Leo Bormans, the author of The World Book of Happiness, presents Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty? The Final Proof! at TEDxGhent…
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Is the glass half full or half empty – The final proof! Leo Bormans at TEDxGhent
TRANSCRIPT:
We are in crisis, left behind, always harder, seldom kind. Then we feel what might be missed is the power of an optimist. The question we always ask, worldwide, when we are talking about happiness, is whether the glass is half full or half empty.
Well, I promise you that we’ll give the answer to that question today. But then we have to go back to our personal youth. You have become an ambassador of creativity, you are an ambassador of courage, of innovation, of organization. We all are ambassadors of some strength.
Where did we learn that? When I was a kid of 4, 5 years old, my father was a salesman. He took me to small grocery shops in Limburg, that’s a small province in Belgium. And they turned upside down an old vegetable box. I would be standing on it and recite poems. And then I got an ice cream. I got lots of ice cream in my youth.
And in fact, when I’m talking today on this thing, what did they do? They turned an old vegetable box upside down, I’m standing on it, reciting a poem, and hopefully get an ice cream afterwards. That’s the way it works. We have all become the people, we have become thanks to positive strength, thanks to someone who has told you you are good at something. We learn to support through positive engagement, through encouraging each other. We don’t learn anything through cynicism or through indifference.
When I was traveling the world, I met in Nepal and in India the word ‘namaste’.
But when an American says ‘hello’, it doesn’t mean anything. Namaste means three things: I bow for the god in you. I’ve seen you. There is something positive in you and I bow for that, deeply. Teachers tell this to students. Students to teachers, all over, everyday, 100 times. I’ve seen you. There is a positive strength in you. And I bow deeply for that.
Well, wouldn’t we live in another world if people would say that and mean it? And life is not a party. I’m not driving the country in a car full of balloons. We all have our ride on sadness. If I open the door of your heart, there is a lot of sadness and trouble and sorrow in it. We all have that. It’s not about that. I hate the song ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. I changed the motto into ‘Do worry, be happy’.
There is something going wrong in the world, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be happy. Everyone is looking for happiness all over, it’s a universal quest.
And I asked 100 professors in 50 countries to summarize in 1000 words what we know about happiness, not what we believe, but what we know about happiness. Well, we found out that we have been focusing on the wrong things. We have been studying psychology, sociology, economics. That’s what’s it about: It’s not only about philosophy. It’s not about sunflowers and balloons, it’s about science. We have been studying the wrong things. We know quite a lot about schizophrenia, paranoia, but most of the people are not schizophrenics or paranoiacs.
The opposite of bad is ‘not bad’, but that’s not the same as good. The opposite of unhappy is ‘not unhappy’, but that’s not the same as happy. So when we could study what makes people happy and broaden that knowledge, we could become happier citizens.
And we know the relationship between optimism and happiness is quite big, it’s quite important. The relationship between smoking and lung cancer is the same as the relationship between optimism and happiness. When you smoke, you get lung cancer. When you are an optimist, you become happy. And when you’re happier, you’re healthier and successful: in sports, in science, in friendship.
Why don’t you want to become an optimist? We know out of science that 50% of optimism is about genetics. It’s about what we got from our parents, our grandparents and so on. So 10% is due to the circumstances, that’s the house we have, the job we have. 40% is left for what is between our ears. That’s the mindset, that’s the way we look at things. This 50% of genetics, we cannot change. This 10% of circumstances, we’re we focusing all day long. And the 40% is what we have in our own hands.
Don’t you think that happy people experience more happy things than unhappy people? We all experience more or less the same things in our lives but the optimists give a double weight to the positive things, and the pessimists give a double weight to the negative things. That’s the choice we have. Optimism is a combination of belief and behavior. You start believing that things will come out and you behave like that.
Well, one of the professors taught me the lesson that there are red buttons and green buttons in society. The red buttons are the pessimists. The green buttons are the optimists. And you can see that immediately when you talk to someone, in 3 minutes, I immediately know whether you are a green or a red button.
Shall I teach you? You can know that in 3 minutes. The red buttons are always talking about themselves, the past and problems. The green buttons are talking about we, us, the future and solutions. It’s not about I, it’s about we. It’s not about the past, it’s about the future. It’s not about problems, it’s about solutions.
And when you succeed in connecting the green buttons in an organization, in a school, in a street, in your family, the red buttons become irrelevant.
A woman came to me last week. She said, “Well, that’s nice about the green buttons and the red buttons, but I’m married to a red button. What do I have to do now?”
So we know that optimism and pessimism are spreading like a virus. It’s like a virus. It’s the optimism as well as the pessimism. You know that. When someone enters who is an optimist, you become an optimist yourself. And we see that in the study that regions full of optimists, they influence each other. Workfloors influence each other.
And I’m not talking about stupid things. It’s only a few weeks ago, the United Nations, for the first time in history, published a World Report on Happiness. And that’s full of statistics that really prove that the new priority is needed. And we’re talking in that report — not only on the gross national product, but on gross national happiness. This is a system that works in Bhutan, as you know a country in the Himalayas. And the Prime Minister of Bhutan was invited to New York to come and talk there. We have been laughing of Bhutan, but now it has become an example of good practice.
And they are not only measuring work, they are measuring harmony: work and the hours of sleep. They are measuring physical health and mental health. They are measuring in education knowledge and values. It’s about harmony and we can learn quite a lot of that.
Yes, indeed when Herman Van Rompuy wrote a letter to 200 leaders of the world to make “happiness, hope and positive thinking, quality of life in our policies and our social behavior a priority”, I was glad, I was holding his hand while he was writing that letter. So the quote he says, “Cynics will immediately dismiss these proposals as naive, but positive thinking is no longer something for drifters and dreamers.” It’s a science. We can measure it and we can do positive interventions.
If we measure on a scale of 1 to 10, Zimbabwe has 2.8 on happiness, China 6.4, Denmark 8.3. There is an influence of social policy on the numbers of people who are happy and we can change that. And we can make these new priorities.
Do you know that how many — when you see the publicity of lotteries worldwide, it’s always about sunshine and palm trees. I don’t know whether you know how many palm trees there are in Denmark, but not that many. It’s not about sunshine.
When we compare the most happiest countries to the countries that are not happy at all, we don’t see a difference in sunshine or palm trees. It is about trust. When people trust each other, and trust the institutions, they are more happier. And when there is more equality in a country, then people are happier, the rich and the poor, the men and the women. Everybody can be happier. And let’s go for a happier world for all and not only for less misery, but for a better world.
The best-selling sign in the West is not any more ‘Welcome’ but ‘Beware of the dog’. Beware of the dog. We have become afraid of everything. There is fear of everything. We are afraid of the Muslims, of the Chinese, of everything. And closed down in our houses, we are killing ourselves in suicides. We have bought our dogs and our alarm systems.
But the great problem in our society is not aggression or violence. It’s about solitude. In our houses, there is fear. Well, we could change that. And the media play an important role on that. There has been a time that journals were called ‘Der Spiegel’, the mirror. They are not the mirror of society any more. They have become the keyholes of society, focusing on conflict, on measuring conflict, all again and again, making people afraid.
We have quite a lot of studies that people who have seen the journal, and read the papers, have become more and more afraid. The reality is the same, but they become afraid reading all these stories. They are focusing on a message of distrust and fear.
Do you know what the opposite of fear is? The opposite of fear is hope. And a crisis is an opportunity. Do you know the pessimists will never solve the crisis? There has never been built the statue for pessimists.
There are more optimists in the world. There are more. But the pessimists make more noise. You know that at meetings and gatherings, the pessimists always make more noise. The pessimists are still living in the holes and the caves. The optimists have came out of the caves and holes watching for the fire, watching for the future. And publicity knows that very well: watches all over, always picture at 10 past 10. Would you buy this watch if it would be 20 past 7? You wouldn’t buy it. It’s a smile that sells.
Well, if they tell me that happiness doesn’t sell, I don’t believe that. Do you know what’s the best sold meal in the world? Happy meals! Don’t tell me that happiness doesn’t sell.
But it is not about pleasure. We found out in positive psychology, we thought that happiness was about pleasure. It’s not about pleasure, it’s not about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. I hope you have lots of it, but you won’t be happy for that. It is about satisfaction.
We are moving from a money economy to a satisfaction economy. And there are 5 elements that build up our satisfaction. Worldwide, these 5 elements build up our satisfaction.
First thing is the quality of our relationships. The most important thing: our family, our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors.
The second thing is our health. Optimists live longer. They live longer. They have better immune systems. And it’s about work. Work doesn’t only give you an income, work gives structure and meaning to life. Losing your work and your job is as important as losing your wife. It is dangerous. In regions in which people have less employment, they are less happy as well.
Money is important, but not that important as we thought. When you have once enough money to cover the basic needs, more money makes you more jealous, more envy, more trouble, more competition; so more money doesn’t make us happier. That’s the reason why Mexico for instance is happier than France. The gross national product of Mexico is one-tenth of that of France.
And the last thing that is important for our satisfaction is freedom. It’s about freedom. Not only political freedom, democracy, but freedom of choice we can make.
And then we can go for a movement for happiness. That’s not naive. We’re meeting people all over the world. I’m traveling as an ambassador of happiness and quality of life now, all over the world and we meet quite a lot of people who are really expressing their dreams. In the factories, in business, in schools, all over, we have seen that the old priorities don’t work. So it’s not the question that we don’t know what to do. We don’t do what we know.
And then we need infospiration, evidence-based material. We will not change the world by information, we will change the world by inspiration. And meetings like this will inspire people. Based on evidence-based knowledge, we’ll inspire people by infospiration. In a complex world, people have lost their way. It’s a labyrinth. It has become a labyrinth. But we make each other happen. Not only we make each other happy, we make each other happen. Let’s become trustful lighthouses for each other. And everybody has that strength in himself. We don’t have to wait that long any more.
We don’t see the things and the people as they are. We see the things and the people as we are. So we don’t have to change the things and the people. We have to change ourselves, and that’s merely the way we look at things.
There was a grandfather who came to me in the Netherlands, after a lecture. And he told me, “I have eight grandchildren.” And he showed me a picture of a young girl of 15 years old, fair hair, and he said, “This is my favorite grandchild. She is born blind. But when I walk with her through the woods and the city, I hear more, I smell more, I see more, I feel more. She is the pearl of our family.”
He could easily have said, “Well, she is born blind and that’s the burden of our family.” He could not change that reality. He could change the way he looked at that reality.
And that’s the final answer: Is this glass half full or is it half empty?
Well, we know. Stop looking at your life and your work like this glass. Watch your life and your work and your family and your own strengths like this glass. There’s the same water in it, but if you keep on focusing on all the things you don’t have and you still aspire, and you want and you want, you will never become happy.
When you are satisfied with the life you have, and you see, lot of strengths you have, lot of possibilities, experiences, things you have done, and you felt ‘My God!’ and luckily this glass is not full. It’s a stupid thing to think that we will be happy for 100% one day. It’s stupid. It’s not the aim.
But we have the choice to look at our life like this glass, full of emptiness, and things we will never achieve, or see what is the strength, and still leave some certain things that will set those goals, and make us believe that we can set some goals that we can still do something. Light has been discovered in darkness. And the only thing you really need on the journey of your life, is this thing. And I wish this thing to accompany you wherever you go. It’s a telescope.
A telescope has dramatically changed the way we look at the stars. A pessimist focuses on all the troubles at the end and paralyzed by fear, he will never come into action. An optimist focuses on all the possibilities and dreams and driven by hope, he comes into action. And of course he knows there are some obstacles. But a telescope has this universal characteristic that you can turn it around. And that obstacle, that might seem huge obstacle, might be a small one. And you will come into action.
A pessimist focuses on who he is. An optimist focuses on who he might become. To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To the man with a telescope, everything looks like a thing that can be seen from a new perspective.
I wish you all a very good telescope in the journey of your life.
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