哈佛公开课：幸福课第一课英文字幕(3)

as "Ok, so what have I learned? I need to work even harder." You become more energized. You learned from the experience. In other words, the same objective information which is "I got eighth; I expected top three". The same information, very different interpretation. One is a disaster, the other interpretation is an opportunity. One leads to loss of energy, the other one to increasing energy. Or think about another very common example. We know of many people around the world who seemingly have everything, who are doing well, who have more than they need. And yet they are unhappy.

And then there are people around the world who have very little. And yet they never cease, never stop to celebrate life. And we have another way around as well. People who have everything and appreciate it and enjoy life. People who have very little and who see themselves as victim. In other words, it's not just the information that goes in. It's also the shape, the interpretation, the perception, the focus. And that is determined by the shape of the form. This is what I realized when I was an undergrad here. Seemingly, looking in from the outside, I had everything. Doing well (in) sports, academics and socially. And yet my perception, my focus, my interpretation of life-- not that great. I wasn't happy. The interpretation matters very often a lot more as we'll see than the information that goes in. One of the sentences that I'll repeat throughout the class is that happiness is much more contingent on our state of mind than our status or the state of our bank account. And that's where transformation comes in. And that's why it's so important for wellbeing. What that will look like in practice is that we'll cover not so much information. We'll uncover much more and I don't mean that in the Berkeley (George Berkeley) sense of the word.I mean that in the academic sense of the word. In other words, what we'll do is uncover potential that we have inside, that we have inside of us all along. Maybe we just didn't see. Or maybe it's obscured by something or another. We'll uncover it so that we can utilize it, so that we can focus on it, so that we can perceive it. Here is a story just to illustrate it. So this is Michelangelo.One day he was asked by a journalist of his time, "how did you create this most amazing masterpiece, David?", to which Michelangelo responded, "it was easy. I went to the quarry. I saw this huge piece of marble. And in it I saw David. All I needed to do was to chip away the excess stone, to get rid of the marble that shouldn't have been there. And when I got rid of this excess stone, there was David. " Not obviously easier said than done. But the story captured the metaphor of what this class very much is about. It's about chipping away the excess stone. It's about getting rid of limitations, of barriers, whether it's the fear of failure, something that we didn't have as kids. But today most people in our culture have it. It's about chipping away perfectionism that is debilitating and often hurts us. It's about chipping away our ability for success, because maybe we are afraid of success. Maybe we feel guilty about some of the things that we have in our life, and that in turn limits us. Maybe it's about chipping away the limitations on our relationships in while we don't thrive within them.This is what this class is mostly about. As Dero (?) says, "soul grows more by subtraction than by addition", by getting rid of these limitations, limitations that are preventing us from fulfilling our potential. Because our potential is in there in nature. We talk a lot about human nature. It's there whether it's through God, whether it's through evolution. We have a lot of potential that over time with we fix (?) stone of voices with being part of our culture that very often these limitations are put on top of us just like the excess stone. Lao Tzu, "In pursuit of knowledge every day something is acquired. In pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped." Knowledge is about information. Wisdom is about transformation. I was recently interviewed for a newsletter on coaching before a large conference on the topic. And the interviewer asked me, "So what tips, what tools can you give from positive psychology?"So I talked about some of "the greatest hits": the importance of gratitude, the importance of physical exercise. I talked about the importance of spending time on our relationships, about taking time aside and simplifying and so on and so on. As I was going through my long list, she stopped me and she said, "You know Tal, this is all good. The importance of stuff, I know. But our readers already know that. I am looking for the Wow factor. Come on, surprise me. What can you tell our readers?" And I thought about this question for a minute and I realized that there is no Wow. And I told her that, "you know if there is a wow, the wow is that there is no wow." That's it. Because the over-not-transformation emperor, the emperor of quick fixes has no clothes.It doesn't exist. it's over-promising and under-delivering. A life, a fulfilling life, a rich life includes ups and downs, includes pain and getting up again, includes failure and getting up again. It includes success and celebrating it. Victories and losses, ups and downs, as we'll talk about next week. It's not about this one secret. One Wow to the good life. And many of the things you will learn in this class, you've heard of before. Probably nothing new to you. You already know it inside of you. And you are going to say, "Well, it is common sense." And yes, a lot of it is common sense. However, it is Voltaire once said, "Common sense is not that common." And this especially applies to application. So the aim of this class is to make common sense more common, especially in the real world application. At the end of the class …… 此处隐藏：10476字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……