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Happiness, 5.17 (V) Week 5 Video 12 - The 6th Happiness Exercise

[MUSIC] Hi there! Welcome back! You know the main reason for divorce? You'll never guess it, it's marriage. It's true, I don't know a single divorcee who wasn't married before. » [LAUGH] » Welcome back, in this video, I'm going to have Katherine give you the instructions for the penultimate happiness exercise, which we call three good things with a twist. This exercise has to do with recognizing that for even everyday, small events, that's thought out seemingly negative, they trigger positive outcome that would not have occurred unless the negative outcome had occurred. I recently had this happen to me. I kept trying to book these flight tickets for my family, and the credit card kept getting rejected. This happened for all the credit cards that I have. Then I suddenly realized that I was trying to book tickets for an official trip and that it would be much simpler and would save me a lot of hassle. If I just ask the administrative assistant to book the tickets directly. So what started out as a negative outcome, my credit cards not working or not being accepted, turned out to be a positive outcome. Even now, Katherine is trying to push me out and it seems like a negative event, but I'm sure that it's gonna trigger something positive. I'm really not sure what the positive thing is going to be, but, I'm gonna keep my eyes open for whatever positivity happens. See you soon. » It always makes me a little happy to displace Dr. Happy Smarts from stage. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it helps me with connect with you guys, and fulfill the need to belong. Anyways, this will be the last exercise for which I will be giving you the instructions. The next exercise is something called mindfulness, for which we have a guest speaker, Mr. Vijay Bhat, giving the instructions. That exercise is awesome. As you will see, so is this one which we call three good things with a twist. Let me start with a little background about this exercise. There's a very powerful happiness boosting exercise called three good things that Prof. Seligman of U Penn, who's often called the father of positive psychology, is credited with inventing. The exercise involves noting down three good things that happened to you during the day in a journal. These three good things need not be something major like winning a lottery, or going on a date with Rudy Koshin or Jennifer Anniston. They can be something simple like, I received a positive comment on the Aloha discussion forum. Or, it finally rained and my plants got free water. Prof. Seligman found that as many as 94% of those who recorded 3 good things for a mere 15 days showed significant improvement in happiness. The exercise even lifted some out of severe depression. The exercise we have in mind for you now is adapted from the three good things exercise. Like that exercise, this one too involves making a note of three good things that happened to you, but there is a twist. We want you to start with three bad things that happened that eventually lead to good things. This can be a little tricky to understand. So let me give you some specific details now. In this exercise, we will want you to think of three things that started out on a bad note. For example, perhaps on your way to work you realize that you had forgotten to take your phone, because of which, you drive back. You may feel frustrated initially, but as you enter your house to pick up the phone you may have realized that you had also forgotten to pick up your USB drive that has an important document on which you wanted to work. So what initially seemed like a negative event may have ended up saving you a lot of time. Here's another example. You may have been stuck in heavy traffic, but because of that, you may have gotten to hear a favorite song that you hadn't heard in ages. The idea is to connect the dots. As Steve Jobs might have said, "From mundane, everyday events, so that you recognize that few events are unambiguously negative. Of course it's important that you don't pick extremely negative events for this exercise. For example don't pick getting fired from work or your kid falling violently ill, although as Professor Raj discussed, even intensely negative events could, in the long run, lead to positive outcomes. It will be difficult for you to get past the negativity of these events, to see the positive outcomes they trigger. Plus, positive outcomes from big negative events usually take some time to unfold, which means you won't be able to think of any positive consequences from them, so focus only on mildly negative events for this exercise. Events like failing to find your favorite brand of cereal, or having to fill in gas when you are already a little late for work. I should mention that, even from mildly negative events, you may find it difficult to find any positive consequences. The reason is because when we think of something negative, our mind immediately thinks of other negative things, something that Professor Raj will touch upon next week. These negative thoughts will blind you from seeing the positive consequences triggered by negative events, but if you persevere, you will see that almost every negative event triggers at least one positive consequence. The way to persevere is to use the emotion regulation tactic of attention deployment. That is, use the power of your mind to stop thinking negative thoughts. Instead, take your mind back to the original negative event and retrace everything that happened as a consequence of it. You can close your eyes as you're doing the retracing of the events, if that helps. When you do this, you are bound to identify at least one positive consequence that came out of it. For example, in the process of searching for your cereal box, you may have discovered really old food rotting in the back of your cupboard. Throwing out that food, may have made you feel good or having to fill in gas when you were already late for work, may have given you the opportunity to grab a much needed cup of coffee. These types of positive consequences, may not fully compensate for the original negative event, but that's okay. So long as you are able to think of at least positive consequence for each negative event, you are all set as for this exercise. This is, in a nutshell, the three good things with a twist exercise. With that let me give you more specific instructions. At the end of this video you will see a link, clicking on that link will take you to this website. As you can see, the exercise involves four main steps. Step one, is to think of three mildly negative events that happened, and write about them in sentence or two in this space. For example, I'm going to write I didn't get enough sleep last night, got into a mild argument with my dad. And my computer took ages to start up as my three mildly negative events. Then when you click the next button, it will take you to the next page which is step two, Connect the dots. As you can see, the three negative events that I came up with earlier, are listed here. My task now is to think of at least one and as many as three positive consequences triggered by each negative event. I'm going to write one positive thing that came out of not getting a good night sleep is that, as I lay awake on my bed, I heard my neighbor humming a really nice tune. He seemed so happy, and that made me happy. Another positive thing that came out of it is that, I feel kind of a little woozy today. Normally I wouldn't find it pleasant but somehow today I find the wooziness to be an interesting experience. Okay. I can only think of these two positive things, so I'm going to move to the next negative event. For this one, getting into an argument with my dad, I can't think of anything positive, so I'm going to skip this. For the third one, my computer took ages to start up. I can think of so many positives. Excuse to call that good looking IT engineer to fix my computer, chance for a coffee break with friends, and have a more solid case to request a new computer. Now as you can see here, if you weren't able to come up with even one positive consequence for a negative event, you have the option of replacing that negative event with a positive one. You can do this by clicking on the previous button. Since I'm not able to think of anything positive that came out of the mild tiff I had with my dad, I'm going to hit the previous button and replace that event with this. The coffee this morning was heavenly, right mix of ingredients. I can then come back to the same page. And I'm fully satisfied with everything now, which I am, I just click next. This will take you to the next screen where you can see everything that you typed so far, the negative events that led to positive consequences and or the purely positive events. You can hit the previous button to change anything if you wish to, but if you don't want change anything, you just click Next, which will take you to step three of the exercise. In this step, you will provide your first and last name and email ID, and then when you click on the same button at the bottom, two things will happen. First, you will get an email with everything that you have written so far. Second, you will start receiving an email everyday for the next seven days with a link that will take you to a website where you can do the three good things with a twist each day. So each day for the next seven days, you will need to think of three mainly negative events that happened, that triggered the positive consequences. At the end of the seventh day, you will have received seven emails, one each day. Of the list of negative things that led to positive consequences, don't delete these emails because they will come in handy for step four which is the last step. On the eighth day, after you start the exercise, you will receive an email like this one. Click on the link which will take you to a website on which you will be asked these three questions. Overall, how easy or difficult was this exercise for you? Why? How much more or less confident do you now feel that no event or outcome is purely positive or negative. Why or why not? Typically, those who do this exercise can more spontaneously see the positive consequences triggered by negative events. Did this happen to you? Please elaborate. Answering these three questions is step four. Once you finish this step, click on the Done button, which will take you to the next page on which you can download a soft copy of your responses to the three questions. That's it for the exercise. It's a really simple exercise and concept, but not so easy in practice, mostly because we are also strongly wedded to judging outcomes. But with practice you can become less judgemental of outcomes which will make it easier to become a dispassionate pursuer of passion. Hope you have fun with this exercise and see you next week. I won't be giving you instructions next week but I will make sure to say goodbye to you before the course ends. » Thanks for watching this video folks. I hope you enjoyed this exercise and that you find it to be useful. Give us your feedback through the discussion forums. And, by the way, I should let you know that something positive did come out of Katherine pushing me out. I got to see a bunch of people doing an impromptu dance and I joined them. I'm gonna play you that clip. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] Hi there! Welcome back! You know the main reason for divorce? You'll never guess it, it's marriage. It's true, I don't know a single divorcee who wasn't married before. » [LAUGH] » Welcome back, in this video, I'm going to have Katherine give you the instructions for the penultimate happiness exercise, which we call three good things with a twist. This exercise has to do with recognizing that for even everyday, small events, that's thought out seemingly negative, they trigger positive outcome that would not have occurred unless the negative outcome had occurred. I recently had this happen to me. I kept trying to book these flight tickets for my family, and the credit card kept getting rejected. This happened for all the credit cards that I have. Then I suddenly realized that I was trying to book tickets for an official trip and that it would be much simpler and would save me a lot of hassle. If I just ask the administrative assistant to book the tickets directly. So what started out as a negative outcome, my credit cards not working or not being accepted, turned out to be a positive outcome. Even now, Katherine is trying to push me out and it seems like a negative event, but I'm sure that it's gonna trigger something positive. I'm really not sure what the positive thing is going to be, but, I'm gonna keep my eyes open for whatever positivity happens. See you soon. » It always makes me a little happy to displace Dr. Happy Smarts from stage. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it helps me with connect with you guys, and fulfill the need to belong. Anyways, this will be the last exercise for which I will be giving you the instructions. The next exercise is something called mindfulness, for which we have a guest speaker, Mr. Vijay Bhat, giving the instructions. That exercise is awesome. As you will see, so is this one which we call three good things with a twist. Let me start with a little background about this exercise. There's a very powerful happiness boosting exercise called three good things that Prof. Seligman of U Penn, who's often called the father of positive psychology, is credited with inventing. The exercise involves noting down three good things that happened to you during the day in a journal. These three good things need not be something major like winning a lottery, or going on a date with Rudy Koshin or Jennifer Anniston. They can be something simple like, I received a positive comment on the Aloha discussion forum. Or, it finally rained and my plants got free water. Prof. Seligman found that as many as 94% of those who recorded 3 good things for a mere 15 days showed significant improvement in happiness. The exercise even lifted some out of severe depression. The exercise we have in mind for you now is adapted from the three good things exercise. Like that exercise, this one too involves making a note of three good things that happened to you, but there is a twist. We want you to start with three bad things that happened that eventually lead to good things. This can be a little tricky to understand. So let me give you some specific details now. In this exercise, we will want you to think of three things that started out on a bad note. For example, perhaps on your way to work you realize that you had forgotten to take your phone, because of which, you drive back. You may feel frustrated initially, but as you enter your house to pick up the phone you may have realized that you had also forgotten to pick up your USB drive that has an important document on which you wanted to work. So what initially seemed like a negative event may have ended up saving you a lot of time. Here's another example. You may have been stuck in heavy traffic, but because of that, you may have gotten to hear a favorite song that you hadn't heard in ages. The idea is to connect the dots. As Steve Jobs might have said, "From mundane, everyday events, so that you recognize that few events are unambiguously negative. Of course it's important that you don't pick extremely negative events for this exercise. For example don't pick getting fired from work or your kid falling violently ill, although as Professor Raj discussed, even intensely negative events could, in the long run, lead to positive outcomes. It will be difficult for you to get past the negativity of these events, to see the positive outcomes they trigger. Plus, positive outcomes from big negative events usually take some time to unfold, which means you won't be able to think of any positive consequences from them, so focus only on mildly negative events for this exercise. Events like failing to find your favorite brand of cereal, or having to fill in gas when you are already a little late for work. I should mention that, even from mildly negative events, you may find it difficult to find any positive consequences. The reason is because when we think of something negative, our mind immediately thinks of other negative things, something that Professor Raj will touch upon next week. These negative thoughts will blind you from seeing the positive consequences triggered by negative events, but if you persevere, you will see that almost every negative event triggers at least one positive consequence. The way to persevere is to use the emotion regulation tactic of attention deployment. That is, use the power of your mind to stop thinking negative thoughts. Instead, take your mind back to the original negative event and retrace everything that happened as a consequence of it. You can close your eyes as you're doing the retracing of the events, if that helps. When you do this, you are bound to identify at least one positive consequence that came out of it. For example, in the process of searching for your cereal box, you may have discovered really old food rotting in the back of your cupboard. Throwing out that food, may have made you feel good or having to fill in gas when you were already late for work, may have given you the opportunity to grab a much needed cup of coffee. These types of positive consequences, may not fully compensate for the original negative event, but that's okay. So long as you are able to think of at least positive consequence for each negative event, you are all set as for this exercise. This is, in a nutshell, the three good things with a twist exercise. With that let me give you more specific instructions. At the end of this video you will see a link, clicking on that link will take you to this website. As you can see, the exercise involves four main steps. Step one, is to think of three mildly negative events that happened, and write about them in sentence or two in this space. For example, I'm going to write I didn't get enough sleep last night, got into a mild argument with my dad. And my computer took ages to start up as my three mildly negative events. Then when you click the next button, it will take you to the next page which is step two, Connect the dots. As you can see, the three negative events that I came up with earlier, are listed here. My task now is to think of at least one and as many as three positive consequences triggered by each negative event. I'm going to write one positive thing that came out of not getting a good night sleep is that, as I lay awake on my bed, I heard my neighbor humming a really nice tune. He seemed so happy, and that made me happy. Another positive thing that came out of it is that, I feel kind of a little woozy today. Normally I wouldn't find it pleasant but somehow today I find the wooziness to be an interesting experience. Okay. I can only think of these two positive things, so I'm going to move to the next negative event. For this one, getting into an argument with my dad, I can't think of anything positive, so I'm going to skip this. For the third one, my computer took ages to start up. I can think of so many positives. Excuse to call that good looking IT engineer to fix my computer, chance for a coffee break with friends, and have a more solid case to request a new computer. Now as you can see here, if you weren't able to come up with even one positive consequence for a negative event, you have the option of replacing that negative event with a positive one. You can do this by clicking on the previous button. Since I'm not able to think of anything positive that came out of the mild tiff I had with my dad, I'm going to hit the previous button and replace that event with this. The coffee this morning was heavenly, right mix of ingredients. I can then come back to the same page. And I'm fully satisfied with everything now, which I am, I just click next. This will take you to the next screen where you can see everything that you typed so far, the negative events that led to positive consequences and or the purely positive events. You can hit the previous button to change anything if you wish to, but if you don't want change anything, you just click Next, which will take you to step three of the exercise. In this step, you will provide your first and last name and email ID, and then when you click on the same button at the bottom, two things will happen. First, you will get an email with everything that you have written so far. Second, you will start receiving an email everyday for the next seven days with a link that will take you to a website where you can do the three good things with a twist each day. So each day for the next seven days, you will need to think of three mainly negative events that happened, that triggered the positive consequences. At the end of the seventh day, you will have received seven emails, one each day. Of the list of negative things that led to positive consequences, don't delete these emails because they will come in handy for step four which is the last step. On the eighth day, after you start the exercise, you will receive an email like this one. Click on the link which will take you to a website on which you will be asked these three questions. Overall, how easy or difficult was this exercise for you? Why? How much more or less confident do you now feel that no event or outcome is purely positive or negative. Why or why not? Typically, those who do this exercise can more spontaneously see the positive consequences triggered by negative events. Did this happen to you? Please elaborate. Answering these three questions is step four. Once you finish this step, click on the Done button, which will take you to the next page on which you can download a soft copy of your responses to the three questions. That's it for the exercise. It's a really simple exercise and concept, but not so easy in practice, mostly because we are also strongly wedded to judging outcomes. But with practice you can become less judgemental of outcomes which will make it easier to become a dispassionate pursuer of passion. Hope you have fun with this exercise and see you next week. I won't be giving you instructions next week but I will make sure to say goodbye to you before the course ends. » Thanks for watching this video folks. I hope you enjoyed this exercise and that you find it to be useful. Give us your feedback through the discussion forums. And, by the way, I should let you know that something positive did come out of Katherine pushing me out. I got to see a bunch of people doing an impromptu dance and I joined them. I'm gonna play you that clip. [MUSIC]