本课几个重要内容: 观念或者说想法能够改变现实,当然也不只是单独的观念就可以创造,观念起到一个非常重要的作用。 怎么创造一个积极的环境:自己喜欢的图片、纪念品、艺术品、名言等挂在经常看到的地方;看书、听音乐、观看电影等等。 高的期望并不会导致失望。这里教授指出幸福是有一个基准线的,当碰到开心的事情或者不开心事情,幸福会上升或者降低,但一段时间之后,都会回来基准线。基准线是可以通过努力提高的,而最重要的是去面对现实。 怎么变得更加乐观:首先是行动;其次是想象胜利;最后是认知疗法。 1.Beliefs shape reality "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world." ----The Buddha "Treat a man as a he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he shall become as he can and should be." ----Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Running the mile in 4 minutes are the limitation of human, which is proved by doctors and scientists. Roger Bannister does it. From that on many other atheists did it too. 2.Create a positive circumstance. Create a powerful and positive circumstance, can we? The answer is yes. Priming is something can be done in the conscious and subconscious level. It means planting a seed, planting a belief, planting a word, or a picture in our mind, consciously or subconsciously. And how that really influence our behavior. How to create? Have pictures of people you love or places you love, even if you didn't see them, you see them. Have pleasant object, whether it's memorabilia, whether it’s flowers or arts. Remind us everyday. Quotes, a list of quotes. Have your favorite books next to you. Listen to music. Mindfully listen to it. Watch films that inspire you. 3. The Self-Help Movement 《think grow rich》 By Napoleon Hill “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve” ----Napoleon Hill 《the power of positive thinking》 By Norman Vincent Peale “Have great hopes and dare to go all out for them. Have great dreams and dare to live them. Have tremendous expectations and believe in them.” ----Norman Vincent Peale Our mind create reality, part of true. Mind plays a very important role. Co-create reality. Rely on many other things. 4.How does beliefs work? 5.The brain does not like inconsistency When the things that we think inside and the things happen Outside are not consistent, what we do? Update schema. Ignore/discard information Actively seek confirmation. Create new reality 6.The secret of success Optimism, passion, hard work. “I am a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the luckier I get.” ----Thomas Jefferson “There is no substitute for hard work.” ----Thomas Edison 7.Do high expectations lead to disappointment? The answer is not! Imagine first of all, our happiness has a basic line. When we meet something good, happiness will rise up, but it will go to the basic line after some time. The same will happen to bad thing, go down, and back to basic line. This is not only a good news but also a bad news to us, whatever good thing or bad thing we meet, we will recover. But in fact, we can rise the basic level of happiness. 8.How to rise the basic line? To cope, to put ourselves on the line. We derive certain conclusions about ourselves, I must be brave, I must be a person who has high self-esteem; I must be a person who has a strong desire to succeed, and then we derive conclusions about ourselves in the same way, that we derive conclusion about others, that is self-perception theory. Fail more often, will feel it is not that bad. Fail the way to success. 9.How to be optimistic: 1)Take action, just do it. Actually work hard, Lead to success, more success than before. Start to believe ourselves. When we fail more, we will also have immune to it. "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." ----Soren Kierkegaard 2)Imagine success, Visualization. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and then be spontaneous. When brain sees something, some neurons are firing; when we close eyes and just imagine the same thing, the exact same neurons are firing. Brain did not know the exact thing and imagine one. So the visualization, is to Fool the mind to believe this is the real thing. We have known the mind does not like inconsistency, when we imagine something, we will also change the reality to make inside and outside consistent. Imagine the journey and destination, more success. 3)Cognitive therapy The basic premise: Though drive emotion. Event - Evaluation(though) - Emotion Restoring rationality. Stop the absurd though in your mind. Where do I distort the reality? "3M" Magnifying, exaggerate something that happen. Minimizing. Tunnel vision. Making up or fabricating, making something from nothing. Be real: Is my conclusion tied to reality? Is it rational? They are interconnected. Am I ignoring something important? Go well, or not go well. What other important evidence that I have to take into consideration.
1.bridge building “The careful shielding of a university from the activities of the world around us is the best way to chill interest and to defeat progress. Celibacy does not suit a university. It must mate itself with action.” ----Alfred North Whitehead Pure world is dirty, impure, profane versus academia, which is lofty, idealistic, sacred. This distinction hurts, we should make a connection between them. We should go out to the outside world, make itself with action. We take the research and apply it. Idealism and good intention is not enough. We should take the research seriously, it may not work, and it may have the opposite effect. 2.Change is possible If not, what do we sit here for? The Minnesota twin studies gave a famous research result, "It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and is therefore counterproductive." many people feel depressed by this result, because they think change is almost impossible. People change up and down in their happiness, which is a counter evidence. If the twin studies is true, it just give a average result, which is called the error of average by the professor. We have exception from the average. In the psychology research, the exception is more interesting, maybe is more useful, it proves the rule. We can study the exception, to know why someone can make a change almost in the same circumstances. Which we can call it study the best, or Growing-Tip Statistics. “What this kind of research design means is a change in our conception of statistics, and especially of sampling theory. What I am frankly espousing here is what I have been calling ‘growing-tip statistics,' taking my title from the fact that it is at the growing tip of a plant that the greatest genetic action takes place...” ----Abraham Maslow “If we want to know how fast a human being can run, then it is no use to average out the speed of a ‘good sample’ of the population; it is far better to collect Olympic gold medal winners and see how well they can do. If we want to know the possibilities for spiritual growth, value growth, or moral development in human beings, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people. On the whole I think it is fair to say that human history is a record of the ways in which human nature has been sold short. The highest possibilities of human nature have practically always been underrated.... Certainly it seems more and more clear that what we call ‘normal’ in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don’t even notice it ordinarily.” To talk more about why study the best, the professor gives two reasons: Do not exclude studying the average; The most important is everyone benefit from study from the best. apply what we learn from the best to the average. 3.Internal factors primarily determine happiness A research about people who apply for the tenure. How did they feel when they get the tenure or they do not get the tenure, how long do their feeling will last. The research show that when the teachers succeed in being tenure, they will feel very happy. Of course, it will be very sad for the people who fail in applying tenure. So from the research we can know that the happiness will come back to the basic level after six months, now matter they get the tenure or not. When the basic needs are meet, income make a litter difference in the happiness. Beyond the extremes, the outside make a little influence But we can do something to be happier. It is about Transformation, how to treat outside. 4.Human nature must be obeyed Human nature are constrained, but we can channel it toward good. Painful emotions is as much as part of human nature, as the law of gravity is part of physical nature. In our culture, most of time, We do not give ourselves the permission to be human, the freedom to experience these painful emotions as well. We pay a very high price for this. We need a space. To cry, to joy. With our closed friend, with our family, and with ourselves. When we try to suppress a natural phenomenon, such as having a visual of the word when we say it, that thing just intensifies. The same applies to the painful emotion that are natural. When we try to suppress them, they strength. 5.happiness is and ought to be our ultimate end “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” ----Aristotle “If we were to ask the question: ‘What is human life's chief concern?’ one of the answers we should receive would be: ‘It is happiness.’ How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.” ----William James “Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, the very purpose of our life is happiness, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.” ----Dalai Lama What is good about positive emotion? It feels good to feel good, why not feel good when we can feel good. Borden our thinking, building capacity. Good for us and society. Overcome our negative emotion, Happy people are more successful because they have more energy and work harder. Pursue something rather than running away from something. Physical health. Their immune system is stronger. How about others when we are happy? Not a zero sum game, but a positive sum game. When you feel happy, you will contribute to other people's happy. Better relationship. More generous, more accepting to others. Help ourselves and help others. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ----Buddha “Be the change you want to see in the world.” ----Gandhi
1. Ratio: 21/1 A research on the psychological abstracts from 1967 to 2000 to find out how many abstracts on each aspects, the result shows below: Anger: 5,584 Anxiety: 41,416 Depression: 54,040 Joy: 415 Happiness: 1,710 Life satisfaction: 2,582 The ratio between positive aspect and the negative is 21/1. “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side; it has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological height. It is as if psychology had voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the darker, meaner half.” ----Abraham Maslow “The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.” ----Martin Seligman 21/1 ratio is unhealthy but it reflects reality. depression 10 times higher today than 1960 mean age for depression today is 14.5 (compared to 29.5 in 1960) 2. why more positive research? Psychology as creative rather than merely reactive Happiness is not the negation of unhappiness Prevention through cultivating the positive 3. Question create reality. “Human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about.” ----Cooperrider and Whitney The professor plays a game in the classroom. He gives a picture and asks the students to count how many geometric shapes on the screen in 30 seconds, when the time is up, the teacher not only wants the students to give the number, but also asks some other questions, for example, what is the time on the clock, what is color of the left-most geometric shape. Because the students focus on the question of the number of shapes, most of them can not answer other questions correctly. So this game try to tell us that when we focus on one question, we probably ignore others. We focus on one part, and will forget others. If only asking negative question, Good things do not exist. If we appreciate the good, the good grows. This is also true on the relationship. We always ask what do we need to improve, if this is the only question to ask, and this will be the only question that they will see. They pay attention to the weakness and the things need to improvement, but they do not see many good things, which leads to break the relationship. 4. Passive Victim Vs. Active Agent (被动受害与主动接受) self pity confidence Blame responsibility Frustration hope and optimism Anger forgive/forget “The message of the Positive Psychology movement is to remind our field that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage; it also is the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is wrong; it also is building what is right. Psychology is not just about illness or health; it is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play. And in this quest for what is best, Positive Psychology does not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception or hand-waving; instead it tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to the unique problems that human behavior presents in all its complexity.” -----Martin Seligman 5. Happiness is n' t the Negation of Unhappiness Getting rid of the negative does not make positive. Happiness don't spontaneously emerge once the painful experience goes away. Seeking pleasure. Running away of unhappiness. Thinking about the ability of enjoying food. If we have indigestion, it is very difficult to enjoy food. However, getting rid of indigestion does not guarantee that we can enjoy food. 6. Prevention through cultivating positive Two model: H ealth as the absence of illness . Taking away illness, we become healthy. Deal with the negative. Ill ness as the absence of health . You are sick because you do not have enough health in your life. Cultivate the positive, we are essentially focusing on prevention. “We have discovered that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight, to name several... We have shown that learning optimism prevents depression and anxiety in children and adults, roughly halving their incidence over the next two years... Similarly, I believe, that if we wish to prevent drug abuse in teenagers who grow up in a neighborhood that puts them at risk, that the effective prevention is not remedial. Rather it consists of identifying and amplifying the strengths that these teens already have.” ----- Martin Seligman Positive psychology do not mean "to the exclusion of" the negative, it tells us not only focus on the negative, but also put resource on the strength, advantage, and so on. And sometimes focusing on the positive makes a big difference.
1 、为什么开这门课? 学术期刊上面每篇期刊平均被 7 个人阅读。 2 、安静时刻 再课堂上面安静时刻,回想课程讲的知识,或者回答问题。 安静时刻的重要性,享受安静,进行自省,有可能是这节课收获最大的时刻。 老鼠在迷宫中的研究,分清楚什么是最重要往往是在安静时刻之后。 3 、信息接收 Information VS transformation 对学习知识的全新阐释,在学习中人可以比如为一个容器,学习则是往容器里面装东西。 Information ,在容器中注入东西,容器装满即毕业; transformation ,对容器的转变形状,然后再接受东西,装满这个容器。 信息虽然一样,对信息接收理解不一样,很多时候解读比信息本身更重要。 4 、目的 Fulfilling our potential, chipping the excess stone . 《大卫》巨作的形成就是通过去掉多余的石头,而这也是这门课的目的,教授反复讲到的 chipping the excess stone The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.——Thoreau 做减法比做加法更能使灵魂成长。 In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; in pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped ----- Lao Tzu What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science—information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance. What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world. It won’t ------ Archibald MaCleish Common sense is not that common, make common sense more common. Teach you something you already know 最好能达到的效果是,学生学完会说: Thank you for reminding me 5 、 Asking question The biggest mistake is not asking the right question! It is not about providing definitive answers concerning the good life , It is about identifying the right questions . The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions. ----- Bishop Creighton 哈佛毕业中非常成功与成功人士的区别: Really believe in themselves; always asking question. 6 、关于幸福 幸福是连贯的,不是 1 和 0 之间做选择。 How can I become happier? Look inside myself, study myself. What is you doing differently? The best way to learn is to teach 7 、 Background of positive psychology: humanistic psychology (人本主义心理学)的 product and grandchild 心理学上的 three Force s: First: Reaction to behaviorism Second: Reaction to psychoanalysis Third: humanistic psychology , reaction to Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis. 行为主义认为人是一个行为集合,像一个被击打的球一样; 精神分析学主要通过潜意思的分析,去改变生活; 人本主义心理学通过对以上两种心理学的异议和批评中产生。 不只是学术研究,关注有用的东西,善良,美德、乐观,快乐。