Dan Gilbert at TED2004 The surprising science of happiness Summary These are the thoughts that the speaker researched. When you have 21 minutes to speak, two million years seems like a really long time. 66 percent of the students, two-thirds. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. Two paths to take. So hard. Do more than be fair, be kind. It was a video called “The surprising science of happiness” by “Dan Gilbert”. "For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously." Psychologist Dan Gilbert offers scientific proof that happiness can come from within – though from the brain, not the heart. In this TED talk, Gilbert describes how the brain has developed the capacity to predict how happy we will be in a given situation by simulating an experience—a capacity unique to human beings. By the same speaker at TED talks…] Listen to the MP3 Audio here: The Surprising Science of Happiness by Dan Gilbert at TED Talks. ~ Gary Spooner, "Negative capability...is being capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." So you have to give me one. ~ Thoreau, "I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid." ~ Tennyson, “Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.” ~Tennyson, “There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.” ~Bonhoeffer, "For my part I know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream." In one case, the students are told, "But you know. Background – You’ll get contextual knowledge as a frame for informed action or analysis. ~Einstein, "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds." . ~ Mark Twain, "It is human life. It helps us change our views of the world, in order to we can feel our world better. As Gilbert assures, you can be content with any outcome, desired or not, because of your ability to synthesize happiness. - Marsha Norman, "After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb." Dan shows that events have less of an effect on our happiness than we expect. Helpful – You’ll take-away practical advice that will help you get better at what you do. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." ~ Emerson, “Sometimes you will never know the value of something,until it becomes a memory.” ~ Dr. Seuss, "Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Maybe I left the good one?" which is Yoda from "The Empire Strikes Back", "Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. and they have two gorgeous eight-by-10 glossies of. even after the opportunity to swap has expired. Bold – You’ll find arguments that may break with predominant views. surprise there, I mean, we all have our strengths and weaknesses). " "~James MacGregor Burns, “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, "To contemplate Supreme Truth is like looking upon the face of God; it is consumation and therefore extermination, while learning, which is an endless extenstion of conscious activity, is the striving after, but not the acquisition of truth." I hit big or I miss big. - Richard Bach, "The future is not a result of choices among alternate paths offered by the present, but a place that is created ... created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. among all those delicious futures and find the one that you would most enjoy. ~ Babe Ruth, "Often we don't even discover them as memories until years later when they emerge, not as they were, but as they have become as our souls expand enough to value what we thought at the time was dross as the real gold of our lives". - George A Moore, "... who would not, finding a way, break loose from hell ... and boldly venture to whatever place farthest from pain?" ~ Buddha, "Nothing happens unless first a dream." Why do you think that lottery winners and paraplegics have the same level of happiness a year later? After all, happiness is really how we view life and what priorities we’ve set for ourselves. ~ Condoleeza Rice (commencement speech at University of Alabama, "... life does not consist mainly -- or even largely -- of facts and happenings. As Gilbert assures, you can be content with any outcome, desired or not, because of your ability to synthesize happiness. - Victor Frankl, " The last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. ~ Thoreau, "Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes." we tell the subject. 20m 52s . Friedrich Nietzsche, ''I would finish hoeing my garden.'' Dan Gilbert is indeed an exceptional speaker. You find a way to be happy with what's happened. It's a very small increase, and it doesn't much matter. Dan Gilbert, the author of the book “Stumbling on Happiness,” challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing." largely non-conscious cognitive processes. - Carl Sagan, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness summary The surprising science of happiness the speaker suggests is that we can synthesize happiness, because we have a "psychological immune system" which works under unconscious cognitive processes. They are death’s pulses, death’s heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, "Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." Dan Gilbert: The Surprising Science of Happiness 1. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even that. ~ John Ruskin, No more is it a question of speaking of space and light: the question is to make space and light, which are there, speak to us." In this TED talk, Gilbert describes how the brain has developed the capacity to predict how happy we will be in a given situation by simulating an experience —a capacity unique to human beings. Because they do not know the conditions under which synthetic happiness grows. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert is the author of Stumbling on Happiness. ~ "Captain Dave" via FL390, “There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. - George Eliot (aka Mary Anne Evans), "Every choice you make has an end result." Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." This is a 50-year-old paradigm called the "free choice paradigm.". but these are not statistically significant differences. - Truman Capote, "Do you have the patience to wait til your mud settles and the water is clear? ~ Leo Buscaglia, "Success is relative. because they liked it a little better than number four. ~ General Stonewall Jackson, "the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you...you just got to find the ones worth suffering for..." ~Bob Marley, "A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. It has no beginning and no end.” ~ Stephen Hawking, “They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness” ~ Louise Erdrich, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty." One he mentions is Former Speaker of the House Jim Wright, whose. We fabricate happiness ... very cool. who had anterograde amnesia. Longfellow, “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. 12m 16s . ", "Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." Share. ~ Carl Sandburg, "We can do no great things - only small things with great love." "The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from overrating the difference. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss. ~Marianne Moore, "Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. career blew up ... and who said he is now better off in every way. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria: Enlightening – You’ll learn things that will inform and improve your decisions. They represent a struggle and a victory.” Marcel Proust, "To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life." It consists mainly of the storm of thougths that is forever blowing through one's head. " At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better. Eliot, "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run" ~Thoreau, "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. We happen to have number three and number four,". Like a true Ted talker, he begins with an informal quip, instantly reeling in the audience and then proceeds to a very unique discourse on happiness. ~ Thoreau, "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." ~ Elie Wiesel, "... Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded, but their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere..." Ps 19:3-4 ~ King David, "I distinctly remember forgetting that." We could do it so that when you take the two pictures. I wonder what would happen if people spent less time searching for happiness and instead, simply embraced it. ~ John Keats, "I choose love . - John Wayne, "For what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to acheive ... we are what we repeatedly do. Eloquent – You’ll enjoy a masterfully written or presented text. ~ John Thorn, “My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.” ― Hermann Hesse, “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. Description. ~ Thoreau, "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." For beginners – You’ll find this to be a good primer if you’re a learner with little or no prior experience/knowledge. Not all that much according to Dan Gilbert in his amazing TedTalk — The surprising science of happiness. ~ Liz Gilbert, "If you want to be happy, be." Which course would you like to be in?". I like to live as big as I can." Here's what the ratings mean: Applicable – You’ll get advice that can be directly applied in the workplace or in everyday situations. It is humbling -- and indeed healthy -- to ask why you have been given so much." Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?” ~ Walt Whitman, "Man is not imprisoned by habit. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. The surprising science of happiness | Dan Gilbert. Let me first show you an experimental paradigm that is used, to demonstrate the synthesis of happiness. They bring us the camera; we make up a contact sheet; they figure out which are the two best pictures; and we now spend six hours teaching them about darkrooms. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." ~  Jack London, "It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. - Richard Bach, "Honor isn't about making the right choices. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood. " Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." But if you chose winning the lottery, think again: A year following their life-changing event, lottery winners and paraplegics are “equally happy.” Why did your mental simulator fail you? First of all, here's what students think is going to happen. and we say, "You know, we're doing a photography course. When it is in use we feel very good. One study says that these events have (mostly)very little impact on our happiness levels after three months. Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ GWF Hegel ... and ... ‘Person’ is essentially different from ‘subject’, since ‘subject’ is only the possibility of personality; every living thing of any sort is a subject. ~ Thoreau, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." ~ Merida from BRAVE, "There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. So here's the final piece of this experiment. ~ William Temple, “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The psychological immune system works best. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. - Kahlil Gibran, "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. You have to make a choice. "It turns out that freedom -- the ability to make up your mind and change your mind -- is the friend of natural happiness, because it allows you to choose among all those delicious futures and find the one that you would most enjoy. - W. A. and all the other things they wanted to have Harvard memories of. Most people form a snap judgment about which would lead to a happier future. Because the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics, For the simulator to make you believe that different outcomes. Do more than believe, practice. - Thomas A Edison, "Do more than belong, participate. ~ Plato, "The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." How to fix a broken heart | Guy Winch. Why aren’t we happy? ~Henry David Thoreau, "The Art of Thinking is the art of being one's self and this art can only be learned if one is by one's self." Select the sections that are relevant to you. http://www.ted.com Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. - Carl Sagan, "The brain is like a muscle. - Denis Waitley, "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." And this isn't mine. "We happen to have some extra prints in the closet. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes — and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way — Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. - R.L. "-~Victor Hugo, "He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. - Yo-Yo Ma, "Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you." who can never change their mind, like it a lot! and ... the left overs would be ... Mostly I am cooking ... and washing dishes. Now, half of the students in each of these conditions, are asked to make predictions about how much, they're going to come to like the picture that they keep, Other students are just sent back to their little dorm rooms, and they are measured over the next three to six days. - Carl Sagan, Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. ~ Vaclav Havel, "Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world: all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it....Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world he is the father of modern physics-indeed, of modern science altogether." (Laughter) That's the synthesis of happiness. Eliot, " Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground. " either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse for the horror of our own injustice.". For love is the beauty of the soul. " - T.S. Now, there are two conditions in this experiment. Do, or do not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "To my left, Scorpius' tail, embedded in the Milky Way, is dragging billions of stars west." Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." Source | Youtube : TED http://www.ted.com Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we He mentions the fact that lotsa studies on this stuff support the idea that what we might see as positive and negative outcomes have a lot less impact ... less intensity and also less long lasting effect then what we intuitively believe would/will be the case. ultimately be deeply dissatisfied with the picture. Explaining; why and how we are happy, the duties of the frontal lobe, synthetic happiness and a comparison to natural happiness. Success and failure are for him answers above all." Dan Gilbert gave his first TED Talk in February 2004; The surprising science of happiness was one of the first we ever published, in September 2006. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. ~ Norman Cousins, “Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. There's more to life than being happy | Emily Esfahani Smith. Psychologist Dan Gilbert offers scientific proof that happiness can come from within – though from the brain, not the heart. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all." In a TED Talk, psychology professor Dan Gilbert from Harvard University explains that no matter whether we win a lottery or become paraplegic from one day to the other, we will after a certain amount of time return to our initial level of happiness. ~ Gerard Van der Leun, “It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. Dan Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness," challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. and we allowed students to come in and learn how to use a darkroom. ~John Maynard Keyes, "Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." whether they were in the reversible or irreversible condition. The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. - Lao Tzu, "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. Assessment of Presentation Techniques Visual Aids Cont'd Controversy/Conflict Ability to Engage and Involve the Audience Voice: Clarity, Pace, Fluency Topic: Introduction, Development and Conclusion Introduction Gilbert uses his voice as a tool to ensure he keeps the audience's That destiny is not our own, but I know better. When you have 21 minutes to speak, two million years seems like a really long time. questions 1-5: vocabulary questions testing your knowledge of and/or preparing you for the words used in this TED-talk We rate each piece of content on a scale of 1–10 with regard to these two core criteria. Insider’s take – You’ll have the privilege of learning from someone who knows her or his topic inside-out. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned. Visionary – You’ll get a glimpse of the future and what it might mean for you. Do more than forgive, forget. Books we rate below 5 won’t be summarized. See if you think this concept is truly thought-provoking and a tool you could use every day! 12m 9s . I choose love. Dan Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness," challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. ~ Buddha, "The way is not in the sky. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned. He mentions three other examples to set up the idea we "smirk" at synthetic happiness discounting it as not as valuable or authentic as "natural happiness". -Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." ~ Ann Voskamp, "People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. ... this is the difference between dating and marriage ... ". And ... he has data. We think it is something to be found, we work and plan, we seek ... we have it within, but look outside, ourselves for happiness. 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