You Don't Find Happiness, You Create It | Katarina Blom | TEDxGöteborg
Summary
TLDRIn this talk, a psychologist shares insights on creating happiness and well-being through positive actions rather than just positive thinking. The speaker emphasizes that happiness is a skill that can be cultivated, highlighting the brain's negativity bias and the importance of forming healthy habits. By focusing on meaningful relationships and taking small, positive actions, individuals can improve their overall well-being. The talk concludes with a reminder that behavior influences others, encouraging the audience to lead by example in fostering happiness and connection.
Takeaways
- 👋 We often follow actions rather than instructions, highlighting the importance of positive behavior in creating well-being.
- 🧠 Our brains are not always on our side when it comes to happiness due to automatic negative thoughts and a tendency to worry.
- 🔄 Mind-wandering is common, occurring almost half of the time we're awake, which challenges the idea of controlling happiness through positive thinking alone.
- 🏋️♂️ Happiness is a skill that requires positive action, not just positive thinking.
- 📊 We have a negativity bias, meaning we prioritize negative feedback over positive, which impacts our overall well-being.
- 🧩 Cognitive biases help us navigate the world but can distort our perception, often highlighting negative aspects over positive ones.
- 🏡 Building well-being involves actions like maintaining healthy relationships, which significantly contribute to our happiness.
- 📱 Simple acts of appreciation, like sending a kind text, can develop into powerful habits that enhance our well-being.
- 👫 Quality relationships are crucial for happiness, as demonstrated by long-term studies showing their impact on flourishing.
- 💪 Cultivating psychological habits, especially around relationships, requires the same dedication as physical health habits.
Q & A
What exercise did the speaker initiate at the beginning of the talk to illustrate a point about human behavior?
-The speaker initiated an exercise where they asked everyone to place their hands out and clap them on the count of three. This was done to demonstrate that people often do as others do, rather than always following instructions or doing as they are told.
What was the speaker's profession and what is their area of expertise?
-The speaker is a psychologist who trains organizations, teams, and individuals in creating happiness and well-being.
What was the main contradiction the speaker faced after co-authoring a book on the science of happiness?
-The main contradiction was that the speaker was in the middle of a life crisis, having broken up with their partner, being homeless and jobless, despite having co-authored a book on happiness.
According to the speaker, why is it difficult to maintain happiness and well-being?
-The speaker suggests that it's difficult to maintain happiness because the human brain is not always on our side when it comes to creating happiness, and it requires more than just positive thinking; it requires positive action.
What percentage of time do our minds wander according to the study mentioned by the speaker?
-According to the study by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, our minds wander approximately 46.9% of the time we spend awake.
What is the speaker's view on the effectiveness of controlling thoughts versus controlling actions to create happiness?
-The speaker believes that controlling thoughts is very difficult, if not impossible, and that well-being is better built by positive actions rather than just positive thinking.
What cognitive biases does the speaker mention that affect how we perceive life and situations?
-The speaker mentions cognitive biases that help us categorize and prioritize information, which can affect how we perceive life and different situations.
What is the 'negativity bias' and how does it affect our perception of life?
-The negativity bias is a tendency for the brain to focus on unpleasant or potentially threatening information. It evolved to help us survive in dangerous environments, but it affects how we perceive our life, relationships, workplace, and performance today.
What does the speaker suggest as an example of a psychological exercise to cultivate happiness?
-The speaker suggests sending a text of appreciation or gratitude to someone you care about as an example of a psychological exercise to cultivate happiness.
What is the 'psychological gym' that the speaker and a friend started, and what is its purpose?
-The 'psychological gym' is a place where organizations, teams, and individuals can train psychological skills to create more happiness and well-being. The purpose is to make psychological training as common as physical training.
What does the speaker emphasize as one of the most powerful actions for happiness, based on the Harvard University study?
-The speaker emphasizes investing time and heart into relationships as one of the most powerful actions for happiness, as the Harvard University study found that the quality of relationships is more important than wealth, fame, or hard work for personal flourishing.
Outlines
😀 The Challenge of Achieving Happiness
The speaker initiates the talk with an interactive exercise to demonstrate the human tendency to conform rather than to act independently. As a psychologist, the speaker discusses the difficulty of maintaining happiness, especially during crises, and the misconception that happiness is merely a state of mind. The speaker emphasizes that happiness is a skill that can be developed through positive actions, not just thoughts. The summary also touches on the automatic nature of thoughts and the prevalence of worrying despite its futility, highlighting the need for a more proactive approach to well-being.
🧠 Cognitive Biases and Their Impact on Well-being
This paragraph delves into cognitive biases, particularly the negativity bias, which influences how we perceive and prioritize information. The speaker uses a thought experiment involving feedback from a boss to illustrate how our brains tend to focus more on negative aspects. The speaker references studies by Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and others to show that setbacks have a stronger emotional impact than successes. The paragraph concludes with the idea that our brains are wired for survival, not necessarily for happiness, underscoring the evolutionary origins of our emotional responses.
🌱 Cultivating Happiness Through Action and Relationships
The speaker introduces the concept of a 'psychological gym' as a means to train and develop happiness and well-being skills. The speaker suggests that just as we understand the importance of physical health, we should also prioritize psychological health. An example of a simple yet impactful exercise is provided: sending a text of appreciation to someone you care about. The speaker argues that such actions, when turned into habits, can significantly enhance happiness. The importance of relationships in achieving happiness is emphasized, with references to studies showing that quality relationships are as crucial as diet and exercise for overall well-being.
👏 The Power of Positive Actions and Self-Care
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker reinforces the idea that positive actions are more effective in fostering happiness than positive thoughts alone. The speaker encourages the audience to extend care and understanding not only to others but also to oneself. The talk ends with a call to action, urging the audience to demonstrate positive behavior that can inspire change in others. The speaker suggests that the ripple effect of such actions can start within the room and extend beyond, creating a broader impact on well-being.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Well-being
💡Cognitive biases
💡Negativity bias
💡Mind wandering
💡Positive action
💡Happiness
💡Gratitude text
💡Relationships
💡Psychological gym
💡Emotional asymmetry
💡Habit
Highlights
The speaker begins with an interactive exercise to demonstrate the concept of doing as others do, rather than as we are told.
The speaker is a psychologist who trains in creating happiness and well-being, but admits to experiencing a personal life crisis while promoting a book on happiness.
Happiness is not just about positive thinking; it requires positive action, as our brains are not always on our side when it comes to creating happiness.
The mind wanders nearly 47% of the time we are awake, indicating that thoughts are automatic and controlling them is challenging.
Well-being is better built by positive actions rather than just positive thinking, as we have more control over our behaviors.
Cognitive biases help us navigate the world but can affect how we perceive life and situations, leading to an emphasis on negative information.
People tend to remember negative feedback more strongly than positive, which is a pattern observed in various studies.
The negativity bias is an evolutionary trait that helped us focus on threats, but it affects modern perceptions of life and relationships.
Happiness is a skill that can be trained, but the challenge is turning knowledge into action, even for experts.
The speaker and a friend started a 'psychological gym' to make psychological training as common as physical training.
The psychological equivalent of a green smoothie or exercise is suggested to be the cultivation of healthy psychological habits.
An example exercise is given to send a gratitude text to someone you care about, emphasizing the impact of small actions on relationships.
Relationships are as important, if not more, than diet and exercise for happiness and longevity, according to a Harvard study.
The quality of relationships, including vulnerability and sharing, is what contributes to happiness, not just the quantity.
The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to turn the talk into action, starting with understanding and caring behaviors towards themselves and others.
The audience is invited to participate in a final clapping exercise, illustrating how observing and mimicking behavior can lead to change.
Transcripts
[Music]
hello everyone I would like us to begin
with a short exercise so can everybody
place their hands like this reach out
your hands
thank you and I will count to three and
when I say three I want you to clap your
hands okay one two three so I did this
to show you that we don't always do as
other people tell us to do we rather do
as other people do and this is important
when it comes to creating well-being in
ourselves and in others I'm a
psychologist and I train organizations
teams and individuals in creating
happiness and well-being and a couple of
years back I co-authored a book on the
science of happiness but when the book
was published I was actually in the
middle of a life crisis I've just broken
up with the person who I thought I'd
spend my life with I had no place to
live and no job and I think this is a
very common human experience we all face
problems we end up in crisis sometimes
and we struggle but at the same time I
think most of us we long for that other
kind of life that entails meaning and
connection and happiness but it's kind
of difficult to live this life to always
be there in this happy place and today I
want to show you why your brain is not
always on your side when it comes to
creating happiness but also what we can
do to counter this and it's not going to
be by just positive thinking
this takes positive action because
happiness is a skill we all can train
and work on I want this to start here
how it's not just about positive
thinking
so let's begin with this have you ever
found yourself in a situation where
you're really worried about something
and you kept worrying even though you
knew that worrying won't change the
situation or help the situation in any
way and nevertheless you just kept on
worrying hands up right we're all doing
this and if we could have total mind
power and just switched over to these
happy thoughts
we just have done that and get on with
our lives but that doesn't really happen
does it and did you know that about half
of the time that you've been listening
to this speech your mind has probably
been wandering off thinking about other
things according to a study by Daniel
Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth our
minds wander forty-six point nine
percent of the time we spend awake so
our thoughts are automatic they have a
life of their own and to create
happiness by just control positive
thinking I think it's hard it's not even
possible impossible and I think it's
time that we start talking more about
this how can we take positive action
actually making the change in our lives
because if I would ask you to keep your
focus on your breath
don't think about anything else for five
minutes I doubt that anyone in this room
would be able to do that but if I would
ask you to please raise your hand like
this for five minutes I think we all
would be better able to achieve this so
it's really difficult to control our
thoughts and we have a better chance at
controlling our actions our behavior
therefore well-being is better built by
positive action and not positive
thinking also we tend to look at
ourselves as if we're these objects
rational beings and that perceived
situations in this objective manner and
we process information almost like a
computer I just take information in but
in reality very far from objective and
that's actually a good thing because if
we would truly be able to process and
perceive reality in all its nuanced
complexity we would be rather lost it
would be an overwhelming experience so
therefore our brain have evolved several
cognitive biases that helps us
categorize and prioritize and sort
information making it more easy for us
to navigate but these cognitive biases
this sorting and prioritizing is really
affecting how we perceive life how we
perceive different situations and I'd
like us to explore this further in a
little thought experiments so I invite
you all to think back at the last time
that you had a evaluated conversation
with your boss or manager and I'm quite
sure that you got to hear a lot of good
things things like how you contribute to
the workplace but I'm also quite sure
that you got to hear something that you
can improve with yourself with your
performance and once you leave this
conversation what do you think that your
brain thinks is the most prioritized
information all the things that you do
really good or the one thing that you
should be improving well if you're
somewhat like me it would definitely be
the latter and this doesn't really have
anything to do with how my brain works
this is actually a pattern that's been
shown among people for example
serious are marbella is a professor at
Harvard Business School she did a diary
study where she got to read people's
Diaries
to explore how they experience everyday
life and she saw a pattern that the
negative effect of a setback was more
than twice as strong as the positive
effects of a success and the same thing
goes with money that we feel way worse
about losing an amount of money than we
feel happy about gaining the same amount
and if you would receive a compliment
from a co-worker and then a complaint
from another co-worker these two
comments don't neutralize each other the
complaint would definitely leave a
stronger emotional mark so now we need
to ask ourselves why why do we carry
this emotional asymmetry why do we have
this preparedness to experience
unpleasant and negative emotions and to
understand that we need to understand
the context the environment where our
brain has been evolving for so many
years today several studies say that we
have evolved a negativity bias which
helps our attention to be drawn to
unpleasant or possibly threatening
information and this was really good
back then and there
when we were at the Savannah fighting
for survival every day but today here
and now this definitely affects how we
perceive our life how we perceive our
relations our workplace our own
performance and ourselves so to simplify
this a bit one could almost say that
your brain is concerned that you survive
throughout this day it's less concerned
that you're a happy survivor so by now
we can understand that it's not strange
that all of us sometimes feel anxious or
tense are we worried in one sense we
were built for this but most of us we
long for this other kind of life with
the meaning and the connection and the
happiness and I'm not sure that we can
have
one thing without the other but there
are definitely things and ways how we
can cultivate happiness and build
well-being but this comes with good news
and bad the good news is that happiness
it's not something you find outside of
yourself and it's not something you have
or don't have it's a skill that we all
can work on but the problem is that we
just don't do it
and this definitely applies for myself
this is the worst part of having written
a book on happiness because whenever I'm
having a bad day there's always someone
who can do like having to read your own
book Katerina you should know better so
I've learned that not even experts on
happiness and knows how to turn
knowledge into action and this is one of
the reasons why me and a friend have we
started a psychological gym where
organizations and the teams and
individuals could come and train these
skills in order to create more happiness
and well-being because we want to make
psychological training as common as
physical training because today we know
so many things about how to eat properly
and how to exercise to sustain a
physical health but what would be the
psychological version of a green
smoothie or of doing 50 situps
is there really such a thing and I would
say yes definitely there's a lot of
different exercises and things we can do
building healthy habits for ourselves
and I would like to present an example
of this so once you finish listening to
this pitch when you're leaving this room
later tonight I'd like you to bring out
your smartphone and takes a kind
appreciative gratitude text to someone
that you care for and maybe you can just
notice how that fits and this is a good
example of an exercise that I often do
with leaders and teams and just a couple
of weeks back I did this at a two-day
leader
conference and later I found out that
one of the participants had texted his
wife writing I love you very very very
much which made the wife think what are
you doing at that Leadership Conference
and it just tests texting one person at
one time it won't change the world in
any way but turning this into a healthy
habit over time can have a large impact
and to dedicate this habit to caring for
your relationships might be one of the
most powerful actions that you can take
when it comes to happiness so this might
be the green smoothie that you've all
been waiting for according to several
studies having functioning relationships
is as important if not even more
important as exercising well and having
a good diet and this can even help us
live longer in a study from Harvard
University which began already back in
1938 researchers followed over 700
people to understand what it is that
makes us flourish as people so they
followed these participants for decades
and in 2012 the results came the
researchers found that happiness doesn't
come from wealth it doesn't come from
fame or working hard
it comes from relationships and it's not
about the number of friends that you
have or whether or not you're in a
committed relationship with a partner
they found that it's the quality of the
relationship that counts
being able to be vulnerable listening
and sharing what's close to your heart
that's what matters and by now we know
that forming good healthy habits when it
comes to physical training or having a
good diet it takes dedication it takes
commitment
and I think we should approach
psychological habits in the same way and
especially when it comes to
relationships so by now we know that the
brain has this tendency to highlight the
negative and that this is really tricky
to revoke just by positive thinking it
takes positive action but some actions
are more powerful than others when it
comes to happiness and investing your
time and heart into the relationships
around you no matter if it's at work or
with neighbors or with family or friends
this might be one of the most powerful
things that you can do for yourself and
I'd like us to do this one more time so
can everyone reach out their hands and
I'm gonna count to three and when I say
three I want you to clap your hands okay
one two three yay great so we learn by
watching others behavior you've just
seen me do this two times and already so
many people change their behavior so the
more you can turn this talk into action
by being more understanding and caring
not just towards others but also towards
yourself I think that others will follow
your example and do as you do and the
people outside of this building they
won't know what just happened they won't
know what changed but we know that it
was here in this talk that everything
started thank you
you
Browse More Related Video
Flow: Lối suy nghĩ giúp mình luôn vui vẻ, tích cực
Awaken Your Mind Inner Doctor | In 5 Tariko se Jagaye Apnee Healing Power in Hindi | Ram Verma
Imagine It 100 Times and It Will Become Real! - Law of Attraction
How to buy happiness | Michael Norton
Conoce los secretos para Impulsa el Bienestar Organizacional | Mariano Castro | TEDxAmador
Can Happiness Really Be Learned? • The Habits of Happiness • Ep. 10
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)