We watched a video in class the other day called “The Science of Happiness and Potential”. Shawn Achor goes to Harvard and he was talking about positive psychology. He was talking about Harvard students are not very happy, as “80% of the students at Harvard are depressed”. Those students are very much stressed and have high expectations on them from other people and from themselves. I think this is not only relevant at Harvard, but it is relevant in all colleges and universities around the world. Stresses come from everywhere and students have an extremely hard time with that. Achor stated that “depression rates are 10 times more than they were in the Great Depression”. I think that is crazy. People have so much more things now than in the Great Depression. Therefore, people should be happier right? With all the technology and material items we have, people are not happy, as there are so many pressures to have those things. Achor did a study where they got people to do a task. One group did the task. Then the next group did the task, but before they did the task they told them to think of something that made them happy. The people that were happy before they did the task were 50% more productive and more successful than the group that was not happy before they did the task. Therefore, if students are happy before they write a test or write a paper then they will do better. That is crazy. I think finding a balance between doing school work and doing the things that make you happy is extremely hard, as you want to do well in school, but also need to have fun and be happy. I think school is a lot of pressure now and it can be too much for students. The stress of school can overcome people and become all they focus on, which is very sad. They need to find that balance, but it can very hard to find it.
Here is the video from Shawn Achor "The Science of Happiness and Potential" (there are 3 parts to it):
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