we did angles we did dimensions we did cost analysis she sanded this thing she doesn't like to do this kind of work why did this matter because it had a greater purpose for her it had meaning and because we were working on something that had meaning to her doing the math was just something you did something you engaged him because it had a purpose and it was incredible it was wonderful there's a problem though if every time my children got bored with school we came up with a big project I now have a new full-time job which would be really cool but we have to eat and so the question becomes how in the world can we get this to happen all the time because it's often inconvenient to find that joy that meaning several years later I had an incredibly interesting insight each of my children along the way reading is very important in our family and we worked with each one and they all had different levels and speeds at which they uptake it but then the magic would happen you would find one of them late at night reading a book boy Harry Potter came along at the perfect time right this child you're working with to read they're under the covers with a flashlight reading this Jain illness novel and here's the problem I need them to go to sleep it's really inconvenient but the joys happening right now they're powering their own learning with utter passion and interest and what are they doing they're practicing reading instinctively they're enjoying what they're doing they're achieving and so I kind of struggled right as I tell them put the book away and go skipping down the hallway going thank God it's wonderful but how often does this happen imagine a school system where class is 55 minutes long and you finally engage a student and you get them excited and the bell rings in their excitement has to end because I have to go do something different how often do we structure our world for the convenience of the work we're doing the convenience of other factors and we accidentally squashed the joy that powers extraordinary performance it almost happens by itself and we go around unintentionally squashing it because we don't recognize it for what it is right they weren't they weren't banners and weren't streamers and what there wasn't background music there was utter joy in some quiet activity so the challenge I want to offer you is learn to recognize joy when it's happening I want you to be mindful now the beautiful part of the statement is it's so easy to say not so easy to do I struggle with it here's an example of mindfulness these are my two physicists imagine my two physicists decide that they're going to go off into a project while I'm busy doing the taxes so I look out the back window and these two strapping strong children decide they're gonna carry an 18-foot extension ladder across the backyard now if I ask them to do this they could explain to me why it's impossible they're making a beeline across the property line my first instinct is no because the only thing I see in my head is not joy not mindfulness I see a future trip to the ER it wasn't this one there are others and I caught myself on the way out the door to stop this something wonderful happened where I realized there are something joyful going on why because there's no other reason that would power them to go pick up this ladder and haul it all the way across the yard they're trying to do something what if I helped and just happen to be there in case something bad happens like you know gravity they built a swing out of a skateboard now we get to talk about the load limits of the rope we get to talk about forces distance height stuff they're not interested in except they're gonna get on this thing right and now all of a sudden it's got meaning and now we can talk about all the things they don't want to talk about in math and they did it all by themselves I didn't have to make the project up I think I ultimately had to carry the ladder back because there wasn't really a whole lot of meaning and carrying it back to the barn but how can you recognize joy and be mindful and that be mindful is really hard I heard this first from a gentleman named Paul Saginaw and may have borrowed it from somewhere else this is not useful it's clever but it's not useful he's kind of much more beautiful way to say it when furious get curious because if you're upset boy there's something fueling that and that means somebody else did something there's something feel on that and hey maybe there's something really cool going on and you're stuck in a mode where you can't see it because I was worried about my children's safety remember that birth thing right got to keep them safe so here's my challenge to you my friends often recognize that you know they say good morning I say you have proof right joy comes in different packages it's not like the dictionary says oh it's just lots of happiness no it comes in passion it comes in meaning it comes in people truly connecting with something they're doing it's powerful at work it's powerful at school it's powerful at home and in your community learn to recognize it learn to look for it learn to help it because your actions that you take every day either encourage it or accidently squash it and you have to be very careful that because I know I squash it all the time with my children and I've learned that what I really need to do is recognize when it's happening and foster it I don't have to make up the projects guess what they do it themselves they already know what they're interested in the people in your community they know what they're passionate about help them join matters thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 5,108

Rating: 4.9298244 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Business, Children, Community, Compassion, Creativity, Family, Leadership, Mindfulness, Personal growth, Value

Id: Gh2DChInJNc

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2016