The TEDTalk 2004 video below by positive psychologist Martin Seligman is, by far, the best explanation of happiness in everyday language, but backed by science, that I have ever seen. Using what I’ve learned, I was able to rationalize why I’m generally such a happy camper despite not having some of the elements people deem to contribute most to happiness in life, like love from a partner, kids, even pets, pleasures from alcohol, drugs, gambling, even coffee, etc. For my own reference, I’ll summarize the video below before writing out my deductions that led to conclusions just mentioned about my life, but also reflect on the happiness and lifestyles content mentioned in the video from other developments in positive psychology since the video I have learned. I would highly recommend watching the video, though. Start from 2m 45s if you just want the core of what I am talking about as it’s a bit slow to start before it gets really fascinating!
lasting
The Tipping Point Numbers for Social Change
These are targets every person or group trying to instill social change needs to know to gauge the likelihood or their success.
Recent research has shown that for true social change to occur, you’d need 7-10% of a population to hold an unshakable belief to be able to change the belief of that population within a reasonable amount of time. This is as long as there isn’t another group with another unshakable belief opposing it, like a different religion (Discovery News, August 6 2011). Combine that with the 1% you need to start a movement (Microtrends, by Mark Penn) and you’ve got two real targets for any organization seeking to create lasting social change. There’s none of those around these days, are there? 🙂
Digital Citizen 