Choose one of the sunday sermons from The School of Life (24 to choose from). I’d like you to write a reaction to the video as a comment on this blog post. Tell us why you chose that particular sunday sermon, what you learned, what, if anything, you heard that you’d consider incorporating into a system of self-care as an idea, a method, a design constraint, etc. Include the video’s title and link please.
Alain de Botton – On Pessimism
http://www.vimeo.com/10601416
For my Sunday Sermon, I chose to watch Alain de Botton’s talk, “On Pessimism.” going into this I knew it was going to be tough, but upon finding out that the School of Life is in London and that I would be treated to some particularly pungent Euro-pessimism I jumped into the double-down.
I’ve always considered myself to be an optimist in theory, but distinctly a pessimist in practice so I thought I’d give it a shot. Alain hits the nail on the head right away by pegging the philosophy of either as a means of managing expectations, and uses the example of impotence. If you arrive in the bedroom with high expectations, there’s a great chance that things will go terribly wrong.
This isn’t the example I would use personally, but the model holds true when I consider how I behave when apply for a new job or reaching for a particular goal I would really like to attain – and that is: I always keep my mouth shut about my aspirations until I’ve got the goal in the bag – that way I never get too let down. More importantly, no one looks at me with pity which is the worst way to get let down. You might not care too much about your non-achievement, but if you’ve mentioned it to others inevitably believe that you care more than you do which causes them to treat you as though you’ve been let down… which always leads you to be let down.
It’s all a way to manage expectations. If a society tells us that we are meant to succeed – that success is inevitable – when we fail we believe that something is horribly wrong with ourselves. Alain argues that life is by default a failure, and that by looking at the world through this lens we alleviate ourselves from the agonizing feelings of self-importance and egoism – “which cling to us like a bad smell.”
He uses tons of really funny examples – I won’t get into them all, but the talk is worth a watch. What I do think is relevant to self-experimentation, however is this idea of healthy of skepticism. We shouldn’t believe that tracking our mood and meals will bring us solutions to every possible ailment we’ve ever had, and we shouldn’t mislead those that would use our products into believing that we’ve developed a cure-all method. In doing so – by lowering the bar of what we expect – we’re able to make better decisions about what our results are telling us and we also free ourselves from the pressures associated with experiments that may be perceived as “hype” or “a waste of time.”
Furthermore, skepticism is how we should critique our work once we’ve gone beyond the entry-level. It’s important to be optimistic when beginning a process (so we don’t chase ourselves away before we start), but as we refine our designs and experiments we need to punch more precisely critical holes into our ideas. This doesn’t guarantee their success, but it allows us to get a realistic understanding of the value that an experiment or design has.
Talk Review: “On Happiness” (Richard Layard)
http://www.vimeo.com/19335075
I selected this video because I am interested in how our goals and aspirations in life reflect and facilitate self-happiness. Layard shows how happiness is intrinsically connected to all life’s goals. He asks, “What is important to you?” People often respond with— Being healthy or having freedom. Layard illustrates how there is always a follow up question “why is that important to you?” Most people respond with the obvious: “When I lead a healthy life style it makes me feel good.”– “I want to have freedom because being enslaved makes me feel bad.” Layard points out if you ask the question “Why does it matter if people feel awful?” there is usually silence.
Although these questions seem obvious, we rarely ask these questions of ourselves. The drive to achieve our goals in life is dedicated to our own unique definition of self-happiness but we often attribute them to just the action. The other point Layard makes is about the importance of helping each other and promoting happiness in the world. We often view happiness as a self-goal rather than a communal one, but by promoting happiness across a community we benefit both personally and as a society.
I have listened to many talks on happiness but this was the first talk that gave a nice rounded set of guidelines to live a happy life. Most talks often give a suggestion or two on living happier but this talk truly laid out the conditions. Here are 10 tips for achieving happiness:
1. Relating: feel happy when you are with other people
2. Giving to people: doing an extra act of kindness.
3. Physical Exercise
4. Preserving and enjoying your surroundings: Noticing beauty in nature and life
5. Doing something new each day: Do anything different to stimulate your connections
6. Have a sense of direction: hobbies, anything challenging that simulates you… Caution to not choose goals that are too demanding or ambitious—you are more likely to miss them then achieved them.
7. Inner resilience: The ability to overcome hardship and view things in a positive light no matter awful they are.
8. Emotional positivity: having gratitude and feeling grateful what we have and can achieve
9. Acceptance: Accepting ourselves and other people; the ability to forgive.
10. Have a sense of meaning: Meaning comes from a sense that we are connected to something greater than ourselves. We are not the center of universe but rather connected to everything. We need to feel apart of something larger to you don’t have to believe in god, that greater purpose can be anything you define other than your individual self.
This talk inspired my behavioral experiment for this week as well as plans for my final project. I wanted to spread happiness through a community. (You can look at my behavioral study on my next post). In terms of my final project; I am interested in how breath relates to happiness and exercise. In my life keeping healthy has been an everlasting source of my happiness. In this class we are refining our designs to be more simplistic. I would like to study how breath functions in long distance endurance exercise. I think my project will revolve around designing breathing monitoring system that measures breath rate and consistency. I want to see if we can change our breath can we become more athletically capable. How can breath control relate to our daily lives?
To end this post, I wanted to restate the quote that Layard ended his talk with:
“In the last resort, everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose ones own attitude in any given set of circumstances.” –Victor Fankel
This quote exemplifies our inner resilience, our ability to frame things for the better, to frame life in a positive context. Layard’s talk on happiness suggests we are not victims but rather agents that can take any attitude to assess the situation.
Summary
In this talk, Leadbetter encourages us to think about things that we’re just not encouraged to think about, or speak about (or let enter our heads in any way). Let’s face it, for most of our lives, our later years barely get a thought, and death is just off limits.
Leadbetter encourages us to grapple with the certainty of ageing and death, and to fundamentally re-think our later years. For him we should re-imagine the ageing and dying process founded on two principles; participation and relationships.
Towards the end of our life we should be able to participate and contribute. We should be able to do the things that we love doing; our lives should be about capabilities, not about infirmities. We should be able to make active decisions about the type of death that we want and don’t want. We should grow old while maintaining strong relationships with others, conversing with others – rejecting the idea that the highest goal we should strive for by the end of our lives is efficiency and professional success.
My Reaction
I love this talk because Leadbetter talks about an incredibly sensitive topic in a completely open and humane way; It is hard enough to talk about death, let alone to talk about death in front of an audience – using the death of your parents as the key reference.
The talk really resonated me. I’ve had some experience of the death of a family member, and I suppose the way I think of ageing and dying is fundamentally shaped by this experience. For me, the process of ageing and dying haven’t really been positive things to think about; they go hand in hand with medical intervention and the loss of capability. His talk has shaken that perspective a little bit, and encouraged me to actively consider the type of life that I want.
In a broader sense, the talk has also made me think about the things that I design. At ITP this semester I’m working to re-think the way we participate in urban environments, and to design health devices and services. The talk has really just pushed me to think about these two challenges from a radically different context; to take perspectives on these challenges that feel alien and uncomfortable. This isn’t a revelation, but it’s really valuable to be reminded that I need to step beyond what I’m familiar with. Otherwise all I will ever design will be some version of my own perspective on the world – no matter how much research I do.
Jane McGonigal – On Productivity
http://www.vimeo.com/16227360
I always think that one of my biggest failures is that I waste a lot of time, I procrastinate a lot, so when I see the title of this video, I knew it was for me.
What does it mean to be productive? Jane McGonigal started this productive journey talking about the usual things that people think are productive. It seems that making to-do lists was a common thought. Then, she make us write three productive things that we want to do this week and the result that those will have. Things that you should be doing. I did the exercise and I put:
- going to the gym -> feeling healthier
- Reading more about R -> becoming good at statistics and analyzing data
- Cleaning my computer -> more organized environment to work
Then she read some answers and the conclusion was that most of them were useless.
McGonigal, as a game designer, experienced a concussion and invented a game called “SuperBetter”.
http://blog.avantgame.com/2009/09/super-better-or-how-to-turn-recovery.html
It is a superhero-themed game that turns getting better in multi-player adventure. It’s designed to help anyone recovering from an injury, or coping with a chronic condition, get better, sooner – with more fun, and with less pain and misery, along the way.
So basically, the whole thing is about thinking games as productive experiences. Games are the opposite of depression, they give us the opportunity to be energized, optimistic and to cope with failure in a better way. They help us create social relationships based in trust. Online games are about doing something together. They can make your life flourished, by remembering these principles:
- P : positive
- E : emotions
- R : relationships
- M : meaning
- A : accomplishment
I still have that optimistic and inspiring feeling about this sermon. I found it refreshing, and most than anything true. I believe that those principles brings me to my purpose of life which is being HAPPY, and now I know that even if I think I’m wasting my time by procrastinating, I doing something that makes me happy.
David Eagleman on Being Yourselves
http://www.vimeo.com/22287909
I picked this Sunday Sermon because I was curious about one of the metaphors used in the description – that the brain is a conflicted democracy engaged in a civil war.
In the first part of the talk, Eagleman emphasizes that the brain is complex and that the conscious mind is only a small part of the whole. The conscious mind, like a newspaper, only provides the headlines and summarizes everything that is happening. The unconscious mind is always at work even though we may not be aware of it’s influence. I enjoyed the interactive examples like ones about mirror writing and shifting lanes since they allowed me to experience his point firsthand. The idea of “implicit egotism” was new to me and I enjoyed finding out that people’s career choices seem to be subsciously influenced by their names (e.g. people named Dennis and Denise are more likely to become dentists) because it was amusing and insightful at the same time.
Then, Eagleman explains the concept of the brain being like a neural parliament – where different neural networks battle it out whenever decisions need to be made. A simplified example of this idea is that of the struggle between emotion and reason. He demonstrates by surveying the audience that the situational context can make one or the other more powerful and relates it to modern warfare – where all we need to do to launch a nuclear war is press a button. The suggestion that this button be implanted in the president’s best friend so that it would have to be ripped out in order to preserve the ability of the emotional side to weigh in on the decision was hard to forget. Another example of the parliament at work is when the brain has to balance short term gain and long term consequences. People tend to “discount the future” and be seduced by the idea of having the things they want happen right now. The point is that if we want to make good decisions, we should make sure that all parties are involved. However, it seems that by manipulating the context, it isn’t difficult to influence decision making by making certain members of the neural parliament more powerful.
Finally, Eagleman goes into some of the ways we manage our own behaviors. For the class we are supposed to focus on encouraging good behaviors, but all of his examples here focus on stopping bad behaviors. He uses the story of Ulysses to explain what are now called Ulysses contracts – where your present self preempts the expected undesirable behaviors of your future self. The three categories he talks about are minimizing temptation, putting money on the line, or using social embarrassment. In Ulysses’ story, he lashed himself to the mast and ordered his crew to ignore him so he could make it past the sirens. He gives many examples of modern sirens, like excessive Facebook checking or inability to lose weight, and talks about how people have tried to sail past them by using Ulysses contracts.
Some takeaways for me in terms of influencing the design of self care systems are: (1) Emphasizing the now by making it easier for people to perform the desired behavior (same as the idea of the hot trigger) (2) If the goal is to stop a behavior, consider facilitating the formation of Ulysses contracts. (3) If it doesn’t feel unethical, consider exploring ways to influence a users behavior unconsciously.
Jane McGonigal – Productivity
I chose to watch Jane McGonigal’s talk on productivity. I chose her because I’m a gamer and have been a fan of her promotion and defense against the stereotype of gaming. Productivity has also been something I was always felt lacking in or like I wasn’t doing enough of it. The feeling bred a lot of negative emotions and I found myself easily overwhelmed by the massive to do lists I was making.
Jane points out in her sermon that making to do lists inherently makes one unhappy and outlines the 4 key qualities we need to lead a happy life: PERMA, which stands for Positive Emotion, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. By channeling our To Do lists into a PERMA fashion, we may start doing things that make us happier. I do wonder though where necessary boring tasks like calling Time Warner for the billionth time fit under this model.
She also went over how games cover PERMA, how we are starving for PERMA qualities like Engagement, Accomplishment, and etc and that’s why so many individuals turn to games. I was thinking specifically of my brother at this point. Recently, I had been frustrated with him because all I ever see him do is play games, specifically, Dota. It made me mad to see him waste his life away so unproductively. Games consume his life specifically because he’s not engaged with school work. He also hasn’t been a strong student, much to the disappointment of my parents, which I think makes him feel unaccomplished, giving him more reason to turn to games.
I was actually thinking of staging a mini-intervention with the other half of this week’s assignment, but I just can’t think of anything off the top of my head, but I want to start with small satisfying tasks that would slowly motivate you to take bigger steps. (Eg. taking a multi-vitamin)
I don’t think game mechanics works well for motivation honestly, so despite being a gamer and wanting to be a more productive person, I think I’ll stick meeting the requirements for BJ Fogg’s model instead.
The School of Life Sunday Sermons – “On Pessimism”
Alain de Botton
I choose this video since I did enjoy some of his essays including ‘status anxiety’. On top of this, I am deeply interested in human mood and mental health so I want to see how he approach to mental health with pessimism.
To some extent, I can agree with his idea toward optimism and pessimism, especially the fact that we need to get familiar to our failure and for this, we do meed some narrative stories about failure. The other intriguing thing was that when we encounter death we can recognize priority of things, just like working with skull in the desk.
Also I can agree that remote relationship plays a vital role in feeling envy and miserable. Like he mentioned from the lecture, we don’t feel empty nor envy toward queen. However,to me, that means not only remoteness but also individual situation. We can’t share the same goal, everyone can have their goal which could bring someone’s happiness and it is totally depending on their situation and ability. With this observation, I do believe people can feel happy or better when they experience the change or improvement based on their previous status.
That is why I believe self tracking system has tons of potential for mental health. Even though we can track body condition, not the mood or something related with mental condition, we can get to know where I am and how I can go further based on current status. Also it allows us to make a feasible goal to each of us. I know well about self-help books and sometimes it works well and gives us strong motivation. But if we have no idea about ourselves, then we are easy to get lost and feel empty. If we have enough information on ourselves and context, even though we fail, we can analyze and make a plan-B instead of feeling miserable.
The thing is that how we can live with healthy mind and what behavior or mindset would be needed for this. If we can develop the self healthcare system, what could be a specific goal for behavior change? I believe getting to know about yourself is the start line for this.
http://itp.nyu.edu/~jhm309/myblog/?p=653
here is my reading review of The school of Life !
Mark Williams – On Mindfulness
http://www.vimeo.com/24884903
Throughout my life, I’ve often felt, and still do feel, like I’m running. I’m running from one moment to the next. I find refuge in pockets of relaxation, but, for the most part, I’m constantly in a race to the always approaching next moment. I’d like to think that at some point, all this effort will get me to a final destination of settlement and peace, but for now, I feel I have to run. When discussing this with other people, I’ve been encouraged multiple times to explore the practice of meditation and mindfulness. I’ve read a little bit about it and tried to meditate a few times, but never anything formal, I always end up getting too busy… So, when I saw Mark Williams sermon “On Mindfulness” I jumped at this particular video.
Early in the sermon, Williams states that mindfulness has proven to do two main things: 1) transform destructive emotions and 2) help people reengage with the actuality of life offering a sense of being fully alive. In terms of destructive emotions, he states, “Nothing is so bad that the story we create can’t make it worse.” We’ve become extremely susceptible to “what if” type thoughts and memories, which drag us down into a tangled depressing web. And when our mood gets tangled with these imaginative thoughts, we opt to combat the difficulty of the situation by suppressing our feelings.
However, if we can do the opposite and be courageous in the moment by being with theses difficult feelings rather than suppressing them, we are much more apt at actually dealing with them. According to Williams, mindfulness is not about clearing the mind, but about waking up to the patterns of the mind. “When you’re aware and awake, you can know who you are at your core with compassion rather than judgment. It takes practice but it’s worth it.”
Transitioning to the second point of a fully engaged life, Williams outlined a daily existence that was all too familiar. He described how we go through life constantly leaning forward to the next activity. We’ve created habits of rushing that offer us an illusion of creative productivity. The fact, however, is that being stressed and constantly on-the-go, creates tunnel vision, a lack of overall awareness, and an inability to see the whole picture. The scariest thought of all is living our whole lives under these circumstances only to wonder at the end where our lives went.
Fortunately, mindfulness training can and does work. The goal is to wake up to the actual life we live and decrease any pressure we feel to get somewhere based on fear. Williams argued that mindfulness has proven to be just as effective as any anti-depressant medication; it can be trained, it’s portable, and it’s not dependent on any external resources.
I would love to better incorporate mindfulness into my daily life and combat my tendencies of “postponing life.” I’ve tried a variety of things including meditating while I walk to and from school, taking a minute of my day to just focus on my breathing, and attending meditation classes, but nothing seems to stick. I follow through for a day, maybe a week, and then I revert back to my stressful ways. The closest I have come to practicing mindfulness is through regular exercise; my thoughts are never clearer than after a good run outside. I’m not sure if designing a system for mindfulness will solve everything, but it sure seems like an ideal place to start.