Student: Hi. Good, morning. My name is Dana. I’m a freshman. Um, I’d like to tell you about a social program happening here at Harvard next week. My grandfather, who’s Holocaust survivor, is coming to give an account of his experiences. I think it’ll be a really special opportunity to hear a moving account, a personal account of history. He has spoken at other universities, at the UN. His story is quite incredible. The event will take place at 730 in the Memorial Church, a week from today – Tuesday, March 18. For more information, you can find on the Facebook event. It’s called “Surviving Auschwitz: A Holocaust survivor story”. You could just Google… You could just check Holocaust under the Harvard network. And it’ll be great if you could come. So any questions, please find me. My name is Dana. I always send you the message. I was the creator of the event. Thank you. Thank you, Tal.(Applause)
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar: Hi. Good morning. So today what we are going to do is finish up the lecture on change, sum it up the ABCs- the affect, the behavior, the cognition, and then move on to a related topic which is setting goals, which will be the last topic that I’ll address before we go on break. The… Last time I ended up by talking about the acute change that comes with a Eureka experience, with an ah hah, with an insight. And we talked about these five stages. And a couple of you contacted me after about this and said, “well, It’s not that smooth” and it’s absolutely right. This is a theory. This is an outline. When you write, when you come up with ideas, when you generate course, when you write a paper or write a thesis.
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Hi! Good morning! So today’s lecture is about change. And things are going to change today. Our relationship is going to change today. So stay tuned.
Last time, last time we ended by talking about the different kinds of change. The first approach—the gradual approach, like water wearing down stone, chipping away gradually slowly taking our time. The second approach—the acute change, the sledge hammer breaking stone creating a new pathway, a new channel. The important thing to keep in mind with both forms of changes, with all forms of changes, lasting change that is—which is what we are about—not just the spike and the return to base level. The thing to keep in mind about change is that neither is quick-fix. Even when we pick up that sledge hammer, even when we pick it up, we need to do a lot of work before the preparation. So for example, gradual change, slow change would be doing the gratitude exercise every day, slowly becoming more and more of a benefit finder, gradually looking more at the positive, creating a new neural pathway neuron by neuron.
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Hi! Good morning! So today’s lecture is about change. And things are going to change today. Our relationship is going to change today. So stay tuned.
Last time, last time we ended by talking about the different kinds of change. The first approach—the gradual approach, like water wearing down stone, chipping away gradually slowly taking our time. The second approach—the acute change, the sledge hammer breaking stone creating a new pathway, a new channel. The important thing to keep in mind with both forms of changes, with all forms of changes, lasting change that is—which is what we are about—not just the spike and the return to base level. The thing to keep in mind about change is that neither is quick-fix. Even when we pick up that sledge hammer, even when we pick it up, we need to do a lot of work before the preparation. So for example, gradual change, slow change would be doing the gratitude exercise every day, slowly becoming more and more of a benefit finder, gradually looking more at the positive, creating a new neural pathway neuron by neuron.
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Harvard Positive Psychology, So first I wanna say hi to extension school. We have 350 students watching our lecture every day. So I wanna say hi to them. And actually I want to especially invite extension school and everybody here to see our very modest Tal- right?- he didn’t tell us he was on 60 Minutes, but that is OK. But Saturday night, Tal is going to be the honorary basketball coach for the women’s team, which- the game against Cornell on Saturday at 7 o’clock, which is the biggest game of the season… Six? Six o’clock on Saturday. The biggest game of the season. We actually wanna see everyone of you here and everybody at the extension school at the game. Extension students, I’ll have free tickets for you. Well, most of you- a hundred of you. So in honor of that, we have an honorary student and an honorary team which is, our very famous Kathy Delaney-Smith, award-winning, the most fabulous coach in a whole nation and… our women’s basketball team is here! Come on now! These are our honorary students. There you go. They are shy. Alright, so come! Come and see them! And actually I’ll be there with all my friends and families. And Tal will sign your hand. Alright! Ready guys?
(One player: Yeah.)
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I ended last time by sharing some biographical details about my life. Some people asked me after, “Are they really true?” So yes, They are absolutely true. And I told the incident from two perspectives— first as a fault finder, and then as a merit finder. Now the important thing to keep in mind when we think about the merit finder is that it’s not that the merit finder does not experience pain or disappointment, or anger, or humility, or fear, or disappointment. It’s very disappointing to say the least, not to be able to pursue one’s goal, if the goal happens to be a professional career in squash. It is very humiliating to be the only person who fails of a program and to have to walk around for a whole year in William James while feeling like you have a horn coming out of head. It’s not fun. It’s painful. However, the difference between a merit finder, sorry, a benefit finder and a fault finder is that, the benefit finder understands that while things don’t necessarily happen for the best, it is possible to make the best of things that happen. Things will be OK. Things will turn out fine. It may take a while. Until I see the benefit of it, it may take a while and I will get over the humiliation or the pain or the disappointment. But that, too, shall pass. In other words, the benefit finder understands that these feelings are temporary, gives him or herself the permission to be human and then understands things will turn out fine at the end. I know that. Been there. Done that. Part of life. Permission to be human, which includes permission to experience these emotions and also the permission to fail. We’ll talk a lot about this permission to fail when we talk about perfectionism. Because perfectionism is real intense for your failure or we feel it’s all or nothing. Either we have a complete flawless record, or it’s useless.
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