I choice a fast passed and funny TED talk by Shawn Achor to share on the topic of positivity. I felt really inspired by many points he made in this talk but one idea, in particular, stood out to me:
"What I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.
And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we’ve done is we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.
But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed" (Achor.S, 2011).
Achor recommends using a few different methods daily for 21 days to help increase positivity in your life. The recommendations include listing 3 daily gratitudes, journaling about one positive thing that happened in your day, exercise, meditation, and a daily random act of kindness.
I feel that these 5 steps could easily be implemented into the classroom, especially in a particular course we teach the Health Care Aides called Lifestyles and choices. It could be a 21-day challenge project to help students become more positive and some of the steps such as journaling or meditiation could even be implimented into class time. See TED talk below.
References
Achor, S. (Writer). (2011). The Happy Secret to better work [Motion picture on Ted Talk]. USA: TEDxBloomington.
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