TED

逆転の発想が幸福をもたらす―幸福と成功の意外な関係(TED)

青い鳥

ライフハックとしてではなく、英語学習にも極めて有用なのが、著名人が10分程度のプレゼンを行うTEDです。

TED Talksとは、あらゆる分野のエキスパートたちによるプレゼンテーションを無料で視聴できる動画配信サービスのことです。10年ほど前にサービスが開始されてから、政治、心理学、経済、日常生活などの幅広いコンテンツが視聴できることから人気を集めています。

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TEDは4000を超える膨大な数の動画があります。しかし慣れないうちは、動画の探し方や視聴のコツが分かりませんよね。この記事では、数多くのTEDを見てきた管理人(塩@saltandshio)が、心を揺さぶられたトークをあらすじと一緒にご紹介します。

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ショーン・エイカー: 幸福と成功の意外な関係

ショーン・エイカー: 幸福と成功の意外な関係

私たちは幸福になるために努力し成功しなければならないと思っていますが、逆だとしたらどうでしょう? 心理学者のショーン・エイカーは、幸福は実際生産性や成功の可能性を押し上げることを話します(約12分半)。

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痛みをすり替えたポジティブ心理学

ショーン・エイカーは7歳の時、2歳年下の妹と遊んでいました。

二段ベッドで遊んでいたところ、なんと妹がベッドから落ちてしまいます。慌ててベッドの下を見ると、妹は四つん這いになっていまにも泣きそうな顔をしていました。その顔を見て、ショーン・エイカーは慌てます。なぜなら、一週間前に妹にケガを負わせて親から大目玉をくらっていたからです。

しかし、誤解しないでいただきたいのは、ショーン・エイカーは妹を突き落としたのではありません。むしろ、助けようとしたのに妹はなにかの拍子に自分から落ちてしまったのです。

このまま妹が泣いたら、きっと昼寝をしている両親が部屋に駆け付けて自分が怒られてしまう……。パニックになりながら、ショーン・エイカーは必死に妹をなだめます。そうしているうちに自分の口から出た言葉が、その後のショーン・エイカーの人生を大きく変えることになります。

“Amy, Amy, wait. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you’re a unicorn.”

「エイミー、お願い泣かないで。どんな風に着地したかわかる?人間なら四つん這いで着地なんてしないよ。これはつまり、お前はユニコーンだってことさ!」

泣きそうだった妹のエイミーは兄の言葉を聞いたあと、なんと自分が特別なユニコーンだと思い込みます。そうして彼女は泣くのをやめただけでなく、笑顔まで浮かべてベッドの上に駆け戻り、ユニコーンらしい優美な姿を見せてくれたのです。……痛めた片足を引きずりながら。

奇しくもこのやり取りが、20年後に脳の見方を変えるポジティブ心理学と呼ばれる研究の一例になる出来事になります。そして、この出来事から20年後、ショーン・エイカーはその科学的革命の先駆けとなる研究を行う心理学者になっていました。

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でっち上げのデータがもたらす興奮

ショーン・エイカーは、聴衆に右肩上がりの曲線が書かれたグラフを見せます。ちなみに、このグラフ自体にはなにも意味がありません。なぜなら、でっち上げのデータで作られたグラフだからです。

しかし、私たちは右肩上がりの曲線を見て、なにか特別なデータだと勘違いをします。

しかも、グラフにはところどころはみ出しているデータがあるのですが、私たちはそれをあえて除外しようとします。視界から消してしまうか、物理的にデータを削除してしまうのです。なぜなら、はみだした点は右肩上がりの曲線のデータにとって、平均値を乱す好ましくないデータだからです。

こうした見栄えを重視するためのデータの改ざんに、ショーン・エイカーは異を唱えます。

平均的なものを研究していたら、平均的なものにしかなりません!

はみ出た異常値を消すのではなく、異常値を見つけたらむしろ積極的になぜかと問うべきだとショーン・エイカーはいいます。

  • はみ出た人たちの能力はなにか?
  • なぜ曲線の遙か上なのか?

その理由はなにか。知的能力、運動能力、音楽センス、創造性、エネルギーのレベル、困難に直面したときの反発力、ユーモアのセンスなどなど……。それが何であれ、ショーン・エイカーにとっては、取り除いてしまう異分子ではなく、立派な研究対象なのです。

異分子の研究をすることが大勢を平均まで引き上げることに繋がり、ひいては勤める会社や、世界中の学校の平均自体を引き上げる方法が分かるきっかけになるかもしれないからです。

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ネガティブニュースと医学部症候群

右肩上がりの曲線と一緒に、ショーン・エイカーが危惧するのは、世の中にあふれるネガティブニュースです。

ニュースの多くは、殺人や汚職や病気や自然災害といった話です。これらのニュースソースに触れ続けると、そのうち脳は「現実はネガティブなことばかりだ」と思い込んでしまいます。

ところでみなさんは、医学部症候群という言葉をご存じでしょうか。医学部に進学した学生は、入学後に様々な症状や病気についてテキストを読んでいくうちに、ふと、どれも自分の体に起きている症状ではないか?と思い込んでしまう症候群です。ほんとうはどこも悪くなっていないのに、自分が知らない間に、じつは様々な病気に侵されているのではないかと勘違いしてしまうのです。

このネガティブニュースと医学部症候群でわかるのは、必ずしも現実が私たちを形作るのではなく、脳が世界を見るレンズによって私たちの現実は形作られるということです。

幸いなことに、この症状は逆の事象でも応用ができます。つまり、ネガティブからポジティブな視点に見え方のレンズを変えることで、自分の幸福を変えられるばかりでなく、あらゆる学習や仕事の結果を変えることもできるのです。

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ハーバード大学に入学した生徒のその後

さて、トークに戻りましょう。

ショーン・エイカーは高校卒業後、ひょんなことからハーバード大学に入学してしまいます。そして、大学生活を4年過ごした後で、大学側から問題を抱える学生のカウンセリングをしてほしいと依頼され、もう4年ハーバード大学に居残ることになります。

学生とのカウンセリングを行う中で、ショーン・エイカーは非常に興味深い体験をします。奇しくもそれは、自分が研究している幸福に関する科学について、より深く考えるきっかけにもなりました。

ハーバード大学に入学したばかりの生徒たちは、そのほとんどが興奮状態にあり、入学した自分を誇りに思っています。たとえ、自分の周りに頭の良い人がたくさんいても……です。しかし、2週間経つ頃には彼らの様子が一変します。二週間前まで浮かれていた姿が、きれいさっぱり無くなってしまうのです。

代わりに、雰囲気が暗くなり表情が険しくなります。その理由は、競争や勉強に対するプレッシャーが彼らにのしかかり、ストレスで潰れかかっているからです。しかし、親や友人、そしてまわりの人々は彼らの変化に気が付きません。もちろん、ショーン・エイカーの周りにいる人々も例外ではありませんでした。

ハーバードで幸福の研究をするなんて、時間の無駄じゃないの?ハーバードの学生でいて、どうして不幸に思えるのか分からないわ

あなたにも似たような経験はありませんか?

あの学校に入学したなら、あの会社に入社したなら、きっとあの人の人生は安泰で幸せだろう…と思ったことが。なにをもって幸せに感じるかは、本人の問題であり周りが評価すべきではありません。しかし、周りの人たちにはなかなか理解してもらえないのです。

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まとめ:しあわせになるために、幸福と成功を入れかえよう

私たちはまず、『成功がゴール』という考えから離れなければいけません。ほとんどの企業や学校で教える、「一生懸命がんばれば成功できる、成功すれば幸せになれる」という考え方です。

この考えは科学的に間違っており、じつは逆なのです

なぜなら、成功をゴールにしてしまうと、脳は幸せにいつまでたどりつけません。次から次へと、脳が幸せを求めないといけなくなるからです。たとえば……

  • 良い成績を取る → もっと良い成績を取る
  • 良い学校に入る → さらに良い学校に入る
  • 良い仕事に就く → さらに良い仕事に就く
  • 販売目標を達成する → 目標をさらに上げる

という具合に、終わりがありません。これでは永遠に、私たちは幸せにたどり着くことが出来ません。このように、成功をゴールにすると、元気になるどころか、憂鬱になってしまうのです。こうして、ネガティブ脳が作られてしまうといってもよいでしょう。

ちなみにポジティブな脳は、ネガティブな脳やストレス下の脳よりも、ずっと良く機能するということが研究の結果わかっています。ポジティブ脳になれば知能が上がり、創造性が高まり、活力が増大します。ポジティブな状態の脳は、ネガティブな状態の脳より31%も生産性が高くなるのです。

しかし、残念なことに私たちは常日頃からネガティブ脳を鍛える訓練をしてしまっています。そんな、知らず知らずのうちに長年鍛えているネガティブ脳ですが、じつはたった2分半で出来る作業を21日間おこなうことにより、ポジティブ脳にすることができます。

その方法は簡単です。

  1. ありがたく思うことを毎日新たに3つ書く
  2. それを21日間続ける

この作業を行うことで、21日後にはあなたの脳が変化します。なぜなら、この作業を行うことにより、脳がネガティブなものよりも先に、ポジティブなものを見つけようとするように変化するからです。

瞑想を行いタスクを一つに集中させる人もいます。メールソフトを開くたび、支えてくれる人たちの誰かに、称賛や感謝の気持ちをポジティブなメッセージに変えてメールを書くという人もいます。

大切なのは、運動と同じように脳も繰り返しトレーニングすることにより、考え方を変えることができるということです。幸せの青い鳥は、いつもあなたのそばにいます。ショーン・エイカーのトークは、私たちのそばにいる青い鳥の存在を教えてくれる話でした。

英語全文

When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time — I mean, I’m two years older than her now — but at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war. So we were up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister’s My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.

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There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story — (Laughter) — which is my sister’s a little bit on the clumsy side. Somehow, without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. Now I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.

I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy’s arm just one week before … (Laughter) … heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, (Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could — she didn’t even see it coming — I was trying as hard as I could to be on my best behavior.

And I saw my sister’s face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter’s nap for which they had settled. So I did the only thing my little frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. And if you have children, you’ve seen this hundreds of times before. I said, “Amy, Amy, wait. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you’re a unicorn.”

Now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister would want more than not to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this was an option that was open to her brain at no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn. And the latter won out. Instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn … (Laughter) … with one broken leg.

What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven — we had no idea at the time — was something that was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain. What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology, which is the reason that I’m here today and the reason that I wake up every morning.

When I first started talking about this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph. The very first thing I want to do is start my talk with a graph. This graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning. And this graph doesn’t even mean anything; it’s fake data. What we found is —

(Laughter)

If I got this data back studying you here in the room, I would be thrilled, because there’s very clearly a trend that’s going on there, and that means that I can get published, which is all that really matters. The fact that there’s one weird red dot that’s up above the curve, there’s one weirdo in the room — I know who you are, I saw you earlier — that’s no problem. That’s no problem, as most of you know, because I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that’s clearly a measurement error. And we know that’s a measurement error because it’s messing up my data.

So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I’m trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking — two. But if I’m interested in potential, if I’m interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we’re doing is we’re creating the cult of the average with science.

If I asked a question like, “How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?” scientists change the answer to “How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?” and then we tailor the class right towards the average. Now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you’re either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. We’re hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. We’ll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again. But normal is merely average.

And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average. Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you. Because maybe we can glean information — not just how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.

The reason this graph is important to me is, when I turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it’s negative. Most of it’s about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to think that’s the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world. What that’s doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome — which, if you know people who’ve been to medical school, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you have all of them.

I have a brother in-law named Bobo — which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, “Shawn, I have leprosy.”

Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause. (Laughter)

See what we’re finding is it’s not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

When I applied to Harvard, I applied on a dare. I didn’t expect to get in, and my family had no money for college. When I got a military scholarship two weeks later, they allowed me to go. Suddenly, something that wasn’t even a possibility became a reality. When I went there, I assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well, that they’d be excited to be there. Even if you’re in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you’d be happy just to be in that classroom, which is what I felt. But what I found there is, while some people experience that, when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students — Harvard asked me to; I wasn’t that guy. (Laughter) I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years. And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school,two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.

When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up — I know some of you have heard of it. When they’d come to visit me, they’d look around, they’d say, “This freshman dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart’s from the movie “Harry Potter,” which it does. This is Hogwart’s from the movie “Harry Potter” and that’s Harvard. And when they see this, they say, “Shawn, why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?”

Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality. What we found is that only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by I.Q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

I talked to a boarding school up in New England, probably the most prestigious boarding school, and they said, “We already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. And we’re so excited. Monday night we have the world’s leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression. Tuesday night it’s school violence and bullying. Wednesday night is eating disorders. Thursday night is elicit drug use. And Friday night we’re trying to decide between risky sex or happiness.” (Laughter) I said, “That’s most people’s Friday nights.” (Laughter) (Applause) Which I’m glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. Silence on the phone. And into the silence, I said, “I’d be happy to speak at your school, but just so you know, that’s not a wellness week, that’s a sickness week. What you’ve done is you’ve outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive.”

The absence of disease is not health. Here’s how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. In the last three years, I’ve traveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we’ve done is we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.

But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We’ve found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We’ve done these things in research now in every single company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row,three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you’ve had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we’ve been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.

Thank you very much.

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TEDまとめ(1):エキスパートたちが贈る極上のメッセージ ライフハックとしてではなく、英語学習にも極めて有用なのが、著名人が10分程度のプレゼンを行うTEDです。 TED Talksと...