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Happiness, 4.17 (V) Week 4 Video 13 - Summary of the Week

[MUSIC] Ahoy! My Czech and other friends. Here we are at the end of the fourth week, and as usual, I am astounded at how time flies. it's totally out of control, but the good news is that I'm really enjoying interacting with you all, and I hope that you feel the same. In this video, I want to summarize the main points that week discussed this week. As you may recall, we started by discussing how being in control, or at least perceiving to be in control, is crucial for happiness. Many studies have shown this, but perhaps the most well-known study, is the one that was conducted with residents of an old age home. As you may remember, these residents felt better and lived longer, when they were given more control over such trivial decisions as, which plant to take care of, and which movies to watch. It goes to show, just how important it is for us to feel like we are in control. Given how critical it is to feel that we are in control, both for emotional and for physical health. It's not surprising that many of us seek to be in control, and as it turns out, seeking some degree of control is actually a good thing. Studies show that those with a higher desire for control, tend to aim higher and also accomplish more. The problem, however, is that we over do it, and become overly controlled thinking, which is the fourth deadly happiness sin. Being overly controlled thinking is a happiness sin, because, for the reasons that I discussed, it lowers not just our happiness levels, and the happiness levels of the others around us. It also lowers our ability to make good decisions. The question therefore, is what can you do if you are overly control seeking? The first thing to do is, figure out if you have the tendency to be overly controlling, which is what we tried to do with the two scales. The desirability of control scale, and the maximizer scale that I had you complete. Hopefully, those scales gave you a good idea of whether you're overly control seeking or not. We then discussed the fourth habit of the highly happy, taking personal responsibility for your happiness, which I proposed as an antidote to the fourth deadly happiness sin. Taking personal responsibility for your happiness means, never blaming others for how you feel. Now, although the idea of taking personal responsibility appears simple in concept, it's not easy in practice. One reason for this, is because many of us have some internal obstacles that prevent us from being fully receptive to this idea, of taking personal responsibility. The first obstacle, is that we can't imagine being in control of our feelings if something extreme, like breaking a leg, or losing a job were to happen. So we feel that the idea of taking personal responsibility for our happiness, won't work for us. The second internal obstacle, is that we feel that if we took full responsibility for our happiness, the others around us would take advantage of us. And because we don't want that to happen, of course, we don't want others to take advantage of us, we feel that the whole idea of taking personal responsibility for our happiness, Is not a good idea. But as I discussed, neither of these two objections are obstacles is really valid. With regard to the first obstacle, that since we cant imagine being happy if something extreme were to happen to us, taking personal responsiblity for happiness is not a good idea. Its important to remember, hat you don't gain the ability to control your feelings in just one day. It takes time to build a skill. In other words, just because you currently lack the ability to control your feelings when something extreme happens, it doesn't mean that you will never gain this ability. So asking yourself whether you can be happy, even if something extreme were to happen, is the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask, is whether you can be happy something more commonplace, like having to miss lunch in order to be in time for a meeting, were it to happen. And if you discover that you are able to maintain your equanimity when something commonplace happens, you can take on bigger challenges, and see if you can maintain your equanimity, if something more extreme were to happen and so on. It is through such a process of taking on increasingly bigger challenges, that slowly, over time you gain the ability to retain control over your feelings. And, one day, with sufficient and smart practice, who knows, one could even become as good as Ghandi, or Mandela were in regulating their emotions. With regard to the second obstacle, that others would take advantage of you if you took personal responsibility for your happiness. It's important to remember that just because you don't hold others responsible for how you feel, that doesn't mean that you won't, or can't hold them responsible for the outcomes that their actions triggered. In other words, even as you don't blame others for how you feel, you could simultaneously hold them accountable for their actions. And doing so, will far from making them take advantage of you, make them respect you more. As I mentioned earlier, lots of findings have shown that we are much more likely to make good decisions, and better decisions, when we are control of our own emotions than when we are not. So overall, what this finding suggests, is that you'll interact with others in a far more mature fashion, when you're within control of your feelings, than when you don't. And therefore, the danger there are those who take advantage of you, is really not a valid concern. The next topic that we discussed this week, had to do with how and why taking personal responsibility for happiness, mitigates the tendency to be overly controlling. As I explained, the reason for this, is that taking personal responsibility for your happiness, allows you to take what I call internal control. And once you have internal control, that is, once you have control over your thoughts and feelings, you'll discover that you don't need to exercise that much external control. Or put differently, internal control compensates for lack of external control, and therefore makes you less desires of controlling other people, or outcomes. We then discussed how one could go about gaining internal control. And on this topic I discussed two main strategies. The first of which, was learning simple emotion regulation tactics, including avoiding situations that evoke negative or unwanted emotions. Labeling emotions, attention deployment that is turning towards things that evoke positive thoughts, and away from things that evoke negative thoughts. And, finally, reappraisal, which includes putting things in perspective. In this context, I also discuss the importance of not engaging in self-serving biases, in order to make yourself feel good, and also of not suppressing emotions. Now there's one topic, which although I didn't discuss elaborately, it's still worth spending just a couple of minutes on. This is the topic of, why is it that the ability to regulate your emotions enhances happiness levels? There are at least three reasons for this. The first reason, is that greater control of your feelings, means that you retain the keys to your happiness in your own two hands, rather than abdicating it to an external world. Second, it fulfills the desire for mastery, that all of us have since, by taking internal control, what you will be developing, might be called something like personal mastery. That is mastery over your own mind, over your own thoughts and feelings. And because we have this desire for mastery, fulfilling it in this way makes us feel good. And finally, it gives you the ability to react more maturely to other people, so that others are likely to respect and cooperate with you more, and that, in turn, is also going to boost your happiness levels. So, in the week, I then moved on to discussing the second strategy for taking internal control, which is leading a healthy lifestyle. The logic of this strategy, is that certain level of uncertainty and lack of control in life actually enhances enjoyment from life. But most of use don't know, or have forgotten this, because our life is much more uncertain, and out of control than we can handle. So the idea is to lead a healthy lifestyle, so that we feel good from the inside out, and thus we are in a much better shape, and position to appreciate the positive role that uncertainty and lack of control can play in our lives. I focus on three aspects that constitute a healthy lifestyle; eating right, moving more, and sleeping better. I summarize findings from number of findings, that show how important all three aspects are for keeping our emotional and physical stress levels, or our Attention Deficit trait in check. And therefore, for recognizing the positive role that uncertainty and lack of control play in enriching our lives. That summarizes the main points of this week, but before I conclude, let me add, that you will be multiplying the effectiveness of the two strategies for taking positive control for your happiness. Namely, the simple emotion regulation tactics, and leading a healthy lifestyle by executing them with self-compassion. As you may recall from week two, self-compassion has to do with being kind and gentle with yourself, particularly when things are rough. So when you try to take internal control, try not to get angry or frustrated with yourself if you fail. Remember that it takes a lot of time and practice, to develop the ability to take internal control. Just in case it helps, I have been trying to take personal responsibility for my happiness for over ten years now, and practicing these skills. And I must confess. That I still, to this day, often fail. It may also help you to know that everyone, no matter how famous, successful, put together they appear to be, has struggles and self-doubts and frustrations. So as you try to build your ability to take internal control, don't forget the common humanity aspect of compassion. Make sure to remind yourself that it's totally normal, in fact, it's totally human to feel insecure, dejected, and miserable once in a while. Or, perhaps even quite often. With that, let me move on to what we'll be covering next week. We'll be discussing two sins next week, both of which have to do with distrust. Specifically, in the first half of next week, we'll discuss how distrusting others lowers our happiness levels. And in the second half, we'll discuss how distrusting life itself. That is being negative about the outcomes that occur to us, lowers happiness levels. We'll also discuss antidotes to this sense, the fifth and the sixth habits of the highly happy. With that let me say nosledanou, and let me see you bright and early next week. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] Ahoy! My Czech and other friends. Here we are at the end of the fourth week, and as usual, I am astounded at how time flies. it's totally out of control, but the good news is that I'm really enjoying interacting with you all, and I hope that you feel the same. In this video, I want to summarize the main points that week discussed this week. As you may recall, we started by discussing how being in control, or at least perceiving to be in control, is crucial for happiness. Many studies have shown this, but perhaps the most well-known study, is the one that was conducted with residents of an old age home. As you may remember, these residents felt better and lived longer, when they were given more control over such trivial decisions as, which plant to take care of, and which movies to watch. It goes to show, just how important it is for us to feel like we are in control. Given how critical it is to feel that we are in control, both for emotional and for physical health. It's not surprising that many of us seek to be in control, and as it turns out, seeking some degree of control is actually a good thing. Studies show that those with a higher desire for control, tend to aim higher and also accomplish more. The problem, however, is that we over do it, and become overly controlled thinking, which is the fourth deadly happiness sin. Being overly controlled thinking is a happiness sin, because, for the reasons that I discussed, it lowers not just our happiness levels, and the happiness levels of the others around us. It also lowers our ability to make good decisions. The question therefore, is what can you do if you are overly control seeking? The first thing to do is, figure out if you have the tendency to be overly controlling, which is what we tried to do with the two scales. The desirability of control scale, and the maximizer scale that I had you complete. Hopefully, those scales gave you a good idea of whether you're overly control seeking or not. We then discussed the fourth habit of the highly happy, taking personal responsibility for your happiness, which I proposed as an antidote to the fourth deadly happiness sin. Taking personal responsibility for your happiness means, never blaming others for how you feel. Now, although the idea of taking personal responsibility appears simple in concept, it's not easy in practice. One reason for this, is because many of us have some internal obstacles that prevent us from being fully receptive to this idea, of taking personal responsibility. The first obstacle, is that we can't imagine being in control of our feelings if something extreme, like breaking a leg, or losing a job were to happen. So we feel that the idea of taking personal responsibility for our happiness, won't work for us. The second internal obstacle, is that we feel that if we took full responsibility for our happiness, the others around us would take advantage of us. And because we don't want that to happen, of course, we don't want others to take advantage of us, we feel that the whole idea of taking personal responsibility for our happiness, Is not a good idea. But as I discussed, neither of these two objections are obstacles is really valid. With regard to the first obstacle, that since we cant imagine being happy if something extreme were to happen to us, taking personal responsiblity for happiness is not a good idea. Its important to remember, hat you don't gain the ability to control your feelings in just one day. It takes time to build a skill. In other words, just because you currently lack the ability to control your feelings when something extreme happens, it doesn't mean that you will never gain this ability. So asking yourself whether you can be happy, even if something extreme were to happen, is the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask, is whether you can be happy something more commonplace, like having to miss lunch in order to be in time for a meeting, were it to happen. And if you discover that you are able to maintain your equanimity when something commonplace happens, you can take on bigger challenges, and see if you can maintain your equanimity, if something more extreme were to happen and so on. It is through such a process of taking on increasingly bigger challenges, that slowly, over time you gain the ability to retain control over your feelings. And, one day, with sufficient and smart practice, who knows, one could even become as good as Ghandi, or Mandela were in regulating their emotions. With regard to the second obstacle, that others would take advantage of you if you took personal responsibility for your happiness. It's important to remember that just because you don't hold others responsible for how you feel, that doesn't mean that you won't, or can't hold them responsible for the outcomes that their actions triggered. In other words, even as you don't blame others for how you feel, you could simultaneously hold them accountable for their actions. And doing so, will far from making them take advantage of you, make them respect you more. As I mentioned earlier, lots of findings have shown that we are much more likely to make good decisions, and better decisions, when we are control of our own emotions than when we are not. So overall, what this finding suggests, is that you'll interact with others in a far more mature fashion, when you're within control of your feelings, than when you don't. And therefore, the danger there are those who take advantage of you, is really not a valid concern. The next topic that we discussed this week, had to do with how and why taking personal responsibility for happiness, mitigates the tendency to be overly controlling. As I explained, the reason for this, is that taking personal responsibility for your happiness, allows you to take what I call internal control. And once you have internal control, that is, once you have control over your thoughts and feelings, you'll discover that you don't need to exercise that much external control. Or put differently, internal control compensates for lack of external control, and therefore makes you less desires of controlling other people, or outcomes. We then discussed how one could go about gaining internal control. And on this topic I discussed two main strategies. The first of which, was learning simple emotion regulation tactics, including avoiding situations that evoke negative or unwanted emotions. Labeling emotions, attention deployment that is turning towards things that evoke positive thoughts, and away from things that evoke negative thoughts. And, finally, reappraisal, which includes putting things in perspective. In this context, I also discuss the importance of not engaging in self-serving biases, in order to make yourself feel good, and also of not suppressing emotions. Now there's one topic, which although I didn't discuss elaborately, it's still worth spending just a couple of minutes on. This is the topic of, why is it that the ability to regulate your emotions enhances happiness levels? There are at least three reasons for this. The first reason, is that greater control of your feelings, means that you retain the keys to your happiness in your own two hands, rather than abdicating it to an external world. Second, it fulfills the desire for mastery, that all of us have since, by taking internal control, what you will be developing, might be called something like personal mastery. That is mastery over your own mind, over your own thoughts and feelings. And because we have this desire for mastery, fulfilling it in this way makes us feel good. And finally, it gives you the ability to react more maturely to other people, so that others are likely to respect and cooperate with you more, and that, in turn, is also going to boost your happiness levels. So, in the week, I then moved on to discussing the second strategy for taking internal control, which is leading a healthy lifestyle. The logic of this strategy, is that certain level of uncertainty and lack of control in life actually enhances enjoyment from life. But most of use don't know, or have forgotten this, because our life is much more uncertain, and out of control than we can handle. So the idea is to lead a healthy lifestyle, so that we feel good from the inside out, and thus we are in a much better shape, and position to appreciate the positive role that uncertainty and lack of control can play in our lives. I focus on three aspects that constitute a healthy lifestyle; eating right, moving more, and sleeping better. I summarize findings from number of findings, that show how important all three aspects are for keeping our emotional and physical stress levels, or our Attention Deficit trait in check. And therefore, for recognizing the positive role that uncertainty and lack of control play in enriching our lives. That summarizes the main points of this week, but before I conclude, let me add, that you will be multiplying the effectiveness of the two strategies for taking positive control for your happiness. Namely, the simple emotion regulation tactics, and leading a healthy lifestyle by executing them with self-compassion. As you may recall from week two, self-compassion has to do with being kind and gentle with yourself, particularly when things are rough. So when you try to take internal control, try not to get angry or frustrated with yourself if you fail. Remember that it takes a lot of time and practice, to develop the ability to take internal control. Just in case it helps, I have been trying to take personal responsibility for my happiness for over ten years now, and practicing these skills. And I must confess. That I still, to this day, often fail. It may also help you to know that everyone, no matter how famous, successful, put together they appear to be, has struggles and self-doubts and frustrations. So as you try to build your ability to take internal control, don't forget the common humanity aspect of compassion. Make sure to remind yourself that it's totally normal, in fact, it's totally human to feel insecure, dejected, and miserable once in a while. Or, perhaps even quite often. With that, let me move on to what we'll be covering next week. We'll be discussing two sins next week, both of which have to do with distrust. Specifically, in the first half of next week, we'll discuss how distrusting others lowers our happiness levels. And in the second half, we'll discuss how distrusting life itself. That is being negative about the outcomes that occur to us, lowers happiness levels. We'll also discuss antidotes to this sense, the fifth and the sixth habits of the highly happy. With that let me say nosledanou, and let me see you bright and early next week. [MUSIC]