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  • I do have concerns about the over arching societal messaging that we are hearing, which

  • is that we should focus on being happier; that we should choose to be happy and that

  • we should think positive.

  • Now just to be clear I am not anti-happiness.

  • I, in a past life, wrote and 80 chapter give or take doorstopper book called The Oxford

  • Handbook of Happiness, which really explored how it is that human beings can develop higher

  • levels of happiness.

  • But what I am concerned about in the current discourse is that I think what it is actually

  • paradoxically doing is setting people up for greater levels of unhappiness.

  • Let me explain why.

  • A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with and died of stage 4 breast cancer and she

  • described her experience of suffering and loss as being exacerbated by what she termed

  • "the tyranny of positivity."

  • That she had so many people coming to her and saying just be positive; just think positive;

  • everything will be fine.

  • And what she said is those messages that a real impact on her ability to be authentically

  • and in a real way with her experience.

  • She also said that it made her fairly angry, that if it was just a case of thinking positive

  • and being positive that all of the individuals in her breast cancer support group would be

  • alive today.

  • They were the most positive people that she had met, but they were not alive and that

  • somehow the messaging that our wellness is 100 percent in our control simply by thinking

  • positive can often lead to people who are suffering from illnesses like cancer to feel

  • that they are somehow to blame for their own illness or for their coming death because

  • they weren't positive enough.

  • I very much experienced this in my own life when I was growing up.

  • My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was 16 years old and what I noticed on a really

  • large scale interaction when it came to peers and adults was people both saying to my father

  • that he just needed to believe that he would survive and to us as a family that we just

  • needed to be positive.

  • And I truly believe that this impacted on our ability to actually connect with and in

  • a real way be with each other during our precious time.

  • Because rather than being able to be present and make space for the reality, we were pegging

  • our hopes on some future cure.

  • Difficult experiences are a part of life.

  • They are part of life's contract with the world.

  • They're part of our contract with the world simply by virtue of being here.

  • Life's beauty is inseparable from its fertility.

  • You are healthy until you are not.

  • You are with the people that you love until you are not.

  • You have a job that you love until for some reason that job no longer works out.

  • It is really important that as human beings we develop our capacity to deal with our thoughts

  • and emotions in a way that isn't a struggle, in a way that embraces them and is with them

  • and is able to learn from them.

  • What I worry about when there is this message of be happy is that people then automatically

  • assume that when they have a difficult thought or feeling that they should push it aside,

  • that it's somehow a sign of weakness.

  • And what that does is it actually stops people from being authentic with themselves.

  • It hinders our ability to learn from our experience.

  • And I believe that it is stopping us as a society, including our children, from developing

  • higher levels of well being and resilience.

  • A better way to focus on happiness is for us not to be focused on the goal of happiness

  • per se, but rather what it is that we value, what it is that is important to us intrinsically

  • and how every day we can make moves towards that thing without the over arching expectation

  • being that we will somehow be happier.

  • What happens when we focus intrinsically on what is important to us, happiness becomes

  • an outstanding byproduct of that focus.

I do have concerns about the over arching societal messaging that we are hearing, which

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逼迫積極性會造成絕望嗎? (How Forcing Positivity Can Create Despair | Susan David)

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    Christina Yang 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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