Dr Tal Ben-Shahar – Harvard Open Courses 1504 – Positive Psychology 13

The session is about ‘setting goals’ and Tal brought in the question “Who are you? When is the most real you?”

The benefits of self-concordance include:

• It’s easy to understand that setting self-concordance goals can potentially make us happier.
• Having self-concordance goals resolve internal-conflict.
• It’s a way to dealing with interpersonal conflict too.
• It increases the likelihood of success. From “No pain, no gain” to “Do it better with pleasure”.
• It’s self-reinforcing. It has trickle effect.

Tal suggested how to “set goals” below:

1. Writing them down
2. Setting lifelines
3. Make them specific 
4. Have long-term goals and break them to short-term goals. 

Based on Amy Wrzesniewski’s research, I think over my own experience. At present, I am regarding my job as something between career and calling. More likely to be a career than a calling. I took my first job as a calling as I worked hard and felt guilty if I didn’t do it well. However, I didn’t have a balance in the previous job. Any work can be perceived as a job, a career or a calling. It depends on how we interpret it.

When we pursue our passions, a self-concordant goal and a self-concordant journey, that’s when we come alive, that’s when we also make the world a better place.

When we are stressed, we are more likely to narrow and constrict. So what can we do about stress? Stress is actually good for us, but the lack of recovery from stress harms us. According research on happier people, there are two things they do differently:

• They set rituals for themselves.
• They set rituals for both work and for recovery. To attain multi-level recovery.

Interesting research findings:

• To easy is not necessarily good. 
• When you are acting according to your character strengths, you feel energised and motivated. It comes from within. It feels natural.
• The broaden-and-build theory – experience of positive emotions broaden people’s momentary thought–action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources.

People and their work:

• Muzafer Sherif or Elliot Aronson – to resolve interpersonal conflicts is to have a super ordinate goal, a goal in which both sides engage in and are intra-dependant.
• Ellen Langer – we have opportunities to choose what we want to do and well-being.
• Book The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) – classification of all known mental disorders.
• Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman – Value in action (VIA) – identified 24 character strengths.
• William James – when is the most real you?
• Amy Wrzesniewski – people’s perception of work – (1) Job is a job. (2) Job is a career (3) Job is a calling.
• Ambani Carter, one of the co-founders of Women in Business – “Instead of focusing on what we can live with, we should be thinking about what we can’t live without.”
• Ellen Langer – Beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies.
• Richard Kadison – stress – 45% students experience depression.
• Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s book The Power of Full Engagement – have 60 to 120 minutes of sprint, work, concentrate, focus, hard go for it, and then after that have 15 minutes of recovery. [Tal recommended this ritual. It’s reasonable, but I feel it’s difficult to have 60 minutes focus without distribution from people in my daily work. It’s definitely possible once or twice a day, but continuous sprints and breaks are difficult as people will come to the office, phone rings. meetings or discussions will take place in any time. If I don’t talk to people when they talk around, it’s just isolating myself, isn’t it? Not sure how practical it is in a work environment like mine. ]

The Hamburger Model by Dr Tal Ben-Shahar

I started to read Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s Book Can you learn to be happy? Happier.

It’s very interesting to see Tal’s Hamburger Model, which is a metric that represents four distinct archetypes of attitudes and behaviours to life.

(image from https://j5minsbreak.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/39ed7-hamburger.jpg)

The tasteless vegetarian burgers made with the most healthful ingredients, which would afford future benefit and present detriment. It is the Rat Race archetype. The rat racers suffers subordinate the present to the future. It has a ground that benefits in anticipation of some future reward. No pain, no gain. (p.14)

The tasty junk-food burger yields present benefit and future detriment. It is the Hedonism archetype.

Hedonists live by the maxim “seek pleasure and avoid pain”; they focus on enjoying the present while ignoring the potential negative consequence of their actions. It  has the ground that live for the moment, and give little or no thought to future consequences and plans. (p.14)

The worst of all possible burgers is both tasteless and unhealthy. It is the Nihilism archetype. The Nihilist has lost the lust for life, neither enjoys the moment nor has a sense of future purpose. It has the ground that hopelessness. (p.15)

The burgers are tasty and healthy, which constitute a complete experience with both present and future benefit. It is the Happiness archetype. Happy people live secure in the knowledge that the activities that bring them enjoyment in the present will also lead to a fulfilling future. It has the ground that true happiness is achieved when there is a perfect balance between present pleasure and future benefits. (p.15)

The Rat Racer’s illusion is that reaching some future destination will bring him lasting happiness; he does not recognize the significance of the journey. The hedonist’s illusion is that only the journey is important. The Nihilist, having given up on both the destination and the journey, is disillusioned with life. The rat racer becomes a slave to the future; the hedonist, a slave to the moment; the nihilist, a slave to the past. (pp.26-27)

To varying degrees, and in different combinations, we all have characteristics of the rat racer, the hedonist, the nihilist, and the one who is happy. Tal suggested readers to do exercises, to write done our own experience of each. One day one archetype. Think about what it feels like and what we have paid for it. Do this exercise regularly like every three months, yearly or the timespan that you like.

I am a Rat Racer without doubt. This is mostly relevant to my education (home, school and social culture) since a young age. Normally if I felt very unpleasant from my heart when I was on the way toward my goal, I sought a change. It’s the ”what/where to change to” that bothered me the most. I couldn’t really think good examples of my experience of being Hedonist or Nihilist. The experience was temporary and soon I came back to the Rat Race domain. I misunderstood ‘Hedonism’ and thought they are the happiest people as they enjoy the present all the time. I suppose it’s why I started to question myself more after I came to the UK. Do I really feel happier? Life is too short, so am I doing the meaningful things I real want to?

I think the answer to my questions about myself to some extent is in Tal’s explanation below. It has shed light on my understanding what attitudes and behaviours to life are and what are the differences.

“Once we arrive at our destination, once we attain our goal, we mistake the relief that we feel for happiness. The weightier the burden we carried on our journey, the more powerful and pleasant is our experience of relief. When we mistake these moments of relief for happiness, we reinforce the illusion that simply reaching goals will make us happy. While these certainly is value in relief – it is a pleasant experience and it is real – it should not be mistaken for happiness.” (p.19)

What can I do about it if I’m a rat racer and want to become happier, or say not sacrifice current pleasure? Here some things I can do:

1. Identify what you really really want to do from the list of what you can do and establish meaningful goals. Ensure what you are aiming for in life will be fulfilling.
2. Enjoy the journey.
3. If now, you are doing something that you don’t enjoy or are working towards a goal that you don’t think is fulfilling, find a way to change this.
4. Understand that it is impossible for you to feel happy and fulfilled all the time.The point, however, is to spend as much time as possible engaged in activities that give us both present and future benefits.

Dr Tal Ben-Shahar – Harvard Open Courses 1504 – Positive Psychology 12

This session finished up the topic of “change” and started the topic of “setting goals”.

At the beginning, Tal emphasised that changing is No short cuts; We need to Taking time off; and we need to Evaluation and Elaboration.

Positive emotion and painful emotion flow through same pipeline. And if we suppress negative emotions we are very often indirectly/inadvertently also suppressing positive emotions.

According to Tal, “generally speaking people who set goals are controlling other things more successful”. Personally I’m a person who set goals most of time and try to achieve them before deadlines. I don’t really think I’m successful, rather I see it as a skill or a habit of being organised. However, why don’t I see myself successful? Are my goals wrong goals? Perhaps I was born as a low self-esteem person? But I rarely feel helpless or hopeless.

Watched the session, I had a clue for my questions. Tal stated that “attainment of gaols does not lead to happiness; understanding the proper role of goals, the having of a goal, that leads to happiness.” Not all goals are created equal. The goals should be the things that you perceive that you want to do rather than things you have to do. One role of the goals is to liberate ourselves so that we can enjoy the process. Goals are means towards the present end. I kind of understand that the goals I was thinking about are things like work I have to get done, a project I need to complete, the places I want to visit, the new things I want to learn and so on. I should separate them to some extent, and look closely at what are the things I really really really want to do in my life. They are the goals for. Setting goals for those things lead to happier experience.

Life is too short to do what I have to do; it’s barely long enough to do what I want to do.

Goals make us more successful, for the exact same reason that positive beliefs do. If we declare goals, they are likely to become true. Why? Tal answered: words have power, words create the world. Our brain does not like inconsistency. To keep the consistency, we create the world to make the reality is consist to our imagination, which is to make beliefs come true.

Necessity is the mother of inventions. If we ask the right question, it opens up opportunities.

Tal’s definition of happiness below is from his own book:

“Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing towards the peak“

At the end of the session, Tal showed a video clip from the file Dead Poet Society. Robin Williams as a teacher was telling students Carpe diem – “seize the day”. I was wondering if Robin Williams’d had more help from people like Tal, would he have suffered depression so much?

I searched the poem:

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick  

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

Interesting research findings:

• In general, men benefits more from marriage than women.

People and their work:

• Ira Progoff’s work on Journalling
• Jamie Pennebaker’s book Opening UP: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions and his research contributions – The ABCs in journalling, 4 times a week, 15 minutes each time on writing down painful experience, reduces your anxiety level. Men are benefit more from journalling than women.
• Laura King, a student of Jamie Pennebaker, used Abraham Maslow’s “peak experience” concept and run a similar research study to Jamie Pennebaker’s – It proves that journalling about happy and joyful experience, describing experience, replaying your happy experience rather than analysing it will benefit people too.
• Lyubomirsky Study – journalling about happiness, which analyses the joyful experience has negative effect
• Daniel Wegner – ‘ironic processing’- supression or repression, releasing
• Aaron Antonovsky, one of the fathers of positive psychology – The concept of ‘Salutogenesis’ – Three components as the sources of mental health: (1) sense of comprehensibility (2) sense of manageability (3) the sense of meaningfulness
• Martin Seligman – learned helplessness
• Barbara Fredrickson – The Broaden-and-Build Theory
• Albert Bandura – Self-efficacy Theory
• Karen Horney – ‘neurosis’ never go away completely. so change ourselves completely is unrealistic.
• Henry David Thoreau – The process matters more.
• Abraham Maslow – Resilience
• Roger Bannister – believed that he would break the 4 minutes barrier.
• Thomas Edison – believed that he would generate light from electricity by the 31 December 1879
• W.H. Murrary, one of those prominent accomplished climbers – the importance of committing goals
• Matthieu Richard’s, the translator of Dalai Lama, book The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill
• David Watson and K Naragon’s book The Handbook of Positive Psychology – the importance of goals
• David Myers and Ed Diener – goals and happiness
• Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem – “Live not for battles won, Live not for the-end-of-the-song, Live for the along.”
• Ohad Kamin, Tal’s teacher, gave him the best advice for how to make a decision – identify the things that you can do, out of the things identify the things that you want to do. Out of the things you want to do, identify those things that you really want to do. Then identify the things you really really want to do and to do them.

The Cross Keys at the border of Shropshire, England and Powys, Wales

As the Scotland independence vote is going to be on Thursday, it’s dominated the news.  I listened the BBC Wales radio this morning, Felicity Evans’ talk about the Cross Keys Hotel called my interest particularly.

Now I have a bit time and searched the location of the Cross Keys. It is a Georgian grade II listed building situated in the village of Llanymynech, which straddles the border of Shropshire, England and Powys, Wales. Outside of the front door of the pub, it’s the Powys of Wales. Step into the pub, it’s the Shropshire of England.

You can listen to Felicity’s talk through this website if it’s a bit difficult to search it on the BBC Radio Wales website.

(image from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/wales/mid-wales/powys/hotels/the-cross-keys-hotel)

Dr Tal Ben-Shahar – Harvard Open Courses 1504 – Positive Psychology 11

This session carries on the topic of ‘change’.

Continuing on the facial feedback hypothesis, Tal explains what is ‘Fake it till we make it.’

If the comfort zone would be freezing water, the stretch or the optimal discomfort zone would be flowing water, and the panic zone would be boiling water. The healthy approach to change would be along the stretch zone.

Most people can not get more self-discipline. It’s nature. However, you can be more successful and happier with the self-discipline that you currently have if you change your focus from relying on self-discipline to introducing rituals. Maintaining a ritual does not require a lot of self-discipline, but creating a ritual requires a lot of self-discipline.Having rituals is the only way for lasting change.

Interpretation is a neural pathway. How we interpret things will help us create new neural pathways.

People and their work:

• Frances M. Haemmerlie and Robert L. Montgomery – behaviours and shyness
• Albert Bandura – self-efficacy
• Chapters of the Fathers, the English version of Pirkei Avot
• Dan Millman’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior – the important of action and change
• Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s book The Power of Full Engagement – a paradigm shift – 30 days to change a habit.
• Roy Baumeister – how long will you persevere before giving up and your self-discipline – we all have limited amount of self-discipline.
• William James – it takes 21 days to change a habit.
• John Carter – changes in organisation
• Joe Tomaka – turn from a threat to a challenge
• Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer – the two-factor theory of emotion – focuses on the interaction between physical arousal and how we cognitively label that arousal.
• Lee Ross – how we frame the situation can make all the difference
• David Schnarch – primarily if we want long-term, successful, thriving, passionate relationships, the first objective is to go into relationship to be known. To be known, rather than to be validated.
• Ali Crum and Ellen Langer – mindful and perception
• Howard Gardner – for people to be an expert of a field, they have to have invested at least ten years of very hard word, then incubation.
• Joseph Campbell – a place of creative incubation

Dr Tal Ben-Shahar – Harvard Open Courses 1504 – Positive Psychology 10

This session is about ‘change’.

There is no quick fix to change. The expectation of quick-fix is one of the reasons why levels of the depression are so high today.

Defined by Tal, perfectionism is debilitating fear for failure, is an attitude to failure.

Three pathways to change: the ABCs and the two types of approaches mentioned in last session. The table below shows how interventions could help us to change.

	The gradual approach	The acute approach
The A – the affect, the emotion	Mindful Meditation	A hypothesis – peak experience as a a shock treatment of ecstasy
The B – the behaviour, the action	Introduce to change immediately (write letters, gratitude, replay, physical exercise)	Exit our comfort zone
The C – the cognition, the thought	Attitudinal changes	See other side of ourselves

Interesting research findings:

• Eureka effect/experience – the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept.
• 80% people from the first Gulf War have PTSD.
• After 911, 60,000 individuals have PTSD.
• Facial feedback hypothesis – facial movement can influence emotional experience.

People and their work:

• Carol Dweck – understand the brain changes.
• Ellen Langer’s and Emma Thompson’s research in 80s – at the subconscious level, do you really want to change? People feel hard to change their negative attributes if they view them as a source for positive meaning. Tal listed some associated attributes:

* Rigidity <—> Consistency

* Gullibility <—> Trustworthiness

* Grimness <—> Seriousness

* Perfectionism <—> Drive/ambition 

* Worry/anxiety <—> Responsibility 

* Guilt <—> Empathy/sensitivity

* Simplify <—> Lose edge 

* Fault-finding <—> Realism 

* Happiness <—> No pain no gain

 
This makes me remember Professor Yufen Qian’s session about relationships and happiness. She states people’s characters have both positive and negative sides. When you’re originally attracted by someone’s particular traits, the opposite sides in the traits may bother you later. The negative sides of the trait contribute to the form of the positive/attractive trait that you see. It’s in Chinese. I translate it below.

* Stable, Reliable, Gentle <—> Lack of enthusiasm and the spirit of adventure

* Thoughtful, Attentive, Helpful <—> Need consistent affirmation, Incapable,Weak

* Systematic, Efficiency, Productivity, Successful <—> Boring, Realistic, Bossy

* Footloose and fancy-free, Sexy, Passionate <—> Wicked, Excessively needy, Sex addiction

* Clam, Sedate<, Mysterious <—> Difficult to communicate, No vitality

* Thoughtful, Full of ideas, Thinker <—> Annoying, Cross a bridge before one comes to it

* Funny, Willful <—> Silly, Affected

* Enthusiastic, Generous, Giving, Devoted <—> Aggressive, Manipulative

* Independent, Confident, Strong <—> Cold, Difficult to close

* Vivacious <—> Moody

* Capable, Commanding <—> Arrogant, Manipulative

 

• Nathaniel Branden – identify what you want to get rid of and what you want to keep.
• John Dryden – “We first make our habit and then our habits make us.“
• Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ed Diener – three factors affect on happiness: genetic set range (50%), external circumstances (10%), and intentional activities (40%)
• Jon Kabatt-Zin, Tara Bennett-Goleman, Herbert Benson  – mindfulness
• Tara Bennett-Goleman’s book Emotional Alchemy – “…mindfulness means see things they are without change them…”
• Abraham Maslow – peak experience by innate, meaningful goals, and time.
• William James’s book The Varieties of Religious Experiences
• Alice Eagly and Daryl Bem – Attitude affects behaiour, but behaviour also affects attitude.
• Edgar Schein – behaviour changes attitude.
• David Myers – active acceptance
• Lindsey Hyde and Tory Martin – the founder of ‘Strong Women Strong Girls’ (swsg.org)