哈佛公开课：幸福课第一课英文字幕(4)

back of that mask? That was a quality item there, wasn't it?That was good for about 10 seconds before it snapped out of that cheap little staple they put it in there with. You go to your first house: "Trick or..." Snap!" It broke. I don't believe it!" "Wait up you guys! I gotta fix it! Hey wait up! Wait up!" Kids don't say "wait". They say "wait up! Hey wait up!" Coz when you are little your life is up. Your future is up. Everything you want is up. "Wait up! Hold up! Shut up! Momma, clean up! Let me stay up!" Parents of course are just the opposite. Everything is down. "Just calm down! Slow down! Calm down here! Sit down. Put that down!" So again this curiosity, this looking up, this opening up is opposed to closing down that kids have. This notion. This is what I hope will happen in this class. The one real objective of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.So here is a longitudinal study that was done by John Carter. John Carter, professor of leadership management of the business school across the river, came to Harvard in 1972, joined the faculty and started to follow Harvard class, MBA class of 1973 and followed them through 20 years. And what he was interested in was to find all the information he could about this class. What he found 20 years later, early 90s when this study ended was these students were extremely successful, Or ex-students were extremely successful, students were extremely successful, very wealthy, having a lot of impact, whether it's on the organizations, on the community. They did extremely well. But within the large group of highly successful Harvard MBAs, he found a small group that was extraordinarily successful, more successful than the rest of group, whether in terms of income, whether in terms of impact, whether in terms of overall quality of life. Extraordinarily successful. What he wanted to identify was why-- what distinguishes this small group from the rest of the pack: very successful, but not quite as successful as that small group. And he found only two things. It was not their IQs that made no difference whatsoever to their long-term success.It was not where they came from, pre-MBA, what they did had nothing to do with it. Two and two things along mattered in terms of determining who will be the extraordinarily successful and the rest: the first thing was the extraordinarily successful groups really believe in themselves. They thought they could do well. They were driven. They were motivated. And we'll talk about it in future lecture as belief in self-fulfilling prophecies. They thought "I'm going to make it. I'm going to succeed." That's the first thing. The sense of the confidence. The second thing that he found was this group, they were always asking questions, --always asking questions, initially of their boss, later of their employees, of their partners, children, parents, friends. They were always asking question. They were always at the state of curiosity. Always looking up, opening up, wanting to understand the world the more. They didn't say "Now I have my MBA. That's it. I know enough. " They were life-long learners. They were always asking questions. These two distinguishing characteristics account for the difference between the extraordinarily successful and those who were successful.The question that has guided me whether it's in writing the book, whether it's in creating this class, whether it's first and foremost my personal life is what I call "the question of the question", which is "how can we help ourselves and others, individuals, communities and society become happier?" Note that it is not about helping ourselves and others become happy. It is about becoming happier. Why? Because many people ask me, "So Tal, are you happy?" And I can't really answer that question. I don't know what it means. How do I determine whether or not I am happy? Is it compared to someone else? Is there a certain point beyond which I become happy? Happiness is not a binary either-or, zero-one-- either I'm happy or I'm unhappy. Happiness resides on a continuum. So my answer to this question-- "am I happy?" is today I'm happier than I was 15 years ago when I started focusing on this pursuit.15 years from now I certainly hope to be happier than I am today. Happiness is lifelong pursuit. Hopefully this class is part of that pursuit, but just part. You'll not be happy at the end of class. Hopefully you'll be happier. Cos many people sit here during the lectures on self-esteem, for example, or when we talk explicitly about happiness, they say, "Wait. Do I have self-esteem?"-- Thinking to themselves. "Do I have high self-esteem or low self-esteem?" Irrelevant. Impossible to answer also. The question is "how can I improve my self-esteem, my healthy self-esteem, not narcissism of course? How can I become happier?" That's an important question. And this is the question of questions. This class is not a survey of positive psychology.If you want a survey on positive psychology, I can recommend some excellent textbooks whether it's by Lopez (Shane J. Lopez) or by Peterson (Chris Peterson). Great textbooks. There is also The Handbook of Positive Psychology which is a huge book with most what you want to know about this field. You can also use it in self-defense. Very useful in that respect. But a wonderful book, very well-written, very accessible in the spirit of positive psychology. But this is not that. This is not a survey of positive psychology. What it is is a selective exploration of the question of the questions. In that way, it is eclectic. My background is in psychology and philosophy. I studies organizational behavior. I worked as a consultant in business for a few years. Still do some work there. I worked in the field of education, doing a lot of work in …… 此处隐藏：10456字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……