Positive brains en succes: waar begint geluk?

29 april 2012

Veel mensen denken dat ze moeten werken om gelukkig te zijn, maar zou het kunnen dat de volgorde niet klopt? In deze snelle en onderhoudende talk van TEDxBloomington betoogt psycholoog Shawn Achor dat geluk feitelijk de inspiratiebron vormt van productiviteit.

Een TEDtalk van ruim 12 minuten met Nederlandse ondertitels.



http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

Een korte transcriptie..

So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking -- two. But if I'm interested in potential, if I'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.

If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?"scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towards the average. Now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. We're hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. We'll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again. But normal is merely average.

And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average. Then instead of deleting those positive outliers,what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you. Because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.''