[Applause] good evening and welcome to my talk about positive psychology the secrets to happiness positive psychology is a scientific study of what makes life worth living it focuses on individuals who find life mediocre find it okay and it works out how we can make our lives better how we can make the lives of those who are average way better a lot of psychology focuses on mental health illnesses or on people who are unwell who don't enjoy life but this area of research is really up-and-coming and it's helping us really flourish a couple years ago I
faced a difficult time like many of us here have I was anxious I was sad I was lonely and I thought I would never get out of what I faced but it had just so happened that I had enrolled in a summer course at Brown University Rhode Island where I intended to go and study positive psychology due to the circumstance I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go I didn't want to go but my parents convinced me and I went I fell in love with what I learned there and what I
heard and I was lucky to find my passion when I was on the course I was introduced to this image and it stuck with me it got me thinking what is happiness what is this big age that everyone's so obsessed with and I saw this image and I thought this can't be right this wasn't good enough I wasn't having a happiness at the age of 16 could not simply be just owning a driving license and if it was surely many more of us would be way happier surely it would be much easy easier to wake
up in the morning surely depression mental health illnesses would it be happening if this is what happiness was because we would all be able to reach the state so easily I satisfied so I had to research I wanted answers I wanted to know what happiness was I knew there was more to it and I've read and I watched and I listened to many different resources about the big H and I came across perma first positive psychologists like to call it the wheel of well-being and these are the foundations of my 5 secrets to happiness number
1 positive emotions it seemed pretty obvious right feeling joy excitement love peace of course they're gonna make you feel great of course they're going to make you happy but it's not as simple as that these positive emotions allow you to live an optimistic life they allow you to enjoy things better it reduces what positive psychologist called the negativity bias this is an issue we are all guilty of facing the negativity bias is basically the concept that we focus on the negative things in our life we're too busy thinking of what went wrong what we didn't
do what we couldn't do what someone else did better rather than what we did right and I often find myself going to friend and moaning about what went wrong in the day rather than actually what went well and the more we experience positive emotions the more we are able to get rid of this negativity bias and this is because we're able to be more optimistic my second secret engagement or a some call it flow this is one of the secrets to happiness that I connect with the most I often find myself in the state of
flow or engagement when I'm working or at a concert or with friends or watching a film and this state of engagement or flow is basically being in the zone it's being immersed in an activity no one else nothing else around you matter this is what engagement is and research has shown a high link between being in the state and personal growth because being in this state of flow allows you to reach your challenges you're so engaged that you're able to motivate yourself you are able to do things you didn't think you'd be able to do
because you're not worried about anything you're not worried about anything going wrong you're not worried about what others are thinking it's just you that moment and whatever you're doing and that is the state of flow that is engagement and when you enter the state of flow you're often doing a challenge and when you reach that challenge and you achieve it you feel good and this enables you to feel a positive emission and the more positive emissions you feel that all more optimistic you are about life my third secret relationships for me I say relationship for
make or break having positive relationships in your life gives you a support network we're humans we're social creatures we meant to interact with each other we're meant to be intimate we're meant to engage with each other and this is what relationship allow us to do it allows us to have someone to experience life with us it allows us to do things with someone else to share things with someone else when planning this talk I've really started to think what makes me happy and what makes other people happy so I decided to take this question to
social media and I asked my friends what is happiness what makes you happy I only got 50 responses but out of the 50 35 people responded that friend or family made them happy so surely this shows that positive relationship increased happiness but why well as I said it allows you someone to have to share your experiences with it gives you a support network it allows you to connect to someone but it also allows you to think of someone other than yourself and this is also a key feature when thinking about what makes you happy often
when you do something good for someone else you feel happy you feel good you know you've helped someone and when you have positive relationships with people you're able to help people you're able to give to someone else other than yourself you're thinking of other people all of the sudden you care for someone just as much as yourself whether this is your parents your kids your family your friends your teacher your student it allows you to build relationship and when you're out there and you're doing good for others that allows you to enter a state of
flow or engagement when you're engaging in conversation when you're going out with them you enter the state and when you enter this state you feel positive emotions and the more positive emotions you feel the more optimistic your view of life is my fourth secret to happiness is meaning this one often scares people when you think of having a meaning you think of a higher purpose you think of doing something mega changing the world this is not what it means having a meaning can be as small as just going to school and talking to your friends
that could be your meaning or it could be as big as running a marathon doesn't have to be crazy big it's more like a small past nuco a meaning is tailored to everyone's individual self I read a book last year could a simple act of gratitude and it was basically about a guy called John whose life was a mess he just divorced his wife he lost his house his relationship with his kids was terrible he was about to lose his job and he had no money but he set a goal to write small think you
know everyday to someone and this was his meaning his meaning was he wanted to be thankful for things and he wanted to make people feel good so he wrote these notes and it ranged from milkman to postman to his ex-wife to his children and he found that as he did the years not only was it giving him a positive goal to work towards of fixing his relationship than building new relationships but it was also allowing him to get his life back on track he had something to do somewhere to turn and this is what meaning
in life does for us it gives us a purpose gives us a sense of belonging a place to go when we get lost and sometimes it could result in building new relationship in entering the state of flow and these all create positive emotions which are the foundations to happiness my fifth and final secret achievement again it seems pretty obvious he doesn't like doing things right he doesn't like succeeding who doesn't like doing what they're meant to do of course it's gonna make you feel good again on this survey eight people responded that when they get
verbal responses of something good they've done they feel happy knowing that they've been appreciative they kind of been approved that makes them feel good makes them feel like they've achieved their goal and this is why having a meaning is so important because it allows you to reach achievement and achievement allows you to feel good to feel these positive emotions and feeling these positive emotions allows you to have an optimistic view and when you're facing achievement you're building new relationship people congratulate you people there'll always be people who won't want to congratulate you will be jealous
but there'll always be some who will be there for you and that allows you to have stronger positive relationships we live in a world where we can easily kind of go on our phones open an app and we see hundreds of people achieving thousands of crazy things every day and for a lot of people this makes them feel really bad that person got a new job or that person got a new house or they're making money they're achieving big thing this is a real achievement real achievement is what it means to you it can be
small it can be big you decide that's how you'll find happiness this is pretty much one of my favorite quotes in positive psychology happiness is not the absence of problems it's the ability to deal with them and this relates back to my idea of Palmer we may all have problems we all do but it's not the problems themselves Dallas stopping our happiness it's asked it's our attitude it's our state of mind and if we're able to go and talk to those people we have positive relationships with and we're able to enter these states of flow
maybe by exercising and this is why mindfulness is massive these days because it's helping people change their state of mind enter the state of flow feel the positive emotions from this state of flow and this will help you be happy are these secrets perfect no there still a long way to go and there's still a lot of research to be done and they're not quite as simple enough yeah but there's no simple answer to happiness and if I had it this talk would be shorter I wouldn't be standing here and I'd probably be very rich
but I'll continue to research and when I find a better answer I'll let you know thank you for listening [Applause] [Music]
