The Happiness Hypothesis

Reading The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth In Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt has been a revelation and a joy. Haidt is a teacher at the Univ. of Virginia and a social psychologist. He says his "corner is morality and the human emotions."

In the book, he lays out a path to happiness buttressed by psychological study and generous references to spirituality and philosophy. Here are a few nuggets that I'd gleaned so far (I am on page 101 of 243):

• Emotion is critical in decision making.
  
  
• Learning to understand, distract and coax the beast of our unconscious mind is critical to happiness.
  
  "An emotionally intelligent person has a skilled rider [conscious mind /reason] who knows how to distract and coax the elephant [our unconscious mind] without having to engage in a direct contest of wills" because the elephant will win such a contest every time.
  
  
• We make decisions based on unconscious emotion and justify them based on reason.
  
  "It is the elephant that decides what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Gut feelings, intuitions, and snap judgments happen constantly (as Malcolm Gladwell described in Blink), but only the rider can string sentences together and create arguments to give to other people."
  
  
• Negative emotions leave stronger impressions that positive ones.
  
  For example, "If you were designing the mind of a fish would you have it respond as strongly to opportunities as to threats? No way. The cost of missing a cue that signals food is low; odds are there are other fish [meals] in the sea ... The cost of missing the sign of a nearby predator, however can be catastrophic. Game over ..."
  
  This reminded me of the post that I made about reputation and transparency in June of 2007. One mistake can outweigh hundreds of successes when it comes to people's perceptions of you.
  
  
• Happier people have greater activity in the left side of the frontal cortex in the brain.
  Less happy people have greater activity in the right side of the frontal cortex in the brain.
  
  
• To change your level of happiness ("your affect"), you need to change your thoughts.
  
  
• The 3 best methods for changing your affect are:
  1) Meditation,
  2) Cognitive therapy,
  3) Prozac.
  
  
• The "happiness formula" is: H=S+C+V
  H = Happiness
  S = biological Set point (happiness determined by genetics)
  C = Conditions of your life
  V = Voluntary activities you do.
  
  
• Happiness is determined by strength and number of relationships.
  
  
• Activities that induced happiness are described as the "flow" state, a phrase coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
  
  
• There are 3 key qualities to "flow" experiences:
  1) "There's a clear challenge that fully engages your attention"
  2) "You have the skills to meet the challenge"
  3) "You get immediate feedback about how you are doing at every step."
  
  (Qualities that are present when delivering a well-crafted, successful presentation, by the way.)
  
  
• If you spend money, spend it on experiences, not on stuff - assuming you want to increase your happiness level.
  
  
• You can chart your own happiness and find out what activities are likely to make you happy online at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center site here. (My chart is below.)

I am happy I found the book ... or the book found me.

Growth or Fixed Mind-Set?

Carol Dweck, a Psychology Professor at Stanford, has written a book titled, "MindSet." She posits that one's mindset is a greater determinant of one's ability to succeed than talent. She outlines 2 different mindsets: The Fixed Mind-Set and the Growth Mind-Set. A fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities as... well, fixed. In other words, you are who you are, your intelligence and talents are fixed, and your fate is to go through life avoiding challenge and failure. A growth mindset, on the other hand, is one in which you see yourself as fluid, a work in progress. Your fate is one of growth and opportunity.

Here's a terrific Nigel Holmes graphic that originally sparked my imagination. You can also find a recording of an interview with Moira Gunn and Carol Dweck here.

In this press release from Stanford, she recounts a story from the 6th grade:

When psychology Professor Carol Dweck was a sixth-grader at P.S. 153 in Brooklyn, N.Y., she experienced something that made her want to understand why some people view intelligence as a fixed trait while others embrace it as a quality that can be developed and expanded.

Dweck's teacher that year, Mrs. Wilson, seated her students around the room according to their IQ. The girls and boys who didn't have the highest IQ in the class were not allowed to carry the flag during assembly or even wash the blackboard, Dweck said. "She let it be known that IQ for her was the ultimate measure of your intelligence and your character," she said. "So the students who had the best seats were always scared of taking another test and not being at the top anymore."

Asked what seat number Dweck occupied during that memorable year, the professor paused, and silently raised her right index finger. "But it was an uncomfortable thing because you were only as good as your last test score," she said. "I think it had just as negative an effect on the kids at the top [as those at the bottom] who were defining themselves in those terms."

From that experience, Dweck became fascinated with intelligence, convinced that IQ tests are not the only way to measure it. "I also became very interested in coping with setbacks, probably because being in that classroom made me so concerned about not slipping, not failing," she said.

This idea resonated deeply for me. As a trainer, I am constantly interacting with people in a learning environment. I can clearly see behaviors in workshop participants that fall into one category or another.

Also, it parallels the Zen philosophy called Beginner's Mind. Beginner's mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see "things as-it-is."

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, captured it very simply with, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Think of how a child approaches life and you will inherently understand beginner's mind. It's full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. "I wonder what this is? I wonder what this means?" Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking "What is this? What does it mean?"

When I give feedback to workshop participants, those in Fixed (or Expert) Mindset will react by explaining or defending themselves. They feel a strong need to counter any conception that they "made a mistake" by not doing a perfect execution of the task assigned in a given exercise.

Those in Growth (or Beginner's) Mindset react with a sense of humility and confidence. They are genuinely interested in hearing how they might improve their skills. They tend to be thankful for feedback and are quickest to laugh at their own foibles.

Which mindset do you possess? Dweck provides a checklist to assess yourself and shows how a particular mindset can affect all areas of your life, from business to sports and love. The good news, says Dweck, is that mindsets are not set: at any time, you can learn to use a growth mindset to achieve success and happiness

To Act or Not to Act - The Climate Change Debate

I don't normally focus on such issues in this blog. But this video struck me as very important to pass along.

This video demonstrates that the risk of not acting on climate change FAR outweighs the risk of acting.

http://view.break.com/311805