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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.

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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,

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let me tell you the true story --

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(Laughter) --

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which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side.

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

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suddenly 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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Now 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.

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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

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just one week before ...

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(Laughter)

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... heroically pushing her out of the way

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of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,

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(Laughter)

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for which I have yet to be thanked,

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I was trying as hard as I could --

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she didn't even see it coming --

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I was trying as hard as I could to be on my best behavior.

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And I saw my sister's face,

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this wail of pain and suffering and surprise

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threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake

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my parents 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 little 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 before.

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I said, "Amy, Amy, wait. Don't cry. Don't cry.

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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)

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Now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister 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.

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Of course, this was an option that was open to her brain 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

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she just experienced,

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or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn.

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And the latter won out.

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Instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play,

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instead of waking my parents,

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with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me,

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instead a smile spread across her face

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and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn ...

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(Laughter)

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... with one broken leg.

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What we stumbled across

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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 something that 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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What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology,

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which is the reason that I'm here today

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and the reason that I wake up every morning.

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When I first started talking about this research

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outside of academia, out with companies and schools,

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the very first thing they said to never do

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is to start your talk with a graph.

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

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This graph looks boring,

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but this graph 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 --

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(Laughter)

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If I got this data back studying you here in the room, I would be thrilled,

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because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there,

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and that means that I can get published,

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which is all that really matters.

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The fact that there's one weird red dot that's up above the curve,

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there's one weirdo in the room --

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I know who you are, I saw you earlier --

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that's no problem.

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That's no problem, as most of you know,

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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

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because it's messing up my data.

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So one of the very first things we teach people

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in economics and statistics and 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

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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 potential, if I'm interested in your potential,

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or for happiness or productivity

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or energy or creativity,

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what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.

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If I asked a question like,

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"How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?"

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scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child

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learn how to read in that classroom?"

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and then we tailor the class right towards the average.

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Now if you fall below the average on this curve,

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then psychologists get thrilled,

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because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder,

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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 10,

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so you keep coming back over and over again.

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We'll go back into your childhood if necessary,

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but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again.

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But normal is merely average.

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And what I posit and what positive psychology posits

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is 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

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and say, why?

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Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve

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in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability,

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creativity, energy levels,

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your resiliency in the face of challenge, your 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 how we can move the entire average up

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in our companies and schools worldwide.

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The reason this graph is important to me

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is, when I turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information

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is not positive, 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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What that's doing is creating something

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called the medical school syndrome --

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which, if you know people who've been to medical school,

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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 that could happen,

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suddenly you realize you have all of them.

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I have a brother in-law named Bobo -- which is a whole other story.

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Bobo married Amy the unicorn.

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Bobo called me on the phone

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from Yale Medical School,

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and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy."

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(Laughter)

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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)

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See what we're finding is 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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When I applied to Harvard, I applied 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 allowed me to go.

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Suddenly, something that wasn't even a possibility became a reality.

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When I went there, I assumed everyone else 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 if you're in a classroom full of people smarter than you,

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you'd be happy just to be in that classroom, which is what I felt.

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But what I found there

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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)

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I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years.

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And what I found in my research and my teaching

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is 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 their physics.

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Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload,

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the hassles, the stresses, the 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 have heard of it.

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When they'd come to visit me, they'd look around,

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they'd say, "This freshman dining hall looks like something

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out of Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter," which it does.

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This is Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter" and that's Harvard.

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And when they see this,

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

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Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have

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to be unhappy about?"

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Embedded within that question

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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 percent of your long-term happiness.

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90 percent of your long-term happiness

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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,

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if we change our formula for happiness and success,

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what we can do is change the way

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that we can then affect reality.

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What we found is that only 25 percent of job successes

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are predicted by I.Q.

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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 boarding school up in New England, probably the most prestigious boarding school,

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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 also 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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coming in to 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 elicit drug use.

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

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(Laughter)

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

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(Laughter)

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(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 just so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week.

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What you've done is 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 different countries,

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working with schools and companies

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in the midst of an economic downturn.

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And what I found is 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 styles, our 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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First, 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 school,

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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 your sales target.

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

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What we've done is we've pushed happiness

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over the cognitive horizon as a society.

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And that's because we think we have to be successful,

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then we'll be happier.

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But the real problem is 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

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performs significantly better

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than it does 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, what we've found

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is that every single business outcome improves.

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Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive

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than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed.

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You're 37 percent better at sales.

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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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What we need to be able to do is 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.

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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 that 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

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more optimistically and more successfully.

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We've done these things in research now

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in every single 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,

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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,

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to write one positive email

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praising or thanking somebody in their social 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,

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but create a real revolution.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)