Ok, so this is not a TED talk, but it is an idea. An idea I have been circling from many different angles. Alan Watts challenges the “journey” metaphor for life here pointing out that a journey presumes a destination, a goal, a finish. I ofter remind myself that to travel is better than to arrive. While life can seem like a journey, what happens along the path IS life, not the destination. Watts encourages us to “Play through life” as if it were music. The point of music is not the end of the music, but the music itself. Feeling its effects and enjoying its melody as it plays. Very well said Alan.
Category: My Favorite TED talks
TED FAV: exercise and the brain
Wendy Suzuki is a wicked smart person. I love to exercise. I know exercise is good for me, especially my energy levels and how I look in the mirror. But how about how my brain shows up for everyone else? And in life generally? Turns out exercise has many cognitive, emotional and mental benefits. And there is data.
TEDFAV: Teach girls bravery not perfection…
As the father of three daughters, this is a very important one. Disney and Barbie teach girls to fawn for the affection and attention of others and to strive for perfection. The better way is to strive for learning, creativity, resilience, and grit. Lets do that.
TedFav: The Pope’s TED talk last week
I have got to admit I am a big fan of this Pope. Very early in his papacy he was asked why he wasn’t talking about traditionally thorny issues like abortion, priest abuse and gays in the church. He replied ” who am I to judge?” Many were stunned. Isn’t the Pope the one who judges us here on earth? Actually no. Only god judges in the end. This pope has really focused on being humble (very Jesuit trait) and helping others. His talk focuses on reminding us all of our common humanity in a time of extreme divisions. While spiritual it is not a “Catholic” ideological pitch. It is reminding us of universal truths and the value of kindness, humility and our common human journey. Very timely and useful.
TEDFAV: Are we really in charge of our decisions?
The Stoics say that the only thing that is truly ours is our agency to make a decision. To decide how to react in a situation. We can’t control anything outside ourselves, but we can control our reactions and decisions. That has been very important advice to me.
But what if our decisions are tainted? Do we always have the right information to make the best decisions? Dan Ariely has been studying how people make decisions, specifically in a commerce setting, and has found that how the options are presented has a profound impact on the decisions people make. As a result of this talk, I have added a new guideline to my own “How I make decisions” list. If you are making decisions and are presented by someone else with the options in that decision, always ask yourself “Is there a third way?” or “Are there other choices for this decision which are not here?”. Otherwise you are handing most of the agency for that decision over to the person who designed the question. Don’t do that.
TED FAV: This is Water by David Foster Wallace
Ok, so this is not a TED talk. It is a commencement speech from Kenyon college. And a very good one. Since I am touring colleges with my junior now, I am considering what to say to her as she goes off to college. It occurs to me that many of the commencement speech contents after the fact may be relevant prior to entry into college. This one is exceedingly appropriate.
TED FAV: It starts with WHY?
Been thinking a lot lately about how brands get embedded into our lives. Why did Apple beat IBM and Microsoft? Because Apple sells us on Why they are making the products they are, not just the What. People buy why not what is the premise. A good premise. Watch this.
TEDFAV: Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Mark Twain once said “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
My oldest, Finn is a Junior in highschool this year. Yea, the worst year in highschool. You have to do all your normal school work AND buff up the extra curricular activities AND do well on the SAT test AND figure out what colleges to apply to. The pressure is intense. And the only thing that seems to matter in Junior year are the results. Grades. Test Scores. College acceptance letters. The focus is 100% on Outcomes. No process. No creativity. No talk about the purpose or meaning behind all these outcomes. No deviation from the objective measures of “success” as defined by our western academic system.
But does this model of education produce the best possible humans? Does it work for the wide variety of personality types out there? Where does creative thinking come in? America prides itself on innovation. But the educational system doesn’t teach innovation. By definition, any standardized system kills the outliers. Yet the outliers is where the creativity and innovation comes from.
Leave it to a Brit (lovers of organization, conformity, empires) to ask the right question. Are we teaching the skills we really want in our kids? Or just stamping degrees on them?
TEDFAV: How positive psychology has reversed how we “get” happiness, now you actually can
Pretty much all my life when I have wondered how to “get” or “achieve” happiness, the answer has gone something like this: “First do X,Y,Z, then when you have achieved A,B,C, you can then be happy.” Pretty much the entire western world has a cognitive happiness model with happiness delayed in the future after some long journey with various achievements along the way. Consumer society is the most obvious offender “Buy This and get That”. But career advice, most religious traditions and even the “self help” industry reinforces this delayed gratification mental model.
This model always caused my BS meter to go off. Wouldn’t being happy now cause you and everyone around you to be happier now? Why couldn’t I be happy now but still have dreams? When hard or bad things happened, why should I allow that to make me unhappy? Are there ways to build happiness NOW without buying into some huge new mental model of the world (one religion say), or hanging my hopes on THE ONE TRUE THING sold by GURUX? I was always VERY skeptical that anyone or any organization had THE ONE TRUE THING that if I just bought it, practiced it, or believed it, all my problems would disappear and happiness would bloom like flowers. Or Unicorns.
Well it turns out my contrarian view has attracted some scientists who have been building a new mental model about happiness which is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what we have been taught. The field is Positive Psychology. One of the lights is Shawn Anchor and he has a brilliant TED talk about the new model. Anchor is also very entertaining and funny using many personal stories to describe the new model. In the end he gives five evidence based practices that have been shown to be able to raise the “base happiness” level in people NOW. You don’ t have to believe anything, buy anything, or join a cult. By adding a couple of simple practices, in total of less than 20 minutes a day, you can reliably and quantifiably increase your base happiness level. When you do that, it is self reinforcing and the world around you (seems to) change. Actually what you have changed is your mindset from a “everything sucks, i am going to be happy later”, to “I am happy now and happiness is my natural state.” If you are looking for an evidence based approach to happiness with some concrete exercises, this is for you.
Grab some popcorn. Watch this one. Change your life.
TEDFAV: Matthieu Ricard on Happieness
Ok, this talk is from way back in the stone ages (2004), but the message is eternally relevant. Ricard is a French scientist who turned Buddhist monk in the Himalayas. His scientific western mind syncs well with my own, making his framing of happiness as really “well being” is very accessible to me. This is really a deep dive into how/why we “search for happiness” and how that search is in vain and going for the wrong goal. Why do so many people “search for happiness” through conditions (get this car, get that place, do x, y, z) yet so few are successful. By reframing the search and reframing the goal away from conditions and toward inner strengths, success is possible. Ricard describes how to build the INNER conditions that are the real foundations of true happiness.
I can also recommend any of his books.