You Don't Find Happiness, You Create It | Katarina Blom | TEDxGöteborg

Hello everyone. I would like us to start with a short exercise. Can everyone place their hands like this? Extend your hands. Thank you. I'm going to count to three. When I say three, I want you to clap. Okay, one, two, three. I did this to show you that we don't always do what other people tell us to do, but rather we do what other people do and this is important when it comes to creating well-being in ourselves and others. I am a psychologist and I empower organizations, teams and individuals to

create

happiness

and well-being and a couple of years ago I co-authored a book on the science of

happiness

, but when the book was published, I was actually in the middle of a life crisis that I just got over.

I met the person I thought I would spend my life with. I didn't have a place to live or a job and I think this is a very common human experience. We all face problems. Sometimes we end up in crisis and struggle, but at the same time. time, I think most of us long for that other kind of life that involves meaning and connection and happiness, but it's kind of hard to live this life to always be there in this happy place and today I want to show you why your brain isn't always right. your side when it comes to creating happiness, but also what we can do to counteract this and it won't just be with positive thoughts, this requires positive actions because happiness is a skill that we can all train and work on.

I want this to start. Here's how it's not just about positive thinking, so let's get started with this. Have you ever been in a situation where you are really worried about something and you keep worrying even though you knew that worrying won't change the situation or help make it better? Either way and yet you kept worrying with your hands up, we are all doing this and if we could have full brain power and just switch to these happy thoughts we would have just done it and moved on with our lives but that doesn't really happen? Did you know that about half the time you've been listening to this speech your mind has probably been wandering thinking about other things?

According to a study by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, our minds wander forty-six times. Nine percent of the time we spend awake, so our thoughts are automatic, they have a life of their own and to

create

happiness simply by controlling positive thinking, I think it is difficult, it is not even possible, impossible and I think it is time we start to talk more about it. How can we take positive action and really make change in our lives? Because if I asked you to focus on your breathing, don't think about anything else for five minutes. I doubt anyone in this room can do that. but if I asked you to raise your hand like that for five minutes, I think we'd all be more able to do it, so it's really hard to control our thoughts and we're more likely to control our actions and therefore our behavior.

The self is best built through positive action and not positive thinking. Furthermore, we tend to look at ourselves as if we were these objects, rational beings and that we perceive situations in this objective way and process information almost like a computer. I'm just taking in information, but reality is very far from being objective and that's actually a good thing because if we could really process and perceive reality in all its nuanced complexity we would be rather lost, it would be an overwhelming experience, so our brain has developed several cognitive biases that help. We categorize, prioritize and classify information, which makes it easier for us to navigate, but these cognitive biases, this classification and prioritization are really affecting how we perceive life, how we perceive different situations and I would like us to explore this further in some small experiments. mental.

So I invite you all to think back to the last time you had a evaluated conversation with your boss or manager and I'm pretty sure you heard a lot of good things, like how you contribute to the workplace, but I. I'm also pretty sure you heard something that you can improve on yourself with your performance and once you leave this conversation, what do you think your brain thinks? It's the top priority information, all the things you do really well or the only thing. which you should improve well if you're like me it would definitely be the latter and this really has nothing to do with how my brain works it's actually a pattern that has been shown among people eg serious people marbella.

As a professor at Harvard Business School, she did a diary study in which she read people's diaries to explore how they experience everyday life and saw a pattern in which the negative effect of a setback was more than twice as strong. than the positive effects of success. and the same goes for money, we feel much worse about losing an amount of money than about winning the same amount and if you received a compliment from a coworker and then a complaint from another coworker, these two comments would not be neutralize each other, the complaint would definitely leave a stronger emotional mark, so now we must ask ourselves why we carry this emotional asymmetry, why we are prepared to experience unpleasant and negative emotions and understand that we need to understand the context, the environment in which our brain has been evolving for so many years.

Nowadays, several studies say that we have developed a negativity bias that helps direct our attention toward unpleasant or possibly threatening information, and this was really good back then, when we were in Savannah fighting to survive every day, but today here and now this definitely affects how we perceive our life, how we perceive our relationships, our workplace, our own performance and ourselves, so to simplify this a little bit, you could almost say that your brain cares about it. If you survive through this day, we care less about you being a happy survivor, so now we can understand that it is not strange that all of us sometimes feel anxious or tense.

We are worried? In a sense, we were created for this, but most of us long for this other kind of life with meaning, connection and happiness, and I'm not sure we can have one without the other, but there are definitely things and ways in which We can cultivate happiness and generate well-being, but this comes with good and bad news, the good news is that happiness is not something that is found outside of yourself and it is not something that you have or do not have, it is an ability in which We can all work, but the problem is that we simply don't. do it and this definitely applies to me.

This is the worst part about having written a book about happiness because every time I have a bad day, there is always someone who would like to have to read your own book, Katerina, you should know better, so I. I have learned that not even happiness experts know how to turn knowledge into action and this is one of the reasons why a friend and I started a psychological gym where organizations, teams and individuals could come and train these skills to to be able to create more happiness and well-being because we want psychological training to be as common as physical training because today we know a lot of things about how to eat properly and how to exercise to maintain physical health, but what would be the psychological version of a green? smoothie or doing 50 sit-ups, is there really such a thing?

I would say yes, definitely, there are many different exercises and things that we can do to develop healthy habits for ourselves and I would like to present an example of this, so once you finish listening to this speech, when you leave this room later Tonight, I'd like you to take out your smartphone and send a kind, grateful thank you message to someone you care about and maybe you can notice how that fits in and this is a good example of an exercise I often do with leaders and teams. and just a couple of weeks ago I did this at a two-day leadership conference and then discovered that one of the participants had texted his wife writing I love you very, very much, which made the wife think what? you're doing at that Leadership Conference and just try texting one person at a time, it won't change the world in any way, but turning this into a healthy habit over time can have a huge impact and dedicate this habit to Taking care of your relationships can be one of the most powerful actions you can take when it comes to happiness, so this could be the green smoothie you've all been waiting for, according to several studies.

Having relationships that work is just as important, if not. Even more important is getting good exercise and a good diet, and this can even help us live longer, according to a Harvard University study that began in 1938. Researchers followed more than 700 people to understand what It makes us prosper as people. these participants for decades and in 2012 the results came in, the researchers found that happiness does not come from wealth, it does not come from fame or hard work, it comes from relationships and it is not about the number of friends you have or whether whether or not you are in a committed relationship with a partner, they discovered that what counts is the quality of the relationship, being able to be vulnerable, listen and share what is close to your heart, that is what matters and now we know that forming good healthy habits when it comes to doing physical exercise or having a good diet takes dedication, it takes commitment and I think we should approach psychological habits in the same way and especially when it comes to relationships, so by now we know that the brain It has this tendency to highlight the negative and that This is really difficult to overturn simply with positive thinking.

Positive actions are needed, but some actions are more powerful than others when it comes to happiness and investing time and heart in the relationships around you, no matter if it is at work, with neighbors or with family. o friends, this could be one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and I would like us to do this one more time so everyone can hold out their hands and I'm going to count to three and when I say three, I want you to clap, okay , one, two, three, yes, great, that's how we learn by observing the behavior of others.

You just saw me do this twice and already many people change their behavior, so the more you can turn this talk into action by being understanding and caring not only for others but also for yourself. I think others will follow your example and do the same as you and the people outside this building will not know what just happened, they will not know what changed, but we know that it was here in this talk where it all began thank you