The TED Assignment - Research Paper Example

Every human being living on this planet wants one thing for sure, i.e. happiness. Whether that happiness comes from having enough food to eat, havinggood quality education, a nice big home, someone to love, a family, friends you hang out with, having luxuries that bring ease to your life, or simply enjoying little things in life. We all want to be happy, but what makes us happy varies from person to person. I listened to various people and their idea of happiness and living a wonderful life on TED Talks, and I found out that everyone has a different way of looking at life and happiness based on their research, experience and beliefs. In this essay I will discuss a few of the videos and how they believe one should lead their lives. The first video I saw was by Amy Purdy who lost her legs due to bacterial meningitis. At that time, she was devastated and wondered how she was going to fulfil her dream of traveling the world and of snowboarding. But then she realized that she had an option to take her life in the direction she wanted to take. So she accepted the fact that she doesn’t have real legs anymore and will have to bear with the artificial ones. She imagined herself to keep walking, helping people and snowboarding again. And this is the life she chose. She became creative about the artificial legs and customized them according to her needs. She failed, slipped, fell many times, but she would not let go of hope that easily. This was when she understood one of the most important life’s lessons: Obstacles do only two things to you-make you stop or force you to be creative. (Purdy, 2011) Her story tells you that one has two options when faced by a real tragedy: you can whine, be depressed, let go of hope and life or look right into the eyes of the world and follow your dreams irrespective of how many obstacles lay in front of you. These obstacles might stop you from doing something the way normally people do, but they also help you to imagine and discover new ways of following your dreams, living life to the fullest and being happy. Another speaker at Ted, Shawn Achor, a researcher and teacher of positive psychology talks about the formula of happiness. He argues that we always talk about what average people think, believe and do. We research on people and we generalize them as average people. He believes that “if we study what is merely average, we will remain average”. Furthermore he talks about the general perception of life and happiness. He argues that our happiness is mostly characterized by the perception of external world. Most of the people think that in life you first work hard, then you achieve success and success gives you happiness. But the real problem comes when you achieve a goal, your definition of success changes. So later on you start hunting for a new goal and you happiness is not long term because it is subjected to the achievement of a certain goal. He suggests that instead of finding happiness in achieving goals, if we reverse the formula and be happy in the present moment, it can create wonders. Research suggests that 75% of job success is because of optimism. This is because when you are happy, you generate positive energy and that positive energy helps you to be more creative, more intelligent and more hardworking. Your brain becomes 31% more productive because of the positive attitude and thus success comes easy to you. Shawn suggests that we reverse our typical formula of happiness and train our brain to think positively by appreciating simple things in life, doing little things to make others happy and our soul purified, and to cherish positive experiences of our lives. (Achor, 2011) I believe that this is a very excellent approach to life. It is rather impossible to find happiness in never ending goals, in a huge bank balance, or dreams that need to be fulfilled. What makes us happy more is the present moment. If we cherish the good times of our lives and celebrate the beauty of the present moment, we can generate positive energy and that can help us in being smarter at work. Dan Gilbert, another speaker at Ted and author of ‘stumbling on happiness’ gives a very new view of happiness. He talks about the difference between natural happiness and synthetic happiness. He talks about this dilemma that has gripped all of us with the thought that if we do not get what we want, we will be devastated and miserable. He talks about the perception people have of natural happiness and synthetic happiness. Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we want; whereas synthetic happiness is what we make when we do not get what we want. Many people believe that synthetic happiness is of inferior quality to natural happiness. He argues that happiness can be synthesized as well as found. He argues that people can be happy even if things do not go as planned. He says that we create an impact bias of overestimating the hedonic impact of future events. People think that failing a test, losing a partner, getting hurt can lead to a devastated life. Dan however, believes that you can create happiness in all circumstances. His mission is to make people accept the things that they cannot change and to be happy in those circumstances. He mentions that our immune system works best when we are stuck or trapped. (Gilbert, 2004) I believe he is right in this way that one can create and synthesize happiness in even bad circumstances. But many would say that it is like ‘faking’ happiness. There is a difference between faking happiness in worst of all circumstances and synthesizing it to find happiness in little things. Just like Shawn above talks about finding happiness in the present moment, in little things, or just like Amy’s story. Amy’s story is the perfect example of synthesizing happiness in the worst of all circumstances. What she did was exactly what Dan talks about here: creating happiness when things don’t go the way you expect them to. So she was happy irrespective of what happened. In fact, she accepted the tough realities of her life and became creative on how she can live beyond the limits. However, if you see it this way that one only synthesize happiness rather that find it, it will be a fake life you may live. It will be a life without dreams, without goals that will make you happy, without having real happiness in your heart from what you like and what you want. Synthetic happiness, I believe is good but it can only be helpful as long as it used only when needed; when you need a different lens to see life through. Neil Pasricha one of the greatest bloggers who runs his blog ‘1000 awesome things’, talk about his story of how he focused on the positive aspects of life and became awesome. Having lost his financial stability, his wife whom he loved a lot, his best friend; he was devastated. But Neil knew that he could not live life like this. He took a different approach to life and started blogging about simple and awesome things in life for example having a waitress to refill you glass without asking or wearing warm underpants. He was most surprised when he got the best blogger award. Neil in this talks mentions three ‘A’s of being awesome. He talks about Attitude as being the first A. He reiterates the same fact that Amy Purdy in her story talks about. He says that if you face any tragedy or anything that is bad for you, you have two options: you can be hurt, gloomy, disappointed and miserable; or you can choose to face the future with bright eyes, full of hope and happiness. The second ‘A’ he talks about is being aware of your surroundings. When a 3 year old looks at the world, s/he looks at it with great curiosity. Even the simple things amuse him/her and most extraordinary look just fine. Neil says that you need to be aware of each and everything in this world and look at it with awe as if seeing it for the first time. This will help you to notice the many things you otherwise do not notice. The third ‘A’ he talks about is authenticity, which is being true to yourself. He argues that one can be awesome and find happiness if s/he lives life the way that makes him or her happy contrary to what the external world feels about it. (Pasricha. 2010) Overall, Neil emphasizes on the fact that there are so many things to be happy about. We humans are blessed with a lot of things that we cannot even count. As Quran, the holy scripture of Muslims says, “which one of the favours of your lord that you will deny?” And the book talks about the countless blessings that God has bestowed upon all of us. Another way of looking at happiness was given by Graham Hill, a writer and designer who talks about being happy with less stuff. In his short talk, he talks about having less space to enjoy more happiness. He gives out three rules of editing your life. First he talks about editing ruthlessly, whether it being getting rid of clothes that you do not need anymore, or the furniture you do not use. Then he talks about using smaller things, For example having a small fridge instead of a big one if there are just a few people living in your home. Third is about using multifunctional house ware. (Hill, 2011) Though it may sound absurd that having less space, little things to use will give you happiness, but when you look at the bigger picture, you may see that it leads to lesser cost, less clutter in your life, less tension about keeping and maintaining the large space and things. This little tip about finding happiness with less stuff is truly inspirational. The last talk that I am going to discuss is the most famous and inspirational talk of Steve jobs. Steve jobs, the founder of Apple and Pixar, in his address to Stanford’s students talks about how to live before you die. In his talk, he relates different stories of his life and how these events impacted his life. The main thing he talks about is connecting the dots which he relates by his own story of being adopted, going to college, dropping out, getting into a calligraphy classes, forming Apple, getting fired from Apple, forming Pixar and then joining Apple back. He reiterates that you can only connect the dots by looking forward, by not looking backward. He also talks about loving what you do and doing what you love. He talks about the fact that love and loss teaches you a lot on life. Next he talks about remembering death. He emphasizes that death can teach you what makes you happy the most. His inspirational tale helps you determine what you would want to do before you die. So that you understand what you actually want to do while you live. I think all of these stories have one thing in common: they talk about our potential to find happiness everywhere in this world. This shows that happiness is something innate, it belongs to our hearts; we can find it in the world we create through our imagination and our actions. Happiness cannot be characterized by something external. It is always related to our feelings, attitudes and perception about the external world. We all know that happiness is a lifelong quest for many people. But these talks explain that happiness can be in the present moment, in what we do now, in how we respond to life and its challenges. Bibliography Achor, Shawn. "The happy secret to better work." Tedx Bloomington, May 2011. 2 April 2012. . Gilbert, Dan. "Why are we happy?" TED, Feb 2004. 2 April 2012. . Hill, Graham. "Less stuff, more happiness." Ted, March 2011. 4 April 2012. . Pasricha, Neil. "The 3 As of being awesome." Tedx Toronoto, September 2010. 4 April 2012. . Purdy, Amy. "Living beyond limits." Ted Talks, November 2011. 1 April 2012. . Read More