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When I was seven years old
and my sister was just five years old,

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we were playing on top of a bunk bed.

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I was two years older than
my sister at the time --

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I mean, I'm two years
older than her now --

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but at the time it meant she had
to do everything that I wanted to do,

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and I wanted to play war.
So we were up on top of our bunk beds.

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And on one side of the bunk bed,

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I had put out all of my G.I.
Joe soldiers and weaponry.

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And on the other side were all
my sister's My Little Ponies

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ready for a cavalry charge.

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There are differing accounts of what
actually happened that afternoon,

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but since my sister is not here with us
today, let me tell you the true story --

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(Laughter) which is my sister's
a little on the clumsy side.

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Somehow, without any help or push
from her older brother at all,

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Amy disappeared off
of the top of the bunk bed

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and landed with this crash on the floor.

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I nervously peered
over the side of the bed

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to see what had befallen my fallen sister

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and saw that she had landed
painfully on her hands and knees

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on all fours on the ground. I was nervous
because my parents had charged me

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with making sure that my sister and I

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played as safely
and as quietly as possible.

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And seeing as how I had accidentally
broken Amy's arm just one week before --

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter ends)

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heroically pushing her out of the way
of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,

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(Laughter)

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for which I have yet to be thanked,
I was trying as hard as I could --

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she didn't even see it coming -- I
was trying hard to be on my best behavior.

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And I saw my sister's face, this wail
of pain and suffering and surprise

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threatening to erupt from her
mouth and wake my parents

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from the long winter's nap
for which they had settled.

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So I did the only thing

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my frantic seven year-old brain could
think to do to avert this tragedy.

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And if you have children,
you've seen this hundreds of times.

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I said, "Amy, wait. Don't cry.
Did you see how you landed?

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No human lands on all fours like that.

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Amy, I think this means you're a unicorn."

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(Laughter) Now, that was cheating, because
there was nothing she would want more

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than not to be Amy the hurt
five year-old little sister,

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but Amy the special unicorn. Of course,
this option was open to her brain

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at no point in the past.

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And you could see how my poor,
manipulated sister faced conflict,

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as her little brain
attempted to devote resources

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to feeling the pain and suffering
and surprise she just experienced,

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or contemplating her new-found
identity as a unicorn.

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And the latter won.
Instead of crying or ceasing our play,

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instead of waking my parents,
with all the negative consequences for me,

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a smile spread across her face and she
scrambled back up onto the bunk bed

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with all the grace of a baby unicorn
-- (Laughter) with one broken leg.

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What we stumbled across at this tender
age of just five and seven --

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we had no idea at the time --

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was was going be at the vanguard
of a scientific revolution

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occurring two decades later in the way
that we look at the human brain.

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We had stumbled across something
called positive psychology,

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which is the reason I'm here today and
the reason that I wake up every morning.

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When I started talking about this research

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outside of academia,
with companies and schools,

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the first thing they said to never
do is to start with a graph.

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The first thing I want
to do is start with a graph.

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This graph looks boring,

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but it is the reason I get
excited and wake up every morning.

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And this graph doesn't even
mean anything; it's fake data.

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What we found is -- (Laughter)

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If I got this data studying
you, I would be thrilled,

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because there's a trend there,
and that means that I can get published,

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which is all that really matters.

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There is one weird red dot above the
curve, there's one weirdo in the room --

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I know who you are, I saw you
earlier -- that's no problem.

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That's no problem, as most of you know,
because I can just delete that dot.

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I can delete that dot because
that's clearly a measurement error.

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And we know that's a measurement
error because it's messing up my data.

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(Laughter) So one of the first
things we teach people

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in economics, statistics,
business and psychology courses

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is how, in a statistically valid
way, do we eliminate the weirdos.

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How do we eliminate the outliers
so we can find the line of best fit?

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Which is fantastic if
I'm trying to find out

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how many Advil the average
person should be taking -- two.

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But if I'm interested in your potential,

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or for happiness or productivity
or energy or creativity,

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we're creating the cult
of the average with science.

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If I asked a question like, "How fast can
a child learn how to read in a classroom?"

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scientists change the answer to

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"How fast does the average child
learn how to read in that classroom?"

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and we tailor the class
towards the average.

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If you fall below the average,
then psychologists get thrilled,

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because that means you're depressed
or have a disorder, or hopefully both.

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We're hoping for both
because our business model is,

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if you come into a therapy
session with one problem,

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we want to make sure you leave knowing
you have ten, so you keep coming back.

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We'll go back into your
childhood if necessary,

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but eventually we want
to make you normal again.

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But normal is merely average.

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And positive psychology posits that
if we study what is merely average,

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we will remain merely average.

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Then instead of deleting
those positive outliers,

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what I intentionally do is come into
a population like this one and say, why?

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Why are some of you high above the curve

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in terms of intellectual,
athletic, musical ability,

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creativity, energy levels, resiliency
in the face of challenge, sense of humor?

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Whatever it is, instead of deleting
you, what I want to do is study you.

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Because maybe we can glean information,

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not just how to move
people up to the average,

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but move the entire average up
in our companies and schools worldwide.

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The reason this graph is important to me

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is, on the news, the majority
of the information is not positive.

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in fact it's negative.

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Most of it's about murder, corruption,
diseases, natural disasters.

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And very quickly, my brain starts to think

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that's the accurate ratio
of negative to positive in the world.

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This creates "the
medical school syndrome."

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During the first year of medical training,

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as you read through a list
of all the symptoms and diseases,

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suddenly you realize you have all of them.

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(Laughter) I have a brother in-law
named Bobo, which is a whole other story.

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Bobo married Amy the unicorn.
Bobo called me on the phone -- (Laughter)

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from Yale Medical School,
and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy."

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(Laughter) Which, even at Yale,
is extraordinarily rare.

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But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo

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because he had just gotten over
an entire week of menopause.

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(Laughter) We're finding it's not
necessarily the reality that shapes us,

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but the lens through which your brain
views the world that shapes your reality.

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And if we can change the lens,
not only can we change your happiness,

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we can change every single educational
and business outcome at the same time.

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I applied to Harvard on a dare.

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I didn't expect to get in,
and my family had no money for college.

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When I got a military scholarship
two weeks later, they let me go.

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Something that wasn't even
a possibility became a reality.

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I assumed everyone there would
see it as a privilege as well,

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that they'd be excited to be there.

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Even in a classroom full
of people smarter than you,

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I felt you'd be happy just
to be in that classroom.

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But what I found is, while
some people experience that,

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when I graduated after my four years

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and then spent the next eight years
living in the dorms with the students --

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Harvard asked me to; I wasn't that guy.

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(Laughter) I was an officer to counsel
students through the difficult four years.

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And in my research and my teaching,

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I found that these students,
no matter how happy they were

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with their original success
of getting into the school,

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two weeks later their brains were focused,
not on the privilege of being there,

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nor on their philosophy or physics,
but on the competition, the workload,

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the hassles, stresses, complaints.

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When I first went in there,
I walked into the freshmen dining hall,

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which is where my friends from Waco,
Texas, which is where I grew up --

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I know some of you know this.
When they'd visit, they'd look around,

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and say, "This dining hall looks
like something out of Hogwart's."

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It does, because that was
Hogwart's and that's Harvard.

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And when they see this,

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they say, "Why do you waste your time
studying happiness at Harvard?

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What does a Harvard student
possibly have to be unhappy about?"

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Embedded within that question is the key
to understanding the science of happiness.

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Because what that question assumes

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is that our external world
is predictive of our happiness levels,

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when in reality, if I know
everything about your external world,

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I can only predict 10%
of your long-term happiness.

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90 percent of your long-term happiness
is predicted not by the external world,

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but by the way your brain
processes the world.

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And if we change it, if we change
our formula for happiness and success,

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we can change the way that we
can then affect reality.

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What we found is that only 25%
of job successes are predicted by IQ,

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75 percent of job successes

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are predicted by your optimism
levels, your social support

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and your ability to see stress
as a challenge instead of as a threat.

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I talked to a New England boarding school,
probably the most prestigious one,

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and they said, "We already know that.

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So every year, instead of just teaching
our students, we have a wellness week.

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And we're so excited. Monday night
we have the world's leading expert

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will speak about adolescent depression.

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Tuesday night it's school
violence and bullying.

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Wednesday night is eating disorders.

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Thursday night is illicit drug use.

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And Friday night we're trying to decide
between risky sex or happiness."

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(Laughter) I said, "That's
most people's Friday nights."

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Which I'm glad you liked,
but they did not like that at all.

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Silence on the phone.

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And into the silence, I said,
"I'd be happy to speak at your school,

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but that's not a wellness week,
that's a sickness week.

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You've outlined all the negative
things that can happen,

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but not talked about the positive."

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The absence of disease is not health.

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Here's how we get to health:

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We need to reverse the formula
for happiness and success.

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In the last three years,
I've traveled to 45 countries,

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working with schools and companies
in the midst of an economic downturn.

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And I found that most
companies and schools

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follow a formula for success,
which is this:

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If I work harder, I'll be more successful.

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And if I'm more successful,
then I'll be happier.

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That undergirds most of our
parenting and managing styles,

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the way that we motivate our behavior.

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And the problem is it's scientifically
broken and backwards for two reasons.

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Every time your brain has a success,

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you just changed the goalpost
of what success looked like.

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You got good grades,
now you have to get better grades,

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you got into a good school
and after you get into a better one,

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you got a good job,
now you have to get a better job,

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you hit your sales target,
we're going to change it.

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And if happiness is on the opposite side
of success, your brain never gets there.

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We've pushed happiness over
the cognitive horizon, as a society.

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And that's because we think we have
to be successful, then we'll be happier.

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But our brains work in the opposite order.

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If you can raise somebody's level
of positivity in the present,

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then their brain experiences what
we now call a happiness advantage,

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which is your brain at positive
performs significantly better

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than at negative, neutral or stressed.

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Your intelligence rises, your creativity
rises, your energy levels rise.

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In fact, we've found that every
single business outcome improves.

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Your brain at positive
is 31% more productive

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than your brain at negative,
neutral or stressed.

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You're 37% better at sales. Doctors
are 19 percent faster, more accurate

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at coming up with the correct diagnosis

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when positive instead of negative,
neutral or stressed.

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Which means we can reverse the formula.

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If we can find a way of becoming
positive in the present,

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then our brains work
even more successfully

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as we're able to work harder,
faster and more intelligently.

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We need to be able to reverse this formula

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so we can start to see what
our brains are actually capable of.

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Because dopamine, which floods into
your system when you're positive,

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has two functions.
Not only does it make you happier,

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it turns on all of the learning
centers in your brain

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allowing you to adapt
to the world in a different way.

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We've found there are ways
that you can train your brain

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to be able to become more positive.

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In just a two-minute span
of time done for 21 days in a row,

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we can actually rewire your brain,

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allowing your brain to actually work
more optimistically and more successfully.

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We've done these things in research now
in every company that I've worked with,

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getting them to write down three
new things that they're grateful for

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for 21 days in a row,
three new things each day.

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And at the end of that,
their brain starts to retain a pattern

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of scanning the world not for the
negative, but for the positive first.

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Journaling about one positive experience
you've had over the past 24 hours

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allows your brain to relive it.

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Exercise teaches your brain
that your behavior matters.

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We find that meditation allows your brain

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to get over the cultural
ADHD that we've been creating

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by trying to do multiple tasks at once

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and allows our brains
to focus on the task at hand.

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And finally, random acts of kindness
are conscious acts of kindness.

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We get people, when they open up
their inbox, to write one positive email

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praising or thanking somebody
in their support network.

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And by doing these activities

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and by training your brain
just like we train our bodies,

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what we've found is we can reverse
the formula for happiness and success,

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and in doing so, not only create ripples
of positivity, but a real revolution.

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Thank you very much. (Applause)