Want to be happier? Stay in the moment | Matt Killingsworth
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- Опубліковано 4 лис 2012
- When are humans most happy? To gather data on this question, Matt Killingsworth built an app, Track Your Happiness, that let people report their feelings in real time. Among the surprising results: We're often happiest when we're lost in the moment. And the flip side: The more our mind wanders, the less happy we can be. (Filmed at TEDxCambridge.)
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Forget happiness! I'll put it this way: "Want to be healthy? Stay in the moment!" It took me many years to discover that my non-stop mind wandering, mental chatter and multitasking were making me sick. Stay in the moment! Powerful stuff, at least it worked for me. I am grateful every single day for finding this "secret".
Can you share how do you stay in the moment?
"Every man is happy until happiness is suddenly a goal." - Tame Impala
wow....this is really a good quote....thanks for sharing mate....
yep i also made a lot of progress using it.
I would disagree there as there are things such as depression. But I get the point.
Impala is a genius 👌
Could you explain what this really means ? I BELEIVE it means if you say to yourself “ my goal is to be happy” then you already set a label on yourself that you ain’t happy ?
You should live in the moment most of the time and the rest use your imagination to plan for your goals but never allow worry, rumination and any negative internal self-talk.
Аrе You On The Path To Ultimate Lifе Suссess? twitter.com/096964f907612a6ef/status/804630629388152832 Want tо bе hapрier Stаy in thе mоoomеnt МMМMaaatt KКKKillingsworth
Аrе Yоооu Оn Тhе Раth Тooо Ultimаtе Lifееe Sucсеss? twitter.com/99b8dbff099e6c65e/status/822777137924931585 Wаnt toооо bе hаррier Stay in thе mоmеnt Маtt KKillingswоrth
DreamBeatsBakery I agree
I feel this .
How can you be in the moment if you don’t allow negative thinking? You need to allow it all or you get anxiety.
Mindfulness is the ANSWER !!!
I could not beleive it, until I experienced the happiness when I am totally focused and immersed in what Im Doing.
I actually mind wandered twice while watching this video. If it hasn't been for the subject of the discussion, I would not have been so conscious about it. I think the thing is to start capturing the moment you are mind wandering to make it stop.
I think technology causes us to "mind-wander" a lot and takes us away from the present moment. The effect being that time seems to be going really fast for a lot of us, and many of us are falling into depression and stress that could be relieved if we lived more in the present instead of on our phones and stuff being distracted at family gatherings. Every moment is unique and it's a shame we miss it because we are always distracted.
When I'm unhappy I remind me of those things:
1.Realize how small my problems are and how little they matter.
2.Think of how comfortable my life is in compare to those of people in third world .
3.Set my expectations low and I'll always be positivly surprised.
4.Set my self a day and time, where I atually gona do something about one particular problem.
Then I can relax and focus on what I'm doing at the moment.
"If mind wandering were a slot machine it'd be like having a chance to lose $50, $20 or $1. You'd never wanna play"
Genius right here
Heck! I'm mind wandering while watching this video
funny
It's simple. Mind wandering is a cause of unhappiness because when your mind wanders you think about things that aren't here in your life, so everytime you "come down" you feel bad because you leave that perfect world that you create all the time.
I don't even know if that's true. I had to say something.
i dont know if anything is true anymore
living in the past = depression, living in the future = anxiety, living in the present = happiness
ABRAHAM LINCOLN thanks for that, I never looked at it that way!
besides from some details its pretty much true
Yup well said
Being in the Now is the absolute place to be.
For as long as I can remember, my mind wanders. I never realized this was a reason for my unhappiness. Thank you for this video.
Sometimes when the present seems a load too hard to bare, it's easy for the mind to wander. Desire can be a dangerous factor too because that takes everyone out of the now.Like a Psychiatrist once told me,THE TRICK IS TO LIKE WHAT YOU HAVE. It's so true, because we were all educated backwards.
@@SimonWells69 That is a wise psychiatrist right there.
this was my theory and why, I believe, we love music bc we can just sit and enjoy it in the moment
TREBLEBOOSTER65 for me its dance, im present when I dance.
he showed we're mind-wandering above 50% when we're listening to music
@@sergiisalo3922 True unless we really sit down & enjoy the music for what it is
Edit: Really anything can be mindfully or unmindfully
I just realised that
Meditation is not shutting down the mind. It's awakening the mind. It's shutting off excessive thinking, habits and patterns of thought and action. It is shutting down of creating words in your mind which distract you from reality in the present moment. It's a method of practice to sustain focus, awareness, calm & peacefulness. It taps into the sub-consciousness at the deepest levels to enable inner transformation into a more "Buddha-like" type of person. One with wisdom, compassion and courage.
Oh, it's not so difficult to come up with a recipe for happiness. Here's mine:
Make sure that every decision you make is concurrent with who you are and what you believe in...and make sure that your decisions will allow you to sleep well at night.
I have many problems, but I do not stay awake at night worrying about who I may have hurt.
I act honorably, and at least I don't have to worry about that.
Buddhism has been teaching people this for over 2,500 years. Meditation is the ultimate practice for gathering awareness of the present moment. Peace Out. Keep your head up and stop texting so much on your cell phone!
Am i the only one to get my mind wandered to check the comments while watching his talk?
No and unfortunately it happens to me all the time!!
Nope
LOL, I do that a lot and I’m doing it right now.
When im angry I remember that I can´t get a single moment back so why to live it in anger. We can always control our thoughts and with that we influence what we feel.
Such a great talk, thank you. I have been undertaking my only happiness project in recent years and have found my struggle with being presence to be my greatest challenge! I find that building in rituals of gratitude (giving thanks at certain points each day) is something that makes the biggest difference. x x
this is so great. figure out the four noble truths(this is stress, this is the cause of stress, this is the path leading to the end of stress, this is the end of stress) to be free from stress which develops concentration and mindfulness, which is the absence of mind wandering
If a difference of 9% is significant statistically then it needs to be shown on scale that demonstrates that to the audience. This is a talk in which audience need to be able to quickly follow both results on the screen and his explanation.
Same here. This program is a gem.
I agree. I seem to be the happiest when I have something to keep my focus on. Like gardening or just working around the house.
I love how he states the obvious yet its seems so excellent.
Conviction and satisfaction with what we have are the keys of happiness. Very simple, but as humans we always seek for more!
All I want in life is for me and my family to be in good health and to be happy.
read what anything12321 said please. :) thanks.
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate it. : ). Respect to you.
when I'm sad, I stop being sad and I start being awesome instead. True story!
I figured this out a few years ago. I'm so glad I did. More people should be open to it.
Happiness comes down to the basics. Food, shelter, family, helping others. So simple.How do we screw that up? lol
Amazing video! And pretty cool how he collected all that data to back it up, and the reasoning provided. Thank you for sharing.
I think it is all about what you know as to how much you enjoy you mind wandering, over the years I have come to know a lot about most subject and I find it totally enjoyable to allow my mind to wondered when I am focused on doing something else- it is like food for thought, I gain great inspiration from. I can understand if you have a narrow and shallow understand how mind wondering could give result in a sense of frustration which would make you feel less happy then when focused on a task.
Interesting point, I have to agree. I'm rarely as focused as I am when playing a good immersive video game. And while it's easy to enjoy those moments, you can hardly say that playing video games makes a person happier overall.
Causality is our instinctive way of stating that "if we do X, we'll later see that Y happens (more often than not)". It's always qualified by "as far as we know" and a hand-waving "if we hold all other things constant". It's our way of describing what we believe about actions, based on our accumulated experience (or humanity's experience, in case of science). No more and no less. Very useful and hugely imprecise all the same. All causal models tend to break when examined carefully.
Apathy and boredom cause mind-wandering. What causes apathy and boredom? A lack of developed creative abilities? I'm most happy when I'm designing a project. Next happiest moment is when the work is complete.
"Service giving is greater than service receiving"
~~cc
the best way to be present is not thinking about the now but to use your: eyes,nose,ears,tongue,skin. these five is the door to now. example when you look at red or whatever colour or whatever object dont describe it in your mind, if you did then fast look at something else. or even better when you eat something if you have time try to focus on the taste of that food that you eat that will make even a vegetable like cucumber super tasty.
His graph on happiness doesn't start at 0, there's only a nine point difference between happy and unhappy....
Very deceptive graph
One might speculate that if not occupied with a specific activity, or deliberate attempt to concentrate - mind wandering is the natural state of the brain until stronger impulses take over. Or that periods of lesser happiness can be instrumental in creating basis for happiness at other moments. Mind wandering could even originate in a general state of mind that may seem to have no direct discernible cause - like light depression or generalized stress - and thus still be a symptom not a cause.
this fellas arms make me smile
I think the point is that you're thinking of something that doesn't exist (at least for us). The past is memory while the future is fantasy. Neither are 'real' events - they're products of your brain function. When you focus on the 'now' you're concentrating on what's actually 'happening' since the only time we can 'really' perceive is each passing moment. Of course I'm being black & white about this when it's much more grey - you obviously do need to think ahead and remember what you just did!
Thanks! I'm looking forward to being in the now!
Times go forward, not backward; the cause has to come before the effect
Mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, you don't want to ever play that game of "mind-wandering"
Really good talk, the core message is to inmmerse yourself every second on the right now, and as I saw in another comment "destinate a moment for each thing", if you have to solve a problem, don't think about it while your doing a different action, is like being forrest gump for each thing, our focus is for only one specific thing at a moment. I will do it as deep work for every task in my life, and never multitask doing mind-wandering, because being distracted is unproductive, be focused on every action you do and don't get distracted for nothing, nothing is nothing. (also mind-wandering) Beautiful video!
Simplicity is the key to happiness.
This is a great study. Thank you!
Super thanks for sharing!!! Amazing talk!!! Thanks!!
I just love the No! at 6:23.
Well said. This is my goal to spread this message.
I think there are very happy people without shelter or some other "basic-need". But it's great you've worked it out for you personally.
You nailed it for me thank you
Thank you..
because one can only live in the moment, the last conscious moment is determinative to conclude what life is.....all the last moments of other people I've witnessed where full of suffer and grief, therefore life is suffering and grief......
10 years later, and this guy is now saying "Want to be happier? Make more money"
thank you for sharing
We've all been there :) More often than not it's a boring speaker droning on like the teacher in Charlie Brown. When that happens of course your mind is going to wander. It's also evidence that daydreaming is a symptom of being unhappy rather than a cause. Our minds wander BECAUSE we are unhappy - not the other way around....
It might just be a natural coping mechanism. It also disables us though from taking important action to change our situations, so it can easily become maladaptive.
Some of the greatest ideas by some of the gratest minds came about when their minds were wandering.
Good talk. Put across very well.
Well usually when I have lots of time and I'm not concentrating on things my mind wonders a lot and I don't really enjoy myself.. but when I have lots of things to do all the time I feel happy, coz I concentrate on things, and not on what could be or might be.. So I think this is true.
Awesome job thank you so much
Great. I would like to hear more on this.
Happiness comes from feeling accepted. Surround yourselves with people. Have a great time and you will be happy
Devin Eason The need to be accepted is not good.
Great video thanks!!
This video is definitely a step towards happiness. But there is a lot more to learn. Fortunately for us, we don't need to invent anything, because around 2550 years ago, a man in India gave us a very descriptive recipe for happiness :)
...Just had an interesting thought.
If the mind tends to wander to unpleasant things, and we gently redirect it back to the moment, and then it wanders to something pleasant, and we dwell on that for a second, or a minute or longer...
We'll have trained ourselves, accidentally, to shut down unpleasant thoughts and focus on what's good in life.
Weird... Think I like it.
Source: Was reading a page in WikiHow on how to stay in the moment after watching this video and the article said, "The mind will wander. Just accept it happened without judgement and gently redirect the mind back to the present." (Yes, I'm paraphrasing.)
yeah i hear you. i'm a big believer in voluntary euthenazia for the terminally ill and similar situations but mostly when people want to commit suicide because things feel hopeless etc., it's more of a transitory thing or a mental illness and it's a tragedy to end one's life for something like that. honestly i think people who've experienced suicidal feelings and fought through them enjoy life in a way those who haven't had that experience don't understand.
yeah, when my mind wanders, I'm thinking about positive things like music and am sometimes constructively introspecting into my life... perhaps very specific kinds of mind-wandering pertaining to music, art, singing, future plans, and introspection grounds you in the moment and makes you more happy as opposed to if you were mind wandering and wishing you were somewhere else like the beach or with your significant other than waiting in traffic.
mind wandering does not cause unhappiness.... the choosen focus of what we think of... or rather not conciously choosing to focus on positive. NLP totally explains this much better
This is too good !!!
That was amazing!
wow, great words
Thanks.
When we kid we focus on what we are doing too. That's why in general we happier as a kid.
REMEMBERING
Smart guy. He figured it out. Almost nobody ever actually does.
I was commuting from work to home and i was very happy because i was thinking of a beautiful young woman i had met earlier that day at work. I was so happy the rest of the day.
Amazing!
This was great!!!
That's why they don't define them. If a person was to define happiness for you, you would end up pursuing something that most likely won;t make you happy. Everybody has a different view of happiness and what can bring it to them. It's up to you to figure out what makes you happy. What they are explaining is that it's up to you. Nobody can tell you how to be happy. It's just up to you.
Right. Happiness is found in whatever keeps you focused on the present moment.
It would appear to explain why last year I had a job that was poorly paid so I had to work 52 hours a week to make ends meet and I was happier then than I am now earning more and working less hours. I think we need to be busy.
not staying in the moment is not even an option. we are stuck in the moment even without trying, its our default. and our present moment is full of past and future, which doesn't make it no present moment. so you don't have to focus on being now, because you are there all the time.
This presentation causes mind-wandering...
Usually I mind wander when I want to think about something good and the fact that I know I'm stuck in some other place doing something other than what I'm thinking about is what causes me to feel unhappy.
Really great
Well spotted! This is a really good and important observation because it shows how easily we can be mislead by biased reporting of statistics. He carefully chose his axes to suggest a 100% difference between the two when it's actually about 15%!!! This disproves any claims he might make about using a scientific approach in his analysis.
Life will put alot on your plate most negative so it's easy to think about a certain worry, but when u block negative thoughts, it helps you from depression and worrying. Now you can focus on the right moves for your life.
One way I've found to get happier, fast, is to start doing something that *demands* my full present attention (example: juggling).
Also, I instinctively started playing (or learning to play) a musical instrument during extremely stressful passages in my life. (By instinctively, I mean I didn't start playing with the specific intent to become happier.)
Aside: Maybe involvement-in-the-present involves more experience and less "judgment," and mind-wandering involves the opposite.
wow...very useful information.....
Present moment is focus and no anxiety and no sadness. Harder to do than do.
AGREED!
Well said Derrick.
Mindfulness is the best form of meditation... it is all about the present moment.
When my mind wanders, it wanders more into many subjects: I'm impressed that most people wander into unpleasant thoughts. When I'm in traffic, I am not focused on my driving skills! I listen to music, I sing. I think about what I'll get for dinner. you can't really say people are unhappy when they're wondering. Wondering is ubiquitious. And you think about 10 things at once. some of them maybe unpleasant, but I personally don't focus on them.
Badass surname, Mr. Killingsworth.
I was mind-wandering while watching this clip.. I had to rewind a couple of times :)
Great job man
Happiness is, and always will be, subjective. Happiness could be playing video games, or playing sports, or traveling, or eating etc. It's all down to what you as an individual get enjoyment from. Find out what you want and live it.
ikr
I like ted talks and the information they bring.
There is however one "trick" that is becoming a little tiring.
When they show these graphs for happiness they maked the difference in high huge (factor 2 maybe).
While in fact on the axis you can see they represent a score of 57 and 66 ..
Just a trick to make it seem bigger than it is and i don't like that.
Breathing is pretty awesome,breathing and enjoying your natural ability to feel your body's warmth...
I think our mind starts to wander when we don't enjoy what you do, can't do something you want to, and we always want something new and exciting. That's why we can live in the moment only for a while. And being happy all the time can't be considered happiness at all.
I agree, but think about how many times a day you try to think about how you look (mostly negative), how others see you (mostly negative), while you working - why Jim can and I can't etc.
He’s a great speaker and made us inspired in how we can feel happier. For me, in order for you to feel happier in your life, you should do the things that makes you happy..😊
Interesting thought.