What I Learned While Making a Movie About Happiness: Roko Belic at TEDxClaremontColleges

This is a great opportunity to share with you

somebody's experiences and some other things I learn

while making a film exploring the true causes of happiness.

The project started when a friend of mine called me on the phone

and he said he read an article that morning

in the New York Times about happiness

and essentially the article said

we're very rich country but not a very happy country.

We're number 23 on the list

no matter we have lots of money

and this friend of mine..his name is Tom Shadiac

he is a guy in the right

he has make literally tens of millions of dollars

directing huge blockbuster Hollywood films

like the naughty professor, Bruce Almighty, liar liar, patch atoms

He said," Look, I know what its like to have a lot of money

and I hang up with people who are more wealthy than me

who are more talented,more successful

better looking...and many of them are not happy.

And in fact the people who sweep the floor in my house

and who tend the garden on my estate

often have more a genuine smile on their faces

than the millionares

that I work with everyday in Hollywood.

I said" I know what does us make happy

I wanna know what does

so he suggested that we make a documentary film exploring happiness

he said ," Look, I am not the documentary and you are."

What do you think?

It sounds great. And he said," I'll happy pay for it."

What do you think about exploring happiness. Sounds it amazing.

I immediately got online and discovered a couple interesting things.

One is that there's new science exploring happiness called positive psychology

which some people would heard of by now

Its the first time really

that the western science has looked

very acutely at the idea of human flourishing.

For thousand of years we've studied what happened to people

who are having problems

to mental illness and pathology

But only recently do we study the other side of the spectrum.

And one of the exciting things that I learn kind of immediately

is that happiness is good for you.

Your immune system gets boosted

You are more creative

You have better relationships

You are healthier and

you even live longer.

And when I though of living long

I was trying think who we'll gonna put

in our movie beside the scientist

I did not wanna make a movie of people talking about happiness

I thought that it will really boring

So I knew I wanted to find people who storage of life

could illustrate this scientific concept

and I remember being a child

and I love the guinness book of records

There was often the oldest person in the world

came from Japan.

And specifically from an island in the south called Okinawa.

And I remember that and I though

Ok, if happy people get to become old

maybe a lot of this elderly people in Okinawa are happy.

And at that the time we couldn't find any research on it

But because my producing partner is Japanese

He said,"Look, I 'll get excuse to see my Mom

why don't we go and check it out.

So we went to Okinawa to find out

An absolutely beautiful place

And the firt stop was at the community center.

And what we discovered among other things

is that its easy in Okinawa to feel tall.

That's me and my film maker friends in the back row

Class picture I was never in the back row

The other thing we learn is that this tradition of meeting

in the community center has gone on for probably thousand of years

It looks like a modern building now

But they've been doing this

since it was grasp up with palm leaves on the roof.

And what I saw was crazy

This people in their mid nineties

some were in the mid eighties

but they were laughing and making jokes with each other

and they were blasting a boom box

It's a traditional Okinawan music

But it was blasting just like any teenager bedroom would be on the weekend

and I sort of don't like buying souvenirs when I travel

cause the world has enough crap in it

and it just feels like a waste sometimes

but I saw this women dancing

once they gets up and do this hula dance

and I though," I wanna take that back,"

I wanna learn one of this dance steps

its kind of paying attention to one

I was trying to figure out

and then I looked at the other woman

and she was doing a different steps

It looks similar but different

I couldn't figure out

so finally I said

Hey, would you please teach me this dance step

And the woman laugh and she said

Oh, we don't have a traditional dance step

in Okinawa you can do whatever you want.

Now, I have been to.. I've been extremely lucky

I've been about fifty different countries in the world

And I have never discovered that a traditional dance step is freestyle

But in Okinawa it is

My producing partner Eji in the middle

He had a great idea, he said

Let's see what a hundreds years old person looks like

when they two or three years old.

Where we'll be able to see the seed of a long

and happy life at that early stage

So we went to a pre school

And the teacher apologized, she said," I am so sorry,"

But today is one day every couple of weeks

we'll gonna spend outside of the class room.

We'll gonna have a foot race through town.

So we followed this fifty kids or so

They started the race and we noticed that at the other..

at the end of the block

there was a group of grand mothers converging.

And the grand mothers were there

as every kids crossed the finished lined the grand mothers hugging them,

they were clapping, they were cheering them on

and if somebody's falling they skin their knee

They'll be there to nurture them

and it was a beautiful scene

and I went to first grand mother just to make a small talk

and I said," Hey congratulations on having such a speedy grand child."

and she looked at the kid who I was referring to and she said

Oh, that's not my grand child

She kind of looked at me up and down and she said

My grand children are older than you.

And so I looked at her friends, about fifty grand mothers there

Whose grand child is that?