What Makes You Happy?
When we ask that question of students 12 to 17 the answer is freedom and personal experiences with family, friends or alone.
Pushing them further, 91% say the absence of school.
Their mental movies of school including four years of high school, is being dominated and feeling insulted by teachers, attacks on their self-esteem, and social rejection.
Over the past 25 years we find the percentage adding they hate school, has risen 33% compared to a generation ago.
It is now politically and socially correct for young kids to admit they hate going to school and being taught.
Wait, they also say they love their time on the computer.
College and graduate students are different; they know how to play the system.
They are highly conscious of telling teachers, parents and those who have power over them, exactly what they want to hear.
These folks know they are going to become part of the system, the establishment, and will not go on record attacking what their superiors support.
The Pareto Principle Professor Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist in 1906 offered his vision of how society works and was crucified for it until he died.
It was true of course or the majority would not have freaked out.
A century later the Pareto Principle is applied in business, education and politics.
Perhaps you know it as the 80/20 rule.
Google it.
What Professor Pareto theorized was that 20% of the population controlled 80% of the property.
A recent study in the U.
S.
indicates the more things change, the more Dr.
Pareto was on the money.
One hundred years of social governmental programs, higher education, billions in charity for minorities, and grants to institutions of learning had not moved the numbers.
In the U.
S.
20% of the population owns and controls 80% of the national income.
The rule has come to mean the Vital Few (20%) verses the Trivial Many (80%).
When someone or an organization relegates a social group to oblivion by calling them the Trivial Many, it makes Americans feel queasy; they call for a investigation or a new law to ban it.
Our approach is to want to help those in the 80% rise into the 20% and many will do just that.
How many? 20%.
Consider the research in sales and marketing: 20% of salespeople produce 80% of their company success, and 20% of your clients produce 80% of the complaints.
We leave it to you to decide if 20% of what you studied produces 80% of your income or success.
For those who cry, Say it aint so Joe, we point to a one hundred year track record for the old professor.
New Research on Happiness Professor Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado at Boulder reported in the Association for Psychological Science: Experiences Make People Happier Than Material Possessions.
They asked thousands about what makes them happier; stuff: tangible, material goods like cars, houses, furniture and jewelry or life experiences like travel, group vacations, or personal accomplishments.
Maybe they got together and agreed to lie, but the great majority up to 74%, voted happiness is social experiences, not hard stuff we accumulate.
In interviews they said: 1.
Experiences become a part of your permanent identity.
2.
Accomplishing your goals and overcoming challengers (experiences) just plain feels better than owning stuff.
3.
Social experiences are more entertaining and involve our instincts of cooperation, territoriality, and hierarchy, the pecking order in life.
They Changed Their Mind Psychologists and psychiatrists for the past 75 years accepted the theory of happiness being a Set Point.
It meant that your subjective well-being was independent of what happened to you, your life circumstances.
If you contradicted this principle with common sense, you were pilloried by your betters with professional jargon indicating you were well near an idiot.
Never mind the death of a close one rattled your bones and you lost your groove for years; that your job disappearing with your company bankruptcy sent you into depression.
Marriage, divorce, and serious illness; work and love episodes can derail your happiness, sometimes permanently.
Professor Richard E.
Lucas of Michigan State University and the German Institute for Economic Research offered their work in the Association for Psychological Science March 6, 2007.
Individual difference in folks play a major role in how or if we can adapt to circumstances, and regain our level of happiness after a personal disaster.
The new paradigm is: people do not adapt to major life events and bounce back to their happiness set-point.
Happiness is not a constant in our lives.
Specifically, happiness levels do change, adaptation is not inevitable, and life events do matter, said Dr.
Lucas.
Losing a leg in Iraq is not ignored and forgotten because an artificial limb permits you to walk; your happiness is often permanently reduced.
So What Does everyone cope with the aftermath of a serious life challenge or do some of us sink into a bottle of booze, prescription drugs or wandering without a rudder? You know individual differences play a role in abject surrender to circumstances, or the bounce back effect.
We got slow and quick adaptors, and no adaptors, right? Does this make sense to you? Adaptation helps us detach from goals and activities that prove to be unrealistic.
Do humans suffer from distorted thinking at various points in their lives and not other times? How about faulty self-perception? Many wrongly blame themselves or others for acts of the environment or pure chance, the turn of the card or getting hit by a Mack truck.
How about those who refuse to take responsibility for their own behaviors? The devil made them do it, maybe drugs or their parents.
New Research Being Top Dog Makes Us Happier Than Simply Getting Top Dollar, according to University of Warwick economics professor Andrew Oswald, and Dr.
Jonathan Gardner.
Levels of happiness is based on hierarchy (rank) more than big bucks.
They interviewed 16,000 at 886 separate workplaces and found this to be a consistent reality.
It was not the achievement of specific goals, overcoming challenges and saving the company for the widows and orphans, we are truly happy when we can look around and see that we stand taller than some of our peers.
Napolean said, Men will die for a ribbon.
We believe Homo sapiens are hardwired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and for immediate gratification and rapid feedback.
What do you think? See ya, copyright © 2007 H.
Bernard Wechsler http://www.
speedlearning.
org hbw@speedlearning.
org -
Pushing them further, 91% say the absence of school.
Their mental movies of school including four years of high school, is being dominated and feeling insulted by teachers, attacks on their self-esteem, and social rejection.
Over the past 25 years we find the percentage adding they hate school, has risen 33% compared to a generation ago.
It is now politically and socially correct for young kids to admit they hate going to school and being taught.
Wait, they also say they love their time on the computer.
College and graduate students are different; they know how to play the system.
They are highly conscious of telling teachers, parents and those who have power over them, exactly what they want to hear.
These folks know they are going to become part of the system, the establishment, and will not go on record attacking what their superiors support.
The Pareto Principle Professor Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist in 1906 offered his vision of how society works and was crucified for it until he died.
It was true of course or the majority would not have freaked out.
A century later the Pareto Principle is applied in business, education and politics.
Perhaps you know it as the 80/20 rule.
Google it.
What Professor Pareto theorized was that 20% of the population controlled 80% of the property.
A recent study in the U.
S.
indicates the more things change, the more Dr.
Pareto was on the money.
One hundred years of social governmental programs, higher education, billions in charity for minorities, and grants to institutions of learning had not moved the numbers.
In the U.
S.
20% of the population owns and controls 80% of the national income.
The rule has come to mean the Vital Few (20%) verses the Trivial Many (80%).
When someone or an organization relegates a social group to oblivion by calling them the Trivial Many, it makes Americans feel queasy; they call for a investigation or a new law to ban it.
Our approach is to want to help those in the 80% rise into the 20% and many will do just that.
How many? 20%.
Consider the research in sales and marketing: 20% of salespeople produce 80% of their company success, and 20% of your clients produce 80% of the complaints.
We leave it to you to decide if 20% of what you studied produces 80% of your income or success.
For those who cry, Say it aint so Joe, we point to a one hundred year track record for the old professor.
New Research on Happiness Professor Leaf Van Boven, University of Colorado at Boulder reported in the Association for Psychological Science: Experiences Make People Happier Than Material Possessions.
They asked thousands about what makes them happier; stuff: tangible, material goods like cars, houses, furniture and jewelry or life experiences like travel, group vacations, or personal accomplishments.
Maybe they got together and agreed to lie, but the great majority up to 74%, voted happiness is social experiences, not hard stuff we accumulate.
In interviews they said: 1.
Experiences become a part of your permanent identity.
2.
Accomplishing your goals and overcoming challengers (experiences) just plain feels better than owning stuff.
3.
Social experiences are more entertaining and involve our instincts of cooperation, territoriality, and hierarchy, the pecking order in life.
They Changed Their Mind Psychologists and psychiatrists for the past 75 years accepted the theory of happiness being a Set Point.
It meant that your subjective well-being was independent of what happened to you, your life circumstances.
If you contradicted this principle with common sense, you were pilloried by your betters with professional jargon indicating you were well near an idiot.
Never mind the death of a close one rattled your bones and you lost your groove for years; that your job disappearing with your company bankruptcy sent you into depression.
Marriage, divorce, and serious illness; work and love episodes can derail your happiness, sometimes permanently.
Professor Richard E.
Lucas of Michigan State University and the German Institute for Economic Research offered their work in the Association for Psychological Science March 6, 2007.
Individual difference in folks play a major role in how or if we can adapt to circumstances, and regain our level of happiness after a personal disaster.
The new paradigm is: people do not adapt to major life events and bounce back to their happiness set-point.
Happiness is not a constant in our lives.
Specifically, happiness levels do change, adaptation is not inevitable, and life events do matter, said Dr.
Lucas.
Losing a leg in Iraq is not ignored and forgotten because an artificial limb permits you to walk; your happiness is often permanently reduced.
So What Does everyone cope with the aftermath of a serious life challenge or do some of us sink into a bottle of booze, prescription drugs or wandering without a rudder? You know individual differences play a role in abject surrender to circumstances, or the bounce back effect.
We got slow and quick adaptors, and no adaptors, right? Does this make sense to you? Adaptation helps us detach from goals and activities that prove to be unrealistic.
Do humans suffer from distorted thinking at various points in their lives and not other times? How about faulty self-perception? Many wrongly blame themselves or others for acts of the environment or pure chance, the turn of the card or getting hit by a Mack truck.
How about those who refuse to take responsibility for their own behaviors? The devil made them do it, maybe drugs or their parents.
New Research Being Top Dog Makes Us Happier Than Simply Getting Top Dollar, according to University of Warwick economics professor Andrew Oswald, and Dr.
Jonathan Gardner.
Levels of happiness is based on hierarchy (rank) more than big bucks.
They interviewed 16,000 at 886 separate workplaces and found this to be a consistent reality.
It was not the achievement of specific goals, overcoming challenges and saving the company for the widows and orphans, we are truly happy when we can look around and see that we stand taller than some of our peers.
Napolean said, Men will die for a ribbon.
We believe Homo sapiens are hardwired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and for immediate gratification and rapid feedback.
What do you think? See ya, copyright © 2007 H.
Bernard Wechsler http://www.
speedlearning.
org hbw@speedlearning.
org -
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