Here is the full transcript of Dr. Ilona Boniwell’s talk titled “Educating For Happiness and Resilience” at TEDxHull 2013 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome. I would like to start this talk by posing a very simple question, which is originally posed by Martin Seligman, who is the father of positive psychology. In two words or less, what would you most want for your children? Think about it and try to answer.
Think as educators, think as teachers, think as parents. What would you most? I think probably the answer will be very simple. The majority of you would say happiness. I would like my children to be happy. Perhaps somebody would say well-being, perhaps somebody would say achievement, but I think happiness would probably win.
And the next question, what do the schools actually teach? And they don’t teach happiness, well really, they teach achievement, yes, they teach thinking skills, yes, they teach conformity, yes, they teach math, English, everything, but not well-being, but not resilience, but not happiness. So there is actually something to do, there is something to do in preparing our kids for life.
If you imagine the future for your kids, what is the future going to look like? This future, do you think they’re going to have a job for life? Chances are not. Do you think they’re going to stay in the same place? Probably not. Do you think they’re going to have periods of unemployment? Probably yes. Do you think they’re going to be absolutely confused at some point in this crazy mad world they’re actually facing? Probably chances are yes.
So how are you, how are we as a system, as a society, as academics, as parents, how are we really preparing our kids for life? What skills can we actually teach them? So I propose that actually what is fundamental is to teach these kids the skills of happiness, the skills of well-being, and the skills of resilience.
Also because they’re facing very difficult period of their life of depression. At any point in time, 2% of kids aged 11 to 15 and up to 11% of young people aged 16 to 24 are suffering from depression. And depression is on the rise.
Depression is starting much earlier. Depression and anxiety disorders are becoming more and more prominent in our societies. And we know, of course, the result of depression is academic difficulties, drug difficulties, difficulties with smoking, with drinking, and so on. The whole host of very complicated difficulties. So what do we do?
The Importance of Teaching Happiness and Well-Being
Why teach happiness and well-being? Apart from talking about the negatives, apart from talking about problems, and the problems our kids are going to face, there are actually some positives about happiness and well-being. And some positives include, for example, creativity.
People who are happy are much more creative. They actually produce more. They’re able to experiment with new information. They’re able to think about new information. They’re able to persist the task. They’re actually able to concentrate better. They’re able to achieve more and to have higher academic success. These people are also more optimistic.
And why is optimism important? Optimism actually leads to resilience. I’ll tell you a story. It’s a personal story. It’s a personal story about a couple of my kids.
So once upon a time, about three years ago, I decided to take two of my kids to India. Well, we got on a plane. We booked the whole trip in India, a very sophisticated trip, about four different places to travel around. And we got in. We took off.
And then the air hostess brings around those landing cards. So I start filling them in. So I start filling them in and it’s written there, visa number. What visa number? Do you know that to go to India with a British passport, you need a visa? Not many of you do. I didn’t. I didn’t get the visa. I didn’t think about the visa. I just booked the trip for two weeks, a very, very good, sophisticated program, but no visa.
So how does it link to optimism and resilience? Well, I stopped crying in Heathrow. My 10-year-old at that point, who is very high on emotional intelligence, spent the whole flight there and back, cuddling me and saying, “Mom, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. It’s all right if you’re going to get through.”
And my oldest son, 12 at that point, who’s very, very, very high on optimism, well, it took him about 20 minutes to turn around and say, “Mom, you think, you know what? I think it’s not the end of the world at all. I’m actually enjoying this trip very much. I have this feeling that I’m going to be able to play my game boy as much as I want, and you’re not going to tell me off.” So I can guarantee to you, optimism does result in resilience. I have the first-hand proof of it.
Well, there are some other benefits. In fact, well-being does lead to longevity. There is a very famous study of positive psychology actually demonstrating that nuns who were much happier lived about nine years longer than nuns in the same convent who were actually less happy.
Optimism does lead — well-being does lead to less vulnerability to illness. If you put happy people in the lab and expose them to cold, they’re actually much less likely to catch it, as demonstrated by the weight of the tissues as a result. Happy people are much more sociable. They’re more trusting. They’re more helpful. They’re actually less hostile, and they’re overall better people, so not necessarily self-centered. So hopefully I actually demonstrated to you that teaching well-being and happiness does make some sense.
So how can we teach happiness? Where should we teach happiness? I propose, first of all, at school, and of course at home. But what are those skills that we need to teach?
First of all, we need to teach what happiness is not, and what happiness is not is, first of all, it’s not pleasure.
Pleasure is nice. Pleasure is very pleasant. I like massage as well, but massage actually doesn’t buy you long-term happiness, unfortunately. Massage doesn’t protect you from lots of important events in life. What is happiness is not as well? It’s actually not beauty.
We strive for beauty. Look at all the magazines, look at all the media, look everywhere. We all strive for beauty, yet more beautiful people are actually not happier, in fact, than the rest of us.
Happiness is not money. Happiness is not about money, because very simply, people who are much richer are only a little bit, tiny, tiny little bit happier than the rest of us. So money doesn’t buy happiness either, and happiness is not power.
In fact, all of this contributes to the phenomenon very well known as affluenza. So this is precisely what is not happiness. What should we teach?
Skills for Happiness
Well, one of the skills to teach is how to cope with the so-called tyranny of choice. We all know that choice is good, right? We are all in a system which is where we are exposed to choices, and yes, some choice is good, but not too much choice.
The problem is when we’re exposed to too much choice, when we have 220 pairs of trainers in front of us, and we don’t know which ones to buy, this choice is actually not helpful, because when we’re exposed to too much choice, it actually has the opposite effect. We shut down. We are not able to choose, and the more we try to choose, the more we try to actually maximize the so-called phenomenon of maximization, the less happy we actually become.
So one skill to teach is how to choose, and which situations to choose, and which situations we can actually refuse from making a choice. Another skill to teach is about the danger of comparison. Very simply, if you want to be unhappy, try to choose somebody who is doing better than you, and keep comparing.
It’s the best way. Really works. And if you want to be happy, either A, try not to compare, or B, try to compare with somebody who is doing worse.
So one or another. The problem is the better we do in life, the more we still continue comparing upwards, and this is the killer for well-being, and this is a very important skill to teach. Third point, the hazard of habituation.
You know, 20 years ago, kids used to turn up to school with an apple. Okay, now there’s nothing really changed. They still turn up with an apple, just the price has changed a little bit.
So another little problem with the apple is that they keep updating all the time. So a year later, they want the next one, and of a different color. The problem, again, is that we get used to things, especially to material things, very, very fast.
The usual adaptation period is three months. Really, for material things, it’s actually much faster. So it doesn’t matter what you buy, you still get used to it, and your kids get used to it, and probably even faster than you.
So you can buy an iPod, an iPad, next computer, next generation of anything else, and next mobile phone. They still get used to it, and one month, two months, three months later, they still want the next thing that just came out. So keep doing it if you wish, but that’s not going to help them, and it’s not probably going to help you either, in terms of your pocket money, whatever is left from it.
Another point, very important, the negativity bias. What is negativity bias? It’s that actually our brain is functioning in such a way that we pick up negative information much better and much quicker than all the positive information out there.
And what does it mean? It means that actually, if somebody told you you are good, and if somebody just gave you criticism, you walk out remembering the criticism. Have you ever had a performance review, when your boss told you five, ten things you are brilliant at, and just mentioned one little thing that’s not working so well, and you walk out thinking of what?
Well, your kids think of exactly the same, because the negative information is much more powerful than the positive information. And to counteract this, we need to work on increasing positive emotions. And what we know from science, is that in order to counteract the negative effect of negative emotions, we need three times as many positive emotions in our life, to actually counterbalance.
So working on increasing these positive emotions is again an essential skill. So the next step is really fundamentally changing the way you look in the world, and your kids look at the world. Is the glass half full, or is it half empty?
And again, there are things to learn, there are things to do. So for example, we have the NAM process, that we teach to many children in many, many, many different schools across the country. It’s a very simple process, how to deal with negative emotions.
We get the kids to wear an elastic band, and every time they feel a negative emotion, they click it. Okay, very, very simple. When we first introduced it to teachers though, the teachers turned around and said, “Do you really think I’m going to give my 30 boys elastic bands?
Do you know what’s going to happen?” Actually, this didn’t happen. What did happen? The kids did wear the elastic band, and so did their parents, and they clicked them every time they experienced negative emotions.
Going to the step number two, the UBIT, is understand. So once you notice the negative emotion, try to understand why is it there, where is it coming from, and what is going to happen if it’s not stopped? What’s going to be the spiral effect of this negative emotion?
Step number three is manage. How do we manage negative emotions? Some of this we know spontaneously, some of this we actually need science, the science to tell us.
So the best way to manage the negative emotions is to remember the acronym ACT, which is Active, Calming, or Thinking Intervention. Active intervention, the best one is exercise. If you have a chance to go for a run around the block when you are stressed out, that’s the quickest and the best solution, completely scientifically proven.
If you have a chance to calm down and meditate for two minutes, we know for example that schools that have done meditation trials with all of their kids are showing remarkable results. Again, this is one of the best ways to calm down negative emotions, and if you have a chance just to think, okay, taking everything into account what good is in this situation, again that would help as well. And then step number four is built on the positive emotions.
Developing Resilience in Kids
So moving on, how do we develop resilience in kids? So we developed a program on resilience, teaching children to identify cognitive processes that go on in their own mind when they’re exposed to different situations. Because what we do know from science is if we notice the cognitive explanations of negative events, that when these events take place, we can actually affect the emotional outcomes of these events.
To put it very simply, we introduce kids to something called parrots of perception, or little imaginary creatures sitting on their shoulder telling them what to think. And we all have these parrots, these explanatory spells represented as metaphorical figures. Well, some of us have the blamer parrot, whatever happens, it’s all your fault.
Some of us have the judge parrot, whatever happens, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, the system is all against me, it’s absolutely not right. Some of us have the warrior parrot, oh my god, oh my god, what’s going to happen in the future? Everything is going to collapse.
Some of us have the faulty parrot, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, I didn’t prepare well enough, it’s all my fault. Some of us have the loser, my god, I’m useless, I’m just useless, I want to disappear somewhere, you know? And some of us, especially teenagers, have the whatever parrot.
Does it look like I care? Okay, you recognize this one, don’t you? I have it every day from 4.
Okay, once you recognize the parrot, then the next step is to consider, is the parrot right or wrong? We actually put the parrot on trial and look for alternatives and evidence, and usually it turns out that the parrot is not completely right. It may be a little bit right, but usually it’s a little bit wrong.
If somebody has just failed an exam, yes, perhaps the teacher is against them and really selected all the wrong questions, but there is a good chance that they actually didn’t prepare well enough either. So it’s about thinking and learning to think in such a way that you actually balance the evidence and alternatives, and you actually come out with an accurate perception of reality. So think about your own personal aviary after this talk.
Well, another step is to develop resilience muscles. Resilience is developed when we have family, friends, and close people around us to help us in difficult situations. Resilience is developed when we know what our strengths are, what we are really, really good at.
Resilience is developed when we have the high level of self-efficacy or have some evidence from the past that we were able to overcome difficult events in our past previously, and resilience is developed when we have positive emotions in our life. Research does show that, in fact, when you teach children the skills, their resilience does go up and actually continues staying up a year later. Research does show that when you teach your skills, their depression levels do go down, and even if they do come back up later on, they’re actually still lower than in a control group, because what is happening during teenagehood is that actually, unfortunately, depression keeps rising year by year.
So, as already mentioned before, I am a psychologist, and I do know all of these things from science, but not only from science. These are my life qualifications, mine is the monkey. Between me and my husband, we have four teenagers and one baby.
Teenagers age 13, 14, 15, and 16. So, I do live this every day. Of course, every day, or nearly every day, I have an ill baby or a child.
Every day, I have somebody forgetting something. Every day, I have either cigarettes in the bag, or bad notes from school, bad marks from school, of course, and this is the actual life. So, can you build resilience and well-being during these circumstances?
Yes, you can. It takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot and a lot of patience, but it is possible.
And just to finish, one of my current projects, I’m working with the government of Bhutan to develop guidelines for UN on how to develop happiness-based public policy, and there is a lot of really good work going on this project, and I would like to finish with the quote from this project on positive education. “We see education for well-being as contributing to a solution of achieving the new economic paradigm, especially if it is guided by the values of altruism, compassion, respect, responsibility, indigenous values, and becoming a complete human being. In fact, we believe that education that shows concern for others enlarges the person, rather than diminishing their uniqueness.
Becoming a good human being is about learning to take greater pleasure in contributing to the flourishing of others than your own.” Thank you very much.