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Lesson 12 (Videos (The Mystery if Happiness (That is somewhat surprising…
Lesson 12
Videos
Feel Good About Failure
Time once spent on reading and writing, now goes to things like giving warm fuzzies, also known as compliments.
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It’s based on the premise that some successful people seem to have high self-esteem, that if we teach self-esteem, we’ll get successful people. That would be reasonable if it worked! But even after doing this for more than twenty years no one’s been able to prove that it does work, and they tried. California spent three years and three quarters of a million dollars on the task force to promote self-esteem, but this study they initiated failed to show that self-esteem courses lead to achievement. Some parents are getting worried.
Making kids feel special has become so important that many schools now avoid anything that might make anybody feel bad.
“Competition” is often a dirty word. Many schools have eliminated honor rolls because the other kids might feel bad. Some schools won’t give out Ds or Fs, and getting good grades is easier.
Psychology professor Carol Dweck, of Columbia University, recently published findings that show that the kind of praise find in self-esteem courses may actually hurt children’s performance. She repeated her experiment for us. Fifth graders are given an easy puzzle to solve and told how smart they are.
An international study of thirteen year olds found American kids ranked last in math, but rated their performances as above average. Korean kids were much less satisfied with themselves, but they ranked first.
Psychology professors Brad Bushman and Roy Bowmeister did research in over a thousand undergraduates, and found that people who thought they were superior or have inflated views of themselves were more aggressive. We asked them to show us the study. Bushman and Bowmeister gave students a standardized questionnaire that asked true or false questions like, “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place.”
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The Mystery if Happiness
That is somewhat surprising when you consider that not long ago most people believe that your only chance for happiness came after you died; if you got to heaven.
Only as living conditions improved, as technology made life less brutal, as vaccines saved children that it dawned on most people that happiness might be possible right on earth.
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” People will feel—not simply that happiness is a desirable state of being, but that it’s a right.
A definition of happiness became owning a home and filling it. Since then homes kept getting bigger and so have our dreams.
Studies of lottery winners found that within a year, most say they are no happier than they were before they won.
That’s why today with double the incomes, and double what the money buys for us, we’re no happier than we were 40 years ago.
We attained a new level of success and then we compared ourselves to those who are a rung or two higher on the ladder and feel relatively miserable.
The left frontal area and it turns out that people who have more activity in that area of the brain are happier.
Children don’t come in as a clean slate, as some people believe. They come in with a certain predisposition, a biological predisposition to display certain emotions.
If we think of ourselves as victims, if we think that our life is out of control, we live with less joy.
I would think somebody who was pessimistic would be happier because they’d always be pleasantly surprised that things didn’t turn out so bad.
The roots of their happiness are tied to their communal values. They talk about cooperation, they talk about self-denial, they talk about giving up things for the sake of the community.
Humor can help you relieve tension, solve problems creatively, communicate with folks, and to deal with the inevitable bumps in the road up ahead.
Gospel Connections
The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People
Although we presume happiness refers to something deeper and more lasting than a momentary good mood, our working definition is simply whatever people mean when describing their lives as happy.
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Those who enjoy
close relationships cope better with various stresses, including bereavement, rape, job loss, and illness
Compared with those who never marry, and especially compared with those who have separated or divorced, married people report being happier and more satisfied with life.
"Happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose."
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