On well being to focus on the constituents of well being and has led us all that actually can be trained were going to talk about that skill a lot today before that i wanted to ask you that our brain is constantly changing its costly developing and your nearest and his colleagues call it near plasticity sim can you explain how exactly does that mirror a place to sit at work. Yes. Neuroplasticity is really a foundational concept and what it means is that the brain changes in response to experience and i often say that the brain is changing wittingly or unwittingly meaning that it can change intentionally or unintentionally most of the time our brains are changing unwittingly most the time we are unaware of the forces around us that are shaping our brain and those forces are ones over which we have little control and the invitation in all of this work is that we can actually harness the power of neuro plus this in the to change our brains for the better. And so the very mechanisms of neuroplasticity that enable stress to get under the skin and to have a negative effect on our mind in our body those same very mechanisms in be harnessed for the good so promote resilience to promote flourishing. So does this mean that our brain always is and this narrow place to sit in mode 5 default. Yes the brain is constantly changing. It is what brains do so. There are things that will affect the overall extent to which the brain is plastic but. It is. Widely recognized that plasticity is one of the core features of the brain. And so. It is that our brains are constantly being shaped and there that that is a basic human property every human being shares this basic characteristic and so neural plasticity is neutral with respect to whether its good or bad it depends if youre in a toxic environment its going to have an impact on your brain its going to shape your brain if youre exposed to traumatic events it will shape your brain through neural plasticity and have negative consequences and so the opportunity here is that we can harness the power of neural plasticity for good and it happens at any age lets say if i were to decide at age 41 that i want to hang this here plasticity and i want to focus on the scale of becoming happy if that can happen for me as well or does it mean that we have to be doing that since were boring and nurturing that in our children. As a very important question and i would say the answer is both so there are neural plasticity happens throughout the wife spends and theres very good art no Scientific Evidence to indicate that it is present as long as youre living however having said that we also know that there are what scientists call sensitive periods of development these are periods in the 1st 20 years during which the brain is especially susceptible to influence especially plastic there are 3 major sensitive periods in Early Development one is around the time approached the other is around the onset of schooling between roughly the ages of 5 and 7 years and the 3rd is around adolescence and we know that during these periods the brain is especially sensitive and so if we can develop interventions for children during these sensitive periods the promise is that they will have multiplicative effects as the child develops and you will be able to achieve more substantial and enduring change if interventions occur during these periods but to go back to the 1st point it doesnt mean that a 41 year old developing her mind is not going to have an influence it will and so the good news is that this is something that everyone it any age can do amazing you know i was always thought that stress is a killer and ive heard a lot that the fizz stress its very psychosomatic here really killing your health as well but it turns out that it also activates our muscle strength and make us thing. Sharp art and sam harris scientists believe this is one of the most powerful changes happen in our brain. Would that be an overstatement to say that some amount of stress an executive is actually a good thing for the brain. Well this is an interesting and important question theres actually evidence that bears on this and as a scientist i am always persuaded by data and what the data show is that your intuition is right up until some points so moderate amounts of stress can be helpful in promoting resilience. Too much stress is going to be deleterious and have a negative effect so its what we call an inverted u. Shape function the optimal amount is somewhere in the middle 2 little stress or too much stress is not good but the fact is that the wife involves suffering and none of us can be fully buffered from stress stress happens and it is how we respond to it that really is the most significant in determining these long term outcomes and we can learn to harness moderate amounts of stress in a way that will maximize our ability to regulate our emotions and promote resilience. So if stress right amount of stress model lies is our cognitive function does that mean that now during the one were in the permanent state of alertness and brain plasticity. Thanks thanks to stress is really the best time to master new skills learn new languages etc. It depends i would say that. It really depends it depends on a persons circumstances there is a huge amount of variation in how people are responding to the pandemic and know there are already published papers showing in extraordinarily high increase rates that serious anxiety and depression suicide in response to the pen demick and to its consequences so its really depends. There may be people who have moderately elevated levels of stress in a way that could be productive and it could be an opportune time for them to. Harness the moderate amounts of stress and put it to good use but its also the case that for quite a large segment of the population i would say its its very difficult. And so i think that one of the most important issues is framing the publics health. Men dates that were being asked to. To adopt cross the world for example which is equally distancing ourselves and so forth. Reflecting on those Public Health recommendations as opportunities for generosity. And for contributing to the Greater Public good when we engage in physical distancing its not only of benefit to ourselves but its of benefit to all the others we might come in contact with and help to prevent the spread of the virus so. When we conceptualize it in a way that goes. Beyond ourselves we know from good Scientific Evidence that having these what psychologists of call self transcendent values values that include not only actions for our own benefit but actions to benefit others that is our full instigator of improved wellbeing were going to take a short break right now when were back well continue talking to professor of psychology at the university of wisconsin Madison Richard davidson talking about how to learn to be happy stay with us. Over the last 3 president ial election cycles there is clear evidence voters are attracted to the message of not interventionism and are very weary before and this is most certainly true in 2060 but his time in office is spotty at best now appears to embrace the same foreign policies as bush and obama i guess nothing really real. The evening. Out. But it was supposed. To spoil for the last time we chased. Each one of will carrying 20 kilos d of drugs to this very 1st offense. For that. Is the very real i mean they all medical men they the boy they have this is the this is for me. I like it really well i dont know maybe they dont make or. Break a very posh. Crown one. Route. And way back with professor Richard Davidson professor of psychology and psychiatry at the university of wisconsin madison and the founder director of the center for health in minds talking about how to learn to be happy which are to the right what about that skill of being happy the one that can be learned youre saying how can it bill 1st 1st of all we talk about will being. Rather than happiness learn. You can have very high levels of wellbeing and not necessarily be happy in fact. Research shows that being happy all the time is really not the point and may be counterproductive and actually inappropriate so if you are in a situation where there is genuine loss loss of a loved one for example it would not be appropriate for you to be happy that you can be sad at the same time you have high levels of wellbeing so thats the 1st thing we described for major components of wellbeing the 1st we call awareness which is being able to focus your attention and also knowing what your mind is doing. Most of the time people think they always know what their mind is doing but im sure many viewers have had the experience of reading a book where theyre reading words on a page and after a few minutes they may realize they have no idea what theyve just read thats an example of not knowing what your mind is doing and that is we know from hard nosed research not conducive to wellbeing. The 2nd component well being is connection connection refers to qualities that nurture positive social Mission Ships healthy socialization ships qualities like appreciation and gratitude and kindness compassion. The 3rd pillar of wellbeing we call insight in insight is about self knowledge knowledge of the narrative that we all carry around about ourselves who we are our beliefs about ourselves and it is very extreme there are people who have very negative self and who actually hold those beliefs to be a true description of who they are and of course thats a prescription for depression and finally the last pillar of well being is purpose and purpose is about finding your true or at finding be direction in which your life is headed and aligning your every day behavior with that sense of purpose and particularly finding a purpose which goes beyond oneself which psychologists of called a self transcendent purpose each of these 4 pillars of wellbeing is based on circuits in the brain that we know exhibit plasticity. And so they can be shaped by experience they can also be shaped by intentional training and weve developed a Training Program to train each of these 4 constituents of well being and actually put it recently into an app which is freely available to anyone anywhere in the world unfortunately now its only in english but if you speak english you can access it its called the Healthy Minds program. So all those 4 aspects 4 pillars are saying there in a straight. Yes and if we train it that means that happen is something that only comes from within this is mean that external factors do not really have any effect on our being happy or unhappy im not saying sad like you sad little loss of the loved ones that are a thing but the happiness is something that purely comes from with them by training those 4 aspects or does it still somewhat depend on external factors. It would be inappropriate to deny the influence of external factors completely they play some role but they play very modest role we know for example that income is related to happiness up to a low threshold beyond that its not we know from research in the United States with lottery winners who win 5000000. 00 who otherwise were lower middle class people it produces a boost in their happy in this initially but then they rapidly come back down to baseline in fact many of them end up less happy and so theres a lot of evidence to suggest that the themes we think may make us happy in terms of extra nl causes actually do not say. Another thing i want to ask you about is meditation i mean youre friends with dalai lama youve studied the impact of meditation our brain for years and years you wrote books about it what exactly does meditation do to our brains i mean its general knowledge that its a good think and its like a fashionable thing to do but i dont really understand i dont really think that people fully understand its impact and what it really does here brain. Well 1st of all meditation. Is a word that can apply to many different techniques and strategies its kind of like the word sports we know that there are many different kinds of sports there are also many different kinds of minute ation not all forms of meditation do the same thing to our mind in every thats the 1st thing there are meditation practices which can cultivate each of these different 4 pillars of wellbeing awareness connection insight and purpose. So depending upon what strategy of meditation you use it will have different effects so meditation can be used to train attention it can be used to enhance kindness and compassion it can be used to develop insight into your own mind and self and it can also be used to strengthen your own lineman with your sense of purpose so. Meditation is a you can think of it as a broad. Range of mental exercises which can exercise different facets of the mind and what Scientific Research has shown is that when you do that it will influence different circuits in the brain and this can have a profound effect on our wellbeing because it needs to changes that are enduring. You know unlike a material external thing or a my taking a drug. These are the kind of changes that endure they stick and they impact all the aspects of our daily life so. Thats one of the reasons why were particularly interested in the application of meditation because it leads to what. We have cold altered charade of consciousness and the trait being something that is more enduring and in a book that i wrote with dan goleman not too long ago the title of the book was called alter traits in english and we use that title to convey the idea that what were talking about are changes that are transformational and enduring. But i think for a lot of people who flirt with meditation to decisive argument to actually go into it full on would be if that is something that if the if that if its a fact on the brain could be may be scientifically measures are proven is there such thing or will it always be sort of an in a place of unknown. No there are already hundreds of scientific papers showing beneficial effects on the brain we have contributed and many papers over the last 15 years theres. No just a very robust corpus of Scientific Evidence showing beneficial effects on the brain one of the things that i remind the public is that when human beings 1st evolved on this planet none of us are brushing their teeth and ill bet every viewer of this program brushes their teeth at least a couple of times a day this is something that all of humanity has learned this is not part of our genome this is something that we do because we know its good for our physical health what were talking about we believe is something good for your Mental Health Mental Hygiene and i think most people would agree that their minds are even more important than their teeth so when that becomes more broadly recognized even if we took 3 minutes a day it will change our minds in our brains and this world would really be a different place ok so do we agree that meditation is rather something that takes care of Mental Hygiene but then it cant really help you hope with Serious Problems like Health Issues or job loss or ruin plans and stuff like that. Well what it does is to help you cope better with youre talking about job problems job was those are adversity as theyre stresses and. As we spoke earlier they stress arises thats part of the human condition were never going to buffer ourselves completely from stress but what we can do is change our relationship to stress we can change how we cope with stress and this is where meditation can really feel and that is think is the global Mental Health and its state its a real issue these days i mean depression and loneliness statistics is really gloomy every year its getting worse and worse suicide rate rates are raising how do you explain this wave of blues over people i mean is it only that we didnt care much for depression in the fiftys and now a diagnosis or is the situation with our Mental Health really worsening these days any if yes then why. Ah i believe it is really worsening i dont think its. It is explained fully by the increased sensitivity to these problems i believe its worsening because were seeing. Globally increased divisiveness. In many parts of world were seeing Global Economic stresses global increase in disparity between rich and poor were also seeing. Increased stress as a consequence of exposure to much higher density of information through the internet all of these factors i think are contributing and so it is unquestionably a real challenge and i think that what we need are 2 starting in Young Children to educate our children in a way that includes teaching them skills to help them cultivate their own wellbeing so that when they become adults and when they enter. The workforce they will do so with. Equipped with tools to help them better manage their own well being richard thank you so much for this wonderful insight on how to become happy cammy the name of the app again because i learned. Its called the Healthy Minds program and if you yes if you go into the website try Healthy Minds dot org you can read all about it thank you so much and good luck with everything in the future with all your diverse its been a pleasure talking to you thank you so much i appreciate you having to take care. That the bill really kiss near those hit a really crucial area can. Show that they can just be suitably. Stood. Out without us apart on it over to stop us they are so dark. No nervous trippin or bull episodes didnt go to see you just you sure the it that you slipped during your force wake would be near mushed up mystery if not thoughts about spirit i pity you it was a more sinister experiment done in there which. If de gea cruel should. Show us the stress of school issuance for you to post here to put by some sort of move to willows russell unbelievable cook official story list so they will bow out is. Joining me every thursday on the alex simon show and ill be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see that. Time after time corporations repeat the same mantra sustainability its very important to excel or it transitions to sustainable transport sustainability sustainable amana a more equitable and sustainable well. They claim their production is completely hamas followed. The models and it does not the Companies Want us to feel good about buying their products while the damage is being done far away this is 2nd eldest thats the point i mean and im skipping instance on moods in this new me doing to me when im studying them to be based on disconnect with who is going in. Very mechanisms. To get under the skin and to. The negative effect on our mind in our body those same mechanisms in the morning through good so the resilience to flourish. Goes on. The chemical weapons watchdog. Test results the. Several times they say. From washington amid reports that United States is group. Terrorists. Means health. Most of the code vaccines on the development have been snapped up by rich nations leaving the poor at the back of the queue
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