Daniel Goleman on Focus: The Secret to High Performance and Fulfilment
Intelligence Squared2013-11-02
Intelligence Squared#Debate#great oratory#Intelligence Squared debate#speech#top debates#best debates#most interesting debates#educational debates#intelligence2#intelligencesquared#is debate#iq2#iq2 debate#iq squared#Daniel Goleman#Emotional Intelligence#soft skills#self-motivation#self-control#empathy#interpersonal relationships#Focus#High Performance#Fulfilment#Hidden Driver of Excellence#self-awareness#relationships#mindfulness meditation#namelogleinad
7M views|10 years ago
💫 Short Summary
Daniel Goleman discusses the importance of attention and emotional intelligence in children's education and success, citing examples and studies to support the crucial role of these factors. He also addresses a question about genetic inheritance and cultural differences in addressing children's development.Daniel Goleman discusses the intersection of emotions, attention, and intelligence, highlighting the importance of managing our emotional state and the potential for emotional change through practice and intervention. He also addresses the effects of overprescribing Ritalin for children with ADHD and the role of parents in helping children develop emotional intelligence.
✨ Highlights
📊 Transcript
✦
Dr. Goleman discusses the importance of attention and focus in children's development.
00:00Attention is a "mental muscle" that can be strengthened through practices like breathing exercises.
Social-emotional learning enhances children's ability to handle themselves and their relationships.
The most important relationships for children shift from family to peers after puberty.
Managing emotions is crucial for attentional capacity and learning.
✦
The ability to manage impulses and mind-wandering is important for academic and professional success.
06:21Children who were able to delay gratification in the marshmallow test had better outcomes in terms of peer relationships and academic scores.
The SAT scores of children who waited in the marshmallow test were 210 points higher than those who didn't wait.
A study in New Zealand showed that cognitive control was a better predictor of financial success and health in the mid-30s than IQ or socioeconomic status.
Teaching children to manage their impulses can help level the playing field.
✦
The speaker shares the importance of attention, emotional intelligence, and relationships in children's learning and development.
12:45Children learn to manage their emotions and behavior through early interventions and social-emotional learning programs.
The ability to focus and control impulses is a better predictor of success than IQ or socioeconomic status.
Cognitive control and emotional intelligence are key factors in achieving academic and professional success.
Children's ability to pay attention and manage their emotions can be enhanced through positive influences and early interventions.
✦
The video discusses the role of social-emotional learning in enhancing children's ability to manage their emotions and relationships.
18:59Children in a tough neighborhood engage in a daily practice called 'breathing buddies' to strengthen their attention and manage their emotions.
Social-emotional learning is integrated into the curriculum to enhance children's abilities to handle themselves and their relationships.
The ability to manage emotions is crucial for attentional capacity and learning.
A study in New Zealand found that cognitive control was a better predictor of financial success and health in the mid-30s than IQ or socioeconomic status.
✦
The talk emphasizes the importance of attention and emotional intelligence in children's education and success.
25:14Social-emotional learning is crucial for children's ability to manage their emotions and relationships.
The speaker witnessed a program in a tough neighborhood that focused on teaching children to stop, calm down, and think before acting when upset.
Children's ability to pay attention and manage their emotions is more important for learning and success than IQ or socioeconomic status.
✦
The section discusses the impact of attention, emotional intelligence, and relationships on children's learning and development.
32:29Children in tough neighborhoods face significant challenges and need support to develop their attention and emotional intelligence.
The ability to manage emotions and focus is crucial for academic and professional success.
Social-emotional learning programs are important for teaching children how to handle their emotions and build better relationships.
✦
Mathieu Picard discusses the importance of stability in power dynamics.
01:04:52Stability is necessary in order to bring someone into a positive state.
✦
Ritalin is being overprescribed for children with ADHD, and more focus should be placed on non-pharmaceutical interventions.
01:05:27Ritalin is not always the best solution for children with ADHD.
More research is needed on the attentional mechanisms involved in ADHD.
Non-pharmaceutical interventions for ADHD are expected to become more prominent in the next five years.
✦
Emotional reactions are largely learned and can be changed through mindfulness and cognitive therapy.
01:06:40Emotions are innate, but emotional reactions are largely learned.
Mind whispering and cognitive therapy can help change self-defeating emotional patterns.
Optimism can be learned through cognitive therapy.
✦
Two types of people in terms of performance: under-aroused and disengaged, and frazzled.
01:09:14Under-aroused and disengaged people need to find what they are passionate about to improve their motivation.
Frazzled people need to find ways to calm down and manage their stress.
✦
Attention is considered an extension of emotional intelligence, and both are intertwined.
01:13:32Attention is viewed as part of emotional intelligence.
The difference in emotions between the sexes highlights the diversity of human emotions.
✦
The speaker suggests that being a good enough parent involves paying attention to the child's feelings and needs.
01:14:12Children's reactions to the marshmallow test may vary, indicating a mix of learned and innate emotional intelligence.
Behavior in children is malleable and can be influenced by parenting.
00:05 I'm very pleased to be here and thank
00:08 you for that introduction tonight this
00:10 evening I'd like to call your attention
00:13 to attention and let me begin with a
00:17 story it's about a classic experiment in
00:21 social psychology it was done many years
00:24 ago at the Princeton Theological
00:27 Seminary with divinity students each
00:30 student was told that they're going to
00:32 give a practice sermon they'd receive a
00:35 topic to prepare and then they go to
00:37 another building and give the sermon to
00:39 be evaluated half of the students were
00:42 given the parable of the Good Samaritan
00:44 as their topic the man who stopped to
00:47 help the stranger in need by the side of
00:49 the road the other half were given
00:51 random Bible topics as each divinity
00:55 student went over to the other building
00:57 to give their sermon they passed a man
01:00 who was bent over and moaning in pain
01:03 the interesting question is did they
01:06 stop to help the more interesting
01:09 question is did it matter if they're
01:11 pondering the parable of the Good
01:13 Samaritan what do you think
01:15 didn't matter make no difference at all
01:18 what mattered was how much time pressure
01:22 people felt they're under and this is
01:24 more or less the story of our lives
01:26 there's a spectrum that runs from
01:29 noticing the other person to tuning into
01:32 the other person to empathizing and
01:34 understanding what's going on with them
01:36 and then if they're in need and there's
01:39 something we can do
01:40 compassion and maybe helping them but if
01:43 we never notice in the first place we
01:45 never go down that road and this is the
01:48 problem with attention today it's under
01:52 siege
01:53 I think the moment I knew we're in
01:55 trouble was a while back before I
01:58 started writing the book focus I was on
02:02 my way to a meeting I was driving I live
02:06 out in the country in New England I was
02:08 late but I was wanting people there to
02:11 know I was coming so as
02:13 I was driving I was texting them on my
02:16 way
02:18 that's rather horrible because it turns
02:20 out as I read not very long after that
02:24 that texting while driving is the same
02:26 as drinking while driving it's really
02:29 bad in fact in my state it's outlawed
02:31 now another thing I've noticed is when I
02:36 was writing the book I'd be kind of on a
02:42 riff really in flow writing well then
02:44 I'd have to look something up so I go to
02:48 Google Scholar I love Google Scholar
02:50 because it gives you access to the
02:51 academic database so I opened my web
02:56 browser and my web browser presents me
02:58 with the news of the day and I'm a news
03:01 junkie so all of a sudden I start
03:04 reading news stories and before I know
03:06 it I've been lot you know fifteen twenty
03:08 minutes has gone by before I realized
03:11 that oh I was supposed to be looking
03:12 that up and today we're all in the same
03:16 boat and that the tools that we use our
03:21 computer our phone and so on are also
03:24 devised to interrupt us to seduce us to
03:28 draw our attention from this to that and
03:32 usually under that is trying to sell us
03:35 something a pop-up ad or whatever but
03:38 attention is besieged in a way that has
03:42 never been true before when I was going
03:44 around to publishers and telling him I
03:47 wanted to write about attention one
03:50 publishers said to me that's wonderful
03:53 we'd love to have that book but could
03:54 you keep it short
03:57 so what happened to us in in 2007 Time
04:02 magazine a major American publication
04:05 had a small article it said there's a
04:07 new word in the English language the
04:09 word is pizzle it's a combination of
04:11 puzzled and pissed-off and it refers to
04:15 the moment when you're with someone who
04:18 takes out their blackberry and starts
04:20 talking to someone else and ignoring you
04:23 in 2007 that was unusual but the word
04:28 pizzle has died with the blackberry
04:29 because now that's the new social norm
04:32 you go out to a dinner very romantic
04:35 restaurant you see a couple together and
04:38 they're both looking at their phones
04:40 instead of into each other's eyes
04:42 something has happened to us in 1977
04:48 Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon wrote a
04:52 very prescient he said information
04:54 consumes attention hence a wealth of
04:58 information creates a poverty of
05:01 attention I think we've entered a time
05:04 when we're in danger of intentional
05:07 impoverishment and the the signs of it
05:11 are more than you know a couple watching
05:14 they're looking at the phone instead of
05:15 it into each other's eyes you the other
05:18 day I saw a mom holding a little toddler
05:21 and the toddler's trying to get her
05:24 attention and she's busy texting he's
05:26 just not available and you know of
05:28 course dad's same story I was on a
05:32 vacation island last summer Martha's
05:35 Vineyard off the coast of New England
05:37 and I was taking a taxi from the ferry
05:39 to my house and I happened to share it
05:41 with seven sorority sisters college
05:44 students who were going for a weekend
05:46 together and we got in the it was a
05:51 shared taxi a big van and we got in the
05:53 taxi and within a minute or two every
05:56 one of the sorority sisters was staring
05:59 into a screened iphone/ipad but they
06:03 weren't talking to each other and I
06:06 think this is a real long
06:09 the ingredients of rapport are three the
06:14 first is full mutual attention from that
06:20 full attention comes a second ingredient
06:23 it's a nonverbal synchrony if you look
06:27 at two people who are really in rapport
06:29 really connecting if you were to make a
06:31 video of that and watch it in silence
06:34 the two bodies look as though they're
06:36 choreographed this is something that's
06:38 managed by a category of brain cell
06:41 called oscillators oscillators govern
06:44 how we respond to someone else how we
06:46 respond to physical objects oscillators
06:49 are very important for the survival of
06:51 the human species consider this at the
06:54 moment of a first kiss they determine
06:56 the velocity at which two skulls come
06:58 together and if they get it wrong it
07:00 would be the end of the species I'm sure
07:03 the third ingredient after the full
07:07 attention and the nonverbal synchrony is
07:11 that it feels good it's a rather
07:14 pleasant joyous state to connect with
07:17 someone that well these are the moments
07:18 in our lives that are the richest that
07:21 that really matter however recently
07:25 there was an article in the Harvard
07:27 Business Review called the human moment
07:31 it said if you want to have real
07:34 connection with someone and if they come
07:37 into your office or remember this turn
07:39 away from your screen ignore your phone
07:42 and on every other device stop your
07:46 daydream or whatever's on your mind
07:48 and pay full attention to the person in
07:51 front of you I find it said that we have
07:55 to have an article in a Harvard Business
07:56 Review to tell us something like that
07:58 but it has come to this because
08:01 attention is a rarer and rarer commodity
08:06 but it's a very precious commodity I
08:10 think the time has come for us to take
08:13 an active stand in our lives
08:16 and fight back against this subtle
08:19 onslaught I know a couple for example
08:23 who when they come home have a pact that
08:27 they'll put their phones in a drawer
08:29 they won't look at them for the evening
08:32 there's a new way of getting together I
08:36 don't know if this has happened here in
08:38 the UK but in the States for example
08:41 when people get together for dinner
08:43 everybody takes their phone out puts it
08:45 in the middle of the table and the first
08:48 person that reaches for their phone
08:49 before the bill comes has to pay the
08:51 bill now there's not just one kind of
09:01 tension attention there's several
09:03 varieties the most obvious is selective
09:06 attention when we focus on one thing and
09:09 ignore others there are two main kinds
09:13 of distractors two general classes one
09:16 is sensory distractors so if you're
09:18 looking at me you're probably not
09:21 noticing this whiteboard here right
09:24 that's relatively easy the tough one is
09:27 the second category it's emotional
09:29 distractors our emotional distractors
09:32 are extremely powerful they're thoughts
09:35 about that conversation that didn't go
09:37 so well the Tiff's I had with my partner
09:40 this morning the mostly relationship
09:42 concerns things that have upset us so
09:46 the more focused we are the better we do
09:48 at anything as a rather obvious but for
09:51 example a test of concentration among
09:54 athletes predicts how well they'll do
09:56 the next season that's rather
09:58 straightforward and the less our mind
10:02 wanders or students mind modern rule
10:04 reading a text the better we comprehend
10:06 the text however it turns out on average
10:10 while we're reading a book our mind
10:12 wanders about twenty to forty percent of
10:15 the time I think it depends on the book
10:17 that particular study was done with
10:18 Pride and Prejudice
10:20 if it had been done say with I don't
10:23 know fifty shades of gray or blink or
10:26 whatever it might have been different
10:27 but the the point is that the more
10:31 disrupted attention is particularly for
10:33 young people the harder it is for them
10:36 to grasp to build the cumulative mental
10:38 models that amount to mastery and in any
10:42 subject there are basically three modes
10:47 of attention I want to call your
10:49 attention to and here's a schematic so
10:54 this is generally the relationship
10:56 between performance say this is high
11:03 this is low and this is the the
11:09 horizontal line is brain activity
11:11 particularly levels of stress hormones
11:14 like cortisol adrenaline and the
11:18 relationship is very telling it goes
11:21 like this
11:26 it's an upside-down U and the highest
11:30 performance is when attention is
11:34 absolutely a hundred percent maybe a
11:36 hundred and ten percent
11:37 it's been called flow flow is discovered
11:40 for those of you who don't know about it
11:42 by researchers who asked people in in
11:45 many different domains of expertise
11:47 basketball players ballerinas
11:49 neurosurgeons tell us about a time you
11:52 outdid yourself
11:53 you were absolutely at your best even
11:55 you were surprised and no matter what
11:58 the domain was people were describing
12:00 the same phenomena djegal state and one
12:03 of the characteristics of the state is
12:06 that attention is utterly absorbed there
12:09 was a neurosurgeon who said I had to do
12:12 a surgery an operation that I didn't
12:15 really know if I could it was so
12:16 difficult but I did it superbly I was
12:21 really surprised myself at the end of
12:23 the surgery I looked around and I saw
12:25 some rubble in the corner of the
12:27 operating theatre I said what happened
12:28 they said while you were operating the
12:31 roof
12:32 you didn't over there and you didn't
12:34 notice it's that kind of attention it's
12:37 unbreakable it's also a state where your
12:41 skills are called upon at the utmost and
12:43 whatever the demand is you can meet it
12:45 you're very flexible very adaptable and
12:48 very tellingly it's a state that feels
12:51 good it's it's like rapport rapport is
12:55 mutual flow interpersonal flow so that's
12:58 when focus is a hundred percent when you
13:03 have too much to do too little time
13:06 too little support when you feel
13:08 overwhelmed you're down here and the
13:14 stress hormones at their highest you're
13:18 in a state which was called recently in
13:20 the scientific journal action of the
13:22 journal Science in an article was called
13:25 the neurobiology of frazzle I don't know
13:29 if you're familiar with frazzle I've
13:31 been there many times it's constant
13:33 stress and here the problem is you can't
13:37 stop thinking about what's upsetting you
13:40 what's stressing you you're not focusing
13:42 here you're not focusing on the task at
13:44 hand
13:45 you're focusing on what's upsetting you
13:48 and that's the power of emotions
13:49 emotions take over attention they guide
13:53 attention and if they're too strong then
13:56 you'll never get up here over here
13:59 performance is low because people are
14:01 under motivated disengage this is a huge
14:04 problem of disengagement in the
14:06 workplace people feel in fact there was
14:10 a survey this is really interesting was
14:11 done at Harvard 2,500 people are given
14:15 an iPhone app and the app rings them at
14:18 random times during the day and they
14:21 answer two questions what are you doing
14:23 now and what are you thinking about now
14:27 and the discrepancy of course is a lot
14:30 as a measure of mind wandering turns out
14:32 50 percent of the time on average our
14:34 minds are wandering the one activity
14:37 that had the highest focus no surprise
14:40 was making love but who fills out that
14:44 at a time like that I still haven't been
14:47 able to figure that out the the lowest
14:51 three were commuting sitting at a
14:55 computer and work that's this so if
15:01 you're not engaged in what you're doing
15:05 your cortisol levels are too low so I've
15:15 been talking about focusing as though it
15:19 were the only valuable kind of attention
15:21 but actually mind wandering which is the
15:25 enemy of focusing the term they use in
15:29 brain sciences they are anti-correlated
15:32 if your mind is wandering by definition
15:34 you're not focusing and vice versa mind
15:37 wandering is absolutely essential for
15:40 creative insight the creative process
15:43 demands that first of all you gather
15:45 information you focus on the problem you
15:49 really concentrate and then you let go
15:52 the annals of science art and
15:55 mathematics are full of people who came
15:58 up with incredible solutions when
16:01 they're just daydreaming in the shower
16:03 getting on a bus walking your dog and
16:06 that's because during mind-wandering
16:09 we're able to make connections between
16:13 remote elements in a new way that has
16:15 value that's the definition of a
16:17 creative act of course if you're going
16:19 to execute if you're going to put the
16:22 idea to use then you have to go back
16:26 into focus but mind-wandering is
16:28 extremely extremely valuable there's
16:32 another level that which attention
16:34 operates this has to do with leadership
16:36 but I argue that leaders need three
16:38 kinds of focus to be really effective
16:41 the first is an inner focus let me tell
16:44 you about a case that's actually from
16:48 the annals of Neurology there was a
16:50 corporate lawyer who unfortunately had a
16:53 small prefrontal brain tumor it was
16:56 discovered early operated
16:57 successfully after the surgery though he
17:00 it was very puzzling picture because he
17:02 was absolutely as smart as he had been
17:05 before a very high IQ no problem with
17:08 the tension or memory but he couldn't do
17:10 his job anymore he couldn't do any job
17:12 he in fact he ended up out of work his
17:15 wife left him he lost his home he's
17:18 living in his brother's spare bedroom
17:20 and in despair he went to see a famous
17:22 neurologist named Antonio Damasio
17:24 Damacio specializes in the circuitry
17:27 between the prefrontal area which is
17:29 where we consciously pay attention to
17:32 what matters now where we make decisions
17:34 where we learn and the emotional centers
17:36 in the midbrain particularly the
17:38 amygdala which is our radar for radar
17:40 for danger it triggers our strong
17:42 emotions they had cut the connection
17:45 between the prefrontal area and
17:47 emotional centers and demacia at first
17:51 was puzzled he he realized that this
17:54 fellow on every neurological test was
17:58 perfectly fine but he something was
18:00 wrong and then he got a clue he asked
18:02 the lawyer when should we have our next
18:04 appointment and he realized the lawyer
18:07 could give him the rationale pros and
18:09 cons of every hour for the next two
18:11 weeks but he didn't know which is best
18:13 and Damacio says when we're making a
18:17 decision any decision when to have the
18:19 next appointment should I leave my job
18:20 for another one what strategy should we
18:22 follow going into the future who should
18:24 I marry this fellow compared to all the
18:26 other fellows I mean those are decisions
18:29 that require we draw on our entire life
18:32 experience and the circuitry that
18:35 collects that life experience is very
18:37 base brain it's very ancient in the
18:40 brain and it has no direct connection to
18:44 the part of the brain that thinks in
18:46 words it has very rich connectivity to
18:48 the Castro intestinal tract to the gut
18:50 so we get a gut feeling feels right
18:53 doesn't feel right Damacio calls them
18:55 somatic markers it's a language of the
18:58 body and the ability to tune into this
19:00 is extremely important because this is
19:03 valuable data - they did a study of
19:07 California entrepreneurs and asked them
19:09 how do you make your decisions these are
19:10 people
19:11 who built a business from nothing to
19:12 hundreds of millions or billions of
19:14 dollars and they more or less said the
19:16 same strategy I'm a voracious gatherer
19:19 of information I want to see the numbers
19:21 but if it doesn't feel right I won't go
19:24 ahead with the deal they're tuning into
19:27 the gut feelings I know someone I grew
19:30 up in a farm region of California the
19:33 Central Valley and my high school had a
19:36 rival High School in the next town and I
19:38 met him someone who went to that other
19:40 high school he almost he was not a good
19:43 student he almost failed it didn't
19:45 graduate came close to not graduating
19:47 high school he went to a two-year
19:49 college at community college that we
19:51 call them found his way into film which
19:54 he loved and got into a film school in
19:58 film school his student project caught
20:00 the eye of a director who asked him to
20:03 become an assistant and he did so well
20:05 at that that the director arranged for
20:08 him to direct his own film someone
20:11 else's script he did so well at that
20:12 they let him direct a script that he had
20:16 written and that film did surprisingly
20:20 well so the studio that financed that
20:23 film said if you want to do another one
20:25 we will back you and he however hated
20:30 the way the studio edited the film he
20:33 felt he was a creative artist and they
20:35 had butchered his art he said I'm gonna
20:39 do the film on my own I'm gonna finance
20:42 it myself
20:42 this was everyone in the film business
20:44 that he knew said this is a huge mistake
20:46 you shouldn't do this but he went ahead
20:49 then he ran out of money
20:51 had to go to 11 banks before he could
20:54 get a loan he finished managed to finish
20:56 the film you may have seen the film it's
20:58 called Star Wars so George Lucas made a
21:03 decision on the basis of his gut it
21:06 didn't feel right to let the studio
21:09 mangle his next gnome he read was his
21:11 integrity and this inner sense is
21:15 ethical it's an ethical writer you know
21:19 it answers the question is what I'm
21:21 about to do in keeping with my sense of
21:23 meaning values
21:24 and ethics that's not a question that we
21:27 answer first in words we answer first
21:29 and what feels right and doesn't feel
21:31 right then we put it into words and
21:33 every leader today needs a strong
21:35 ethical rudder so I'd say an inner
21:39 awareness inner focus is essential then
21:44 there's other focus which is being able
21:46 to read people being able to tune into
21:49 the person there are three kinds of
21:52 empathy and this is empathy I'm talking
21:54 about the first is cognitive cognitive
21:57 empathy means I understand how you think
22:00 about things
22:01 your mental models how you see the world
22:03 what that means is I'm able to
22:06 communicate with you in terms you really
22:10 understand you really resonate with
22:12 managers leaders who are able to talk to
22:16 other people with good cognitive empathy
22:18 are able to get better than expected
22:21 performance out of people because they
22:23 know how to mobilize them they know what
22:25 matters then there's emotional empathy
22:27 emotional empathy is an immediate felt
22:32 sense of what's going on in the other
22:34 person and this is absolutely essential
22:36 to if you only have cognitive empathy
22:39 and you don't have emotional empathy
22:40 you'll be you'll miss the mark the Third
22:44 Kind of empathy is very important too
22:47 it's empathic concern not only do I know
22:51 how you think and how you feel but if
22:53 there's something I something you need
22:55 and I can help you with I'm predisposed
22:57 to help the leaders who have the most
23:00 loyalty who people love working for have
23:03 all three kinds of empathy there's an
23:09 article in the Harvard Business Review
23:11 called leadership run amok leadership
23:14 run amok is about people who may have
23:16 cognitive empathy but lack the other two
23:18 these are leaders who are very good at
23:21 hitting the target for example but don't
23:24 care about what happens to the people
23:26 that they manage they have no feeling
23:29 for them and so they demoralize people
23:31 our people are ready to leave if
23:35 Abell the third kind of focus is outer
23:40 focus this is very important for example
23:43 in formulating strategy you need to
23:46 understand the ecosystem within which
23:48 your organization operates you need to
23:51 be able to sense what's going to work
23:54 what we'll need to do in the future and
23:56 so on and for that you need a kind of
23:58 systems view big-picture thinking the
24:02 sad story here is actually the
24:05 blackberry there are two kinds of
24:07 basically two kinds of strategic
24:09 thinking one is exploitation the other
24:12 is exploration in exploitation you take
24:16 a product or a brand that's worked very
24:18 very well and you fine-tune it you tweak
24:21 it you keep making it better because it
24:24 keeps working for you that's what
24:25 blackberry did the danger is if you
24:28 don't also explore exploration means you
24:31 see you look widely you see what's
24:33 happening where things are going you do
24:36 R&D you try to come up with the next new
24:38 thing and they failed they failed to see
24:41 for example Samsung they failed to see
24:43 what the competition was doing if you so
24:46 if you don't have an inner focus and an
24:49 other focus and an outer focus the
24:52 danger is being rudderless clueless or
24:56 blindsided attention is a mental muscle
25:05 it's it's like going to the gym if you
25:08 go to the gym and you lift weights every
25:11 time you do a repetition you strengthen
25:13 the muscle that you're working a tension
25:17 can be strengthened in the same way in
25:21 fact I think I'll show you how if you're
25:27 interested it just take two minutes all
25:30 you have to do is sit straight up
25:38 close your eyes and bring your attention
25:41 to your breath don't try to control your
25:44 breath just watch your breath to observe
25:46 it try to sense it coming in and out
25:49 maybe your nostrils and watch every
25:53 breath the full in-breath the full
25:57 out-breath start over again with the
26:00 next breath and just start again with
26:11 the next breath be fully aware of the
26:15 sensation and if you find that your mind
26:24 is somewhere else
26:25 bring it back again and gently restart
26:54 now you can open your eyes but did
26:57 anybody notice their mind wandering did
27:01 anybody bring it back
27:03 that's the rep actually the exercise is
27:07 not keeping your mind focus the exercise
27:11 is when it wanders bringing it back
27:14 that's what strengthens the connectivity
27:17 in the attentional circuitry this is a
27:20 study that was done at Emory University
27:22 and this is a basic muscle to mind
27:27 what's interesting to me is that we
27:30 don't exercise it typically we depend on
27:35 externals
27:36 to grab our attention in fact our
27:39 economy in a sense is built on the
27:42 grabbing of attention habituation is
27:45 what the brain does when it's this sees
27:48 the same old thing day after day after
27:50 day save walking the same way to work or
27:52 whatever it is you don't see it after a
27:54 while the brain economizes on attention
27:59 orienting on the other hand is opening
28:02 up it's whenever the brain encounter is
28:04 something new novel and surprising it
28:06 excites the brain and think about it
28:10 every season there's a new fashion well
28:15 what is a new fashion it's actually a
28:17 minor variation on a basic product every
28:21 year there's a new car well what's a new
28:24 car it's just enough difference to
28:27 excite the orienting response so it's
28:30 the basis of our economy it's a very
28:32 radical move to cultivate the ability to
28:36 manage your own mind so that you can
28:39 orient at will but that's exactly what's
28:43 possible with the tension training and I
28:45 become a big advocate of it one of the
28:47 reason is the research Richard Davidson
28:50 who's a neuroscientist at the University
28:51 of Wisconsin has expertise in the brain
28:56 and emotion and he's found in his
28:58 research that when were agitated when
29:00 we're upset and angry and anxious
29:02 there's a lot of activity in the right
29:04 prefrontal area just behind the floor
29:07 also in the amygdala of the brains
29:09 trigger point for the fight flight
29:11 freeze response when we're on the other
29:14 hand in a really positive state I feel
29:16 great enthusiastic what a wonderful day
29:19 there's a lot of activity on the left
29:22 side and no activity on the right each
29:24 of us has a renter ratio at rest of
29:28 right-to-left activity that predicts our
29:30 mood range day to day he finds there's a
29:34 bell curve for this like for IQ most of
29:36 us are in the middle we have bad days we
29:38 have good days if you're very far to the
29:40 right you may be clinically depressed a
29:42 clinically anxious if you're very far to
29:44 the left you're very resilient you
29:46 bounce right back from setbacks so
29:51 Davidson paired up with a fella named
29:54 Jon kabat-zinn who has made mindfulness
29:57 as he calls it very popular for example
30:01 in the in the medical sector as a way to
30:03 manage chronic conditions and also in
30:07 the states of leasing business recently
30:09 a lot of businesses are bringing it in
30:11 and it's more or less what we just did
30:16 Davidson and kabat-zinn went to a
30:19 biotech startup 24/7 you know high
30:23 pressure environment and they taught
30:26 people how to do mindfulness which is
30:28 more or less the exercise of watching
30:31 the breath but they did it 30 minutes a
30:34 day for eight weeks what he found was
30:37 that before that people's brains were
30:40 tilted to the right they're pretty
30:41 hassled and stressed after eight weeks
30:44 30 minutes a day they were tilting back
30:47 toward the left and what's very
30:49 interesting is people spontaneously
30:51 started saying hey you know I'm starting
30:53 to enjoy my work again
30:54 I remember what I loved about this job
30:57 in other words the positive mood was
31:01 really making a difference there's one
31:05 reason that businesses are bringing it
31:08 in I myself feel that it's not we adults
31:14 who
31:15 our most in need of paying attention to
31:19 attention in this way I think it's
31:21 children because childhood has changed
31:24 childhood has changed as a side effect
31:27 of this onslaught of the digital world
31:30 into our personal universe I was talking
31:35 to an 8th grade teacher who was
31:37 complaining about how kids now are
31:39 texting in the States I didn't know
31:41 about here texting has overcome phone
31:43 calls among teenagers as a preferred way
31:45 to connect their kids who will send a
31:48 hundred texts a day to their friends and
31:51 that's that's not unusual
31:52 she said you know for 20 years I've been
31:55 teaching the same book to my 13 year
31:59 olds it's Edith Hamilton's mythology and
32:02 she said in the last two three four
32:03 years my students are starting to say
32:06 they're having trouble reading this it's
32:09 a little too hard and she attributes it
32:11 to a loss of ability to comprehend
32:16 because of this constant distraction
32:19 I saw a kid maybe nine or ten years old
32:23 riding a bicycle and texting while he
32:25 was riding can you believe that luckily
32:29 it was in the country on a country lane
32:31 the reason I'm worried about children is
32:34 that the brain is the last organ of the
32:37 body to become anatomically mature it
32:40 starts growing from birth and it
32:42 actually doesn't finish until the mid
32:44 20s during that time the principle of
32:47 neuroplasticity is extremely important
32:50 neuroplasticity says that repeated
32:53 experiences shape the brain use it or
32:57 lose it as another way of saying it if a
32:59 child has an experience for example of
33:02 empathy and another experience of
33:05 empathy the circuitry for empathy grows
33:07 if a child has experience of paying full
33:09 attention and ignoring distractors which
33:13 is what we just did the connectivity for
33:16 that circuitry grows and children need
33:19 this in order for their brains to
33:21 develop well when we see a child grow
33:23 and go through different phases of
33:25 childhood what we're seeing are the
33:28 external signs of brain growth and I
33:31 think it's it's incumbent on us to help
33:34 children shape their brains in the best
33:37 way I was in classroom of seven year
33:43 olds in Spanish Harlem in Manhattan
33:46 Spanish Harlem is a very impoverished
33:48 place the children they're living in
33:52 housing projects and the projects are
33:55 pretty dire one child came to class the
33:57 teacher told me and was a little shaken
33:59 he just seen somebody shot and the
34:02 teacher said how many how many of you
34:04 have know someone who's been shot every
34:07 hand went up it's that kind of childhood
34:10 it's a very tough place and I happen to
34:12 be there to watch something called
34:15 breathing buddies every day this
34:18 classroom all the kids have a session
34:21 where they go to their little cubbies
34:23 and they get a favorite stuffed animal
34:24 and they lie it down on a rug on the
34:26 floor they put the animal on their belly
34:28 and they watch it go up with the in
34:31 breath and down when they breathe out
34:32 and they count one two three on them one
34:35 two three on the out-breath
34:36 and they're doing exactly what we just
34:38 did exactly what they're strengthening
34:41 the capacity the mental muscle of
34:45 attention there's something else there's
34:47 a twofer here because the same circuitry
34:52 also calms stormy emotions the ability
34:56 to manage emotions is inextricably
34:58 linked with the ability to pay attention
35:01 and the teacher said you know one day
35:04 because of a scheduling problem we had
35:06 to skip this and the class was chaotic
35:08 the class was chaotic so it makes a huge
35:12 difference for these kids I've long been
35:14 an advocate of what's called social
35:17 emotional learning social emotional
35:19 learning takes the emotional
35:21 intelligence component self-awareness
35:23 managing your inner life empathy
35:26 handling relationships and makes it part
35:29 of the curriculum not in a way that
35:31 takes away from academics but in a way
35:33 that enhances children's ability to
35:35 handle themselves and their
35:38 relationships and children's
35:40 relationships if your paradise
35:42 need to tell you this but from puberty
35:44 on before puberty the most important
35:47 relationships in a child's life are
35:50 family after puberty forget family it's
35:52 other kids and the melodramas of
35:55 childhood they didn't invite me to the
35:57 party whatever it me capture attention
36:00 those are emotional upsets the more you
36:03 can manage those upsets the more
36:05 attentional capacity you have to hear
36:10 what the teacher is saying one of the
36:14 things they do in these classes in these
36:16 programs I've seen this in New Haven in
36:20 a neighborhood very similar to Spanish
36:21 Harlem there's a a poster on the wall of
36:25 every classroom it's a stop like a
36:26 traffic light red light yellow light
36:28 green light
36:29 it says when you're upset remember the
36:31 stop light red light stop calm down and
36:35 think before you act
36:37 well stop says you have a choice
36:43 calm down means you can manage your
36:45 inner turmoil think before you act is a
36:49 very valuable lesson because it says you
36:52 can't determine what emotions you're
36:54 going to have our emotions come unbidden
36:56 but once you have them you can stop and
36:59 think what you're going to do in fact
37:01 one definition of maturity is
37:04 lengthening the gap between impulse and
37:08 action
37:08 yellow light think of a range of things
37:11 you could do and what the consequences
37:13 might be
37:13 green light pick the best one and try it
37:16 out this is a lesson in what's called
37:19 cognitive control some of you may know
37:22 about the marshmallow test it's another
37:24 legendary study in psychology
37:26 four-year-olds at Stanford University or
37:29 brought into a room one by one sat down
37:31 as a small table big juicy marshmallow
37:34 put in front of them the experimenter
37:36 says to this for you you can have the
37:38 marshmallow now if you want but if you
37:41 don't eat it till I come back from
37:43 running an errand you can have to then
37:45 then she leaves the room this is a
37:48 predicament that tries the soul of any
37:50 four-year-old
37:51 I assure you I've seen video on it some
37:53 of them will go up and sniff it is over
37:55 dangerous and then jump back and others
37:57 go off and sing and dance themselves in
37:59 a corner to stay distracted about a
38:01 third of the kids can't stand it they
38:02 just grab it and gobble it down on the
38:04 spot and another third or so wait the
38:08 endless 1012 minutes until the
38:10 experimenter comes back and they get the
38:12 two marshmallows the payoff from the
38:14 study came 14 years later when they're
38:17 tracked down as they're about to go to
38:19 university and the two groups are
38:20 compared the ones who gobbled the ones
38:22 who waited and it turns out the ones who
38:25 waited get along much better with their
38:27 peers they're still able to delay
38:29 gratification and pursuit of their goals
38:31 which is exactly what that's a test of
38:33 and this was a surprise on the american
38:37 university entrance exam the SAT which
38:39 at that time had 1600 total points the
38:42 kids who waited had a 210 point
38:47 advantage over the kids who grabbed this
38:50 is really interesting because these are
38:52 all children of parents at stanford
38:55 university these are high IQ high
38:57 achieving families so what's going on
39:00 but the difference seems to be that if
39:03 you're not able to manage your impulse
39:06 and mind-wandering is kind of a
39:09 microcosm of that then you're going to
39:12 be more upset you're going to be more
39:14 emotional you're not going to be able to
39:15 pay attention to what the teacher is
39:17 saying so you can't learn as well there
39:22 was a study done just a few years ago in
39:26 New Zealand every child in a city in New
39:30 Zealand became part who was born over
39:32 course of a year became part of the
39:34 study from ages four to eight they were
39:37 rigorously tested on cognitive control
39:39 many different measures including the
39:41 marshmallow type test and then when
39:44 they're in their 30s they tracked down
39:45 again and it turned out the cognitive
39:48 control the ability keep your mind here
39:51 or bring it back when it wanders was a
39:53 better predictor of financial success
39:57 and health in the mid-30s than either IQ
40:01 or the social economic status of the
40:04 family
40:05 and it's a completely independent factor
40:08 in fact the people who did the study
40:09 argue that we should be teaching this
40:13 ability to children in order to level
40:16 the playing field so this is becoming
40:19 part of social-emotional learning social
40:22 emotional learning though also means
40:25 being smart about your relationships so
40:30 here's something that happened in New
40:32 Haven among eleven-year-old boys they're
40:34 going to play what we call soccer I
40:37 think you erroneously call it football
40:39 here is that right so the these kids
40:43 were three boys going to play slightly
40:45 the first kid is kind of pudgy not very
40:47 athletic and the two kids behind them
40:50 very good at soccer very athletic and
40:53 they're making sarcastic remarks to this
40:56 first kid and one of the other kids says
40:58 to this first kid the big sneer oh so
41:01 you think you're going to play soccer
41:03 and the pudgy kid stops takes a deep
41:07 breath as though to brace himself for
41:09 the confrontation I had this could
41:10 easily lead to a fight in the school
41:12 turns around and says yeah I'm gonna try
41:15 to play soccer I'm not very good at it
41:17 what I'm good at his art show me
41:19 anything I can draw her really well but
41:22 you you're fantastic at soccer someday
41:25 I'd like to be as good as you are and at
41:27 that the other kid just melts comes up
41:29 puts his arm around and says oh you're
41:30 not so bad let me show you a thing or
41:32 two that was no accident that is called
41:36 a put-up that Boyd learned it in his sel
41:40 it's a way to handle put-downs which is
41:44 a very big problem in the teenage early
41:47 teen years and it's just part of a wider
41:51 curriculum which pays attention to what
41:54 matters to kids and attention needs to
41:57 be part of that curriculum and it's not
42:00 just schools you know parents of the
42:02 first coach and all of this when you
42:04 pick up a baby who's crying and soothe
42:06 her you're actually teaching her how to
42:09 soothe herself when you point out to a
42:12 toddler you know when you did that it
42:14 made your friend feel bad that's a
42:18 lesson in
42:18 empathy so it's you know these the
42:21 lessons in attention and emotional
42:24 intelligence start very very early in
42:27 life but I think we've got to get better
42:30 at it one reason is the kids are being
42:33 exposed more and more to influences that
42:37 aren't so great I don't know if you know
42:38 anyone any youngster who likes video
42:41 games and spends hours that then maybe
42:44 it doesn't happen here in London but
42:47 it's a big problem worldwide and the
42:51 data on video games is rather mixed for
42:54 one thing they actually do enhance some
42:57 aspects of attention if you're a kid who
42:59 likes to play fighting games you know
43:02 battle games and you have to be
43:03 constantly on the lookout for the enemy
43:06 who might pop up and kill you it's very
43:09 good for enhancing vigilance you could
43:11 be a very good air traffic controller
43:13 for example however it also means that
43:17 if a kid happens to bump you in the
43:19 hallway your first thought is that he
43:21 has a grudge against you you get a bias
43:23 toward hostile attribution so the video
43:27 games that we have now are rather mixed
43:29 but there's a new generation coming
43:31 along which is using findings from
43:34 cognitive science there's one called
43:37 tenacity that I had my four
43:39 grandchildren play ages 7 to 13 at the
43:42 time in tenacity you have an iPad every
43:48 time you breathe out you tap the screen
43:50 on the fifth out-breath you tap it twice
43:53 if you do that you get a visual reward
43:56 you know flowers blooming in the desert
43:58 as you do it more and more it gets
44:00 harder and harder so basically what it's
44:03 doing is training attention but in a way
44:05 that keeps the attention of kids the
44:07 same way that all the other video games
44:09 do there are there are other things that
44:13 we could be using you know the media
44:16 generally and I say this is a reformed
44:19 journalist the media gives us a very
44:22 toxic view of the world most of the news
44:26 we get is about disaster
44:28 death threats horrible things happening
44:30 to people it's news for the amygdala the
44:32 amend oh is a very primitive part of the
44:34 brain that wants to know what are the
44:36 dangers however if we were to take on
44:39 any given day all of the acts of
44:43 kindness performed around the globe you
44:46 know a mom
44:47 feeding her kid is an act of kindness
44:50 and we would put it on one scale and
44:53 then were to take all the atrocious acts
44:56 and put them on the loser scale the acts
44:58 of kindness would far outweigh those of
45:02 meanness but we don't get that sense of
45:06 the world looking through a media lens
45:09 but you we can use the media better one
45:12 example I like is Sesame Street if you
45:17 have ever if you have a toddler I've had
45:20 a toddler you may have watched Sesame
45:22 Street Sesame Street I found when I
45:25 visited Sesame Workshop is actually a
45:28 very sophisticated operation the day I
45:31 went there the script writers were
45:34 meeting with two cognitive scientists
45:36 they're actually meeting about cognitive
45:37 control because Sesame Street segments
45:41 turn out to be lessons based in science
45:44 wrapped in entertainment one of the
45:47 things that segments that aired this
45:50 season is the cookie connoisseur Club I
45:52 know if you're familiar with Cookie
45:54 Monster Cookie Monster is one of the
45:57 stars of Sesame Street and he loves to
45:59 gobble cookies but Alan who runs a store
46:03 on Sesame Street decided to start a
46:06 cookie connoisseur Club very much like a
46:08 wine connoisseur club and the cookie
46:10 connoisseur Club you take a cookie and
46:13 you study it to see if they're
46:14 imperfections then you sniff it for
46:17 aroma and then you take a nibble to
46:19 taste it
46:20 Cookie Monster of course was dying to
46:24 get into the club so Alan gives him a
46:27 cookie and he instantly gobbles it down
46:29 he can't restrain himself so Alan tells
46:33 him you know in this club we're going to
46:36 try all kinds of cookies so if you don't
46:39 gobble it down I can
46:40 you into the club and you're going to be
46:41 able to eat many many different kinds of
46:43 cookie that does it for cookie so that's
46:47 a lesson this is a show that is loved by
46:49 two to four year olds and two to four
46:52 year olds learn largely by modeling so
46:55 what's happening with cookie is that
46:58 people that the kids are learning a
47:00 lesson in cognitive control and I think
47:04 the more of that the better so let me
47:07 finish with by telling you about a smart
47:12 use of positive emotion of being able to
47:17 manage our own internal world of that
47:19 inner focus there is a remarkable man
47:24 named matthieu ricard he's written some
47:27 books on happiness he's his friend she
47:30 has a doctorate in cell biology from
47:33 Pasteur Institute his mentor there
47:35 actually won a Nobel Prize for the
47:37 research they're doing but after
47:39 graduate school he made a startling
47:40 decision he decided he'd give up science
47:43 and go to the Himalayas become a monk
47:45 and meditate for the rest of his life
47:47 he's been called I think by his
47:53 publishers publicists the happiest man
47:55 in the world because he's been studied
47:58 by scientists and on this right-to-left
48:00 ratio he's very far to the left there's
48:04 a scientist named Paul Ekman who's the
48:06 world's expert on the facial expression
48:08 of emotion Paul is the keenest observer
48:12 of the face as a revealer of what you're
48:15 feeling is a very dangerous man I once
48:17 was walking down the street with Paul on
48:19 the way to a meeting that I was
48:21 conducting and Paul was telling me about
48:23 a system for training people to get good
48:26 at this that he had just developed and
48:28 as he's telling it we're getting to the
48:30 meeting hall and I thought this is
48:32 really interesting but I hope he wraps
48:33 it up I've got to think about what I'm
48:35 gonna do in the meeting at that moment
48:36 he says to me and if someone had studied
48:38 the system they'd know you're getting a
48:39 little angry with me right now this is
48:41 why pathes so dangerous
48:44 Paul was interested in emotional
48:46 contagion he wanted to know what would
48:49 the effect be
48:51 someone like Mathieu who was very very
48:55 upbeat on someone who was quite the
48:57 opposite
48:58 so Paul did a quiet phone survey of
49:02 faculty at the University of where he
49:04 teaches asking who is the most abrasive
49:09 difficult confrontational member of our
49:12 faculty oddly enough
49:14 everyone agreed who that was so he calls
49:16 Professor X aces in the interests of
49:19 science would you take part in a
49:21 scientific experiment and the
49:23 professor's delighted said sure I'd be
49:24 happy to as the day drew near and error
49:27 he started making demands which became
49:28 increasingly outrageous and so they had
49:31 to dump him and go with the second most
49:33 difficult professor and the experiment
49:38 was they're both they're having the
49:39 Mathieu and the professor have their
49:41 physiology measured and they're going to
49:43 have a debate the debate is on the
49:45 premise that the professor should do
49:47 with Mathieu did the professor had a
49:49 very influential secure well-paid
49:52 tenured position but the premise of the
49:56 debate was that he would give it up and
49:58 become a monk and go to Hermitage for
50:01 the rest of his life at the beginning of
50:03 this debate that physiology showed he
50:04 was really agitated at the thought of
50:07 that Mathieu was totally calm
50:09 so as the discussion starts Mathieu
50:12 stays absolutely calm and the professor
50:14 gets calmer and calmer and calmer by the
50:17 end of 15 minutes he's having such a
50:18 good time he doesn't want to stop the
50:20 discussion so our emotions are
50:23 contagious for better or for worse
50:27 particularly when we pay full attention
50:29 to each other I once was waiting for a
50:36 bus on a very hot humid day in New York
50:38 City in August it's the kind of day I
50:41 don't know about London but in New York
50:43 we have a rather invisible balloon
50:44 around us we're feeling a little prickly
50:46 it says don't talk to me don't touch me
50:48 and my balloon intact and the bus pulls
50:51 up get on with my balloon and the bus
50:54 driver did something quite surprising he
50:56 actually spoke to me he said how is
50:59 they Bend I was shocked but I sat down
51:03 taking most of my bubble with me then I
51:06 realized this bus drivers carrying on a
51:07 conversation with everyone on the bus
51:08 you're looking for suits I you know
51:10 there's a great sale over here on the
51:12 right in this department store and did
51:14 you hear about the Monnet exhibit on the
51:15 Left that the means wonderful and the
51:17 Cineplex on were coming to here I know
51:19 the movie and cinema for got the best
51:22 reviews but the one in cinema 2 shot the
51:25 other night fantastic you should on and
51:27 on like that and then people would get
51:29 off the bus and he'd say to them I hope
51:31 the rest of your day is really wonderful
51:33 that man was an urban Saint he
51:37 transformed everyone on the bus he was
51:40 sending ripples of good feeling through
51:42 a city that sorely needed it and I think
51:44 the bottom line is you know you don't
51:47 have to go to the Himalayas for decades
51:49 we all can do that in our lives if we
51:51 pay attention thank you very much
52:07 so I'm happy to I'm happy to answer any
52:10 questions you might have their mics here
52:13 and there's standing might some tools in
52:15 the galleries so just raise your hand if
52:18 you have a question first question over
52:20 here
52:20 you mentioned the low cultures in
52:22 America where there are murders every
52:24 day Steven Pinker writes very well about
52:27 some of these cultures and explains that
52:29 people will be killed over a simple
52:31 slight a disrespect or something and
52:33 it's ingrained in the culture it's
52:36 innate the thing that I can see there's
52:39 a there seems to be an insidious
52:40 political correctness in the world today
52:43 where we're not allowed to say that a
52:45 culture is a rubbish culture and in
52:48 doing that we don't address the problems
52:51 with these people so every day they
52:54 continue to have the low expectations
52:57 the murders the the social Melia that
53:02 creates and continues to create what you
53:04 in America called the broken window
53:06 syndrome and I wondered what your view
53:09 was on the inability for people to
53:12 address these problems honestly and
53:14 openly and even going on to the fact
53:17 that a lot of our condition is
53:18 genetically inherited the brain is no
53:20 different to any other organ in the body
53:22 that whole groups of people get a
53:24 particular kind of genetics sure well I
53:27 think there's a very young after that
53:29 it's it's not being addressed at all and
53:32 we're losing out over that yes well I
53:34 know of some data which speaks directly
53:37 to that I think first of all we have to
53:40 be very careful about stereotypes
53:42 because in any given neighborhood
53:45 there's a range of variation who happens
53:47 to live there there may happen to be
53:50 some very talented young people who live
53:53 in a neighborhood which is otherwise
53:55 rife with problems so for one thing we
54:00 should allow for individual differences
54:02 but generally it's a worldwide problem
54:06 what to do with children who grow up in
54:08 dire poverty because from one thing the
54:12 brain is very fragile so if you're not
54:16 well nourished in childhood the brain
54:19 doesn't grow as well
54:20 and worldwide children who grew up in
54:23 poverty can have undernourished brains
54:26 which makes them susceptible to all
54:28 kinds of behavioral problems
54:30 particularly when it comes to prefrontal
54:33 development as I mentioned that the
54:34 prefrontal area is the one that manages
54:37 emotions so if you can't handle your
54:39 rage for instance many people who end up
54:42 in murderers row who have killed someone
54:44 have a damage to the prefrontal areas
54:47 it's been found so we need to face this
54:49 as you suggest starkly and see what the
54:53 problems are and what the possible
54:55 interventions might be because I would
54:57 never write off an entire group of
54:59 children I would say instead these are
55:03 developing brains let's help them
55:04 develop as well as they could and in
55:07 fact I mentioned that the New Zealand
55:09 study suggested that we have active
55:12 interventions particularly an early
55:15 childhood there's a famous study done in
55:17 the it's called the Perry PE rry
55:20 preschool study where children hadn't
55:23 written children from a neighborhood
55:24 like this at a very enriched program and
55:27 they did much much better in life than
55:29 other kids from the same neighborhood
55:31 and the question of IQ and class is very
55:35 important to understand in cultures
55:39 worldwide where there's a privileged
55:41 caste or class and an underprivileged
55:43 caste or class there was always a wide
55:46 gap in IQ scores between the privileged
55:49 and the underprivileged and it's taken
55:51 to be genetic however there's something
55:53 called the Flynn effect Flynn is a
55:56 researcher at the University of Otago in
55:58 New Zealand and he's shown with vast
56:01 datasets that every three four five
56:04 years when IQ tests are revised they
56:08 have to make questions harder they have
56:11 to make questions harder because kids
56:12 become smarter every generation than
56:15 previous generations in other words it's
56:16 not fixed the other thing he's found is
56:19 that when children a group from a caste
56:23 which is our class which is
56:25 underprivileged migrates to a country
56:29 were the bias about that caste
56:32 class doesn't exist their children do as
56:34 well as other children so it's not
56:37 genetic it's largely situational so
56:40 you're absolutely right we have to look
56:42 squarely at those situations and see
56:44 what we can do to help where is the mic
56:47 next question hello there thank you for
56:50 your talk very much enjoyed it
56:52 my question relates back to the the
56:58 situation of the marshmallows and you
57:00 said if you give one child one yes
57:04 before you all to have one one and if
57:06 one eats one later then he'll have two
57:09 and you said when they got to their 30s
57:12 you know the high achievers were the
57:14 ones who waited right how much of that
57:17 is linked to addiction you mean wanting
57:23 the two marshmallows right away you
57:26 could get addicted to marshmallows I
57:28 think no but is that youth yes yeah
57:31 exactly the inability to control impulse
57:34 makes one susceptible to alcoholism
57:37 addiction Shopaholic gambling addiction
57:40 and so on because you you want the hit
57:43 and you you don't restrain yourself and
57:46 see that there are other ways to go yeah
57:48 by the way don't try that at home with
57:50 your child the marshmallow test I know
57:53 someone who tried it with his
57:55 four-year-old daughter and he peeked to
57:58 see what she did he put the marshmallow
58:00 and left the room she took the
58:02 marshmallow she took out the middle of
58:04 the marshmallow and ate it and then put
58:07 it back
58:10 she's probably CEO of a company now I
58:12 died
58:17 I have good news good news and bad news
58:21 if the brain becomes anatomically mature
58:25 in the mid-20s but doesn't mean it's too
58:27 late to change habit
58:29 however habits instantiated in the brain
58:33 in childhood are very strong so if you
58:36 end up say addicted or overly anxious or
58:41 whatever it may be it's still possible
58:43 to change but you need to make an added
58:46 effort and the reason is that you have
58:50 to practice the new healthy better
58:52 behavior over and over because you've
58:56 practiced the bad way 10,000 times you
58:59 know you've done it over and over in the
59:01 circuitry is so strong but here cross
59:04 your arms this is what a habit feels
59:08 like now cross them the other way with
59:10 the other arm on top
59:11 that's what it feels like to change a
59:13 habit it's a little weird at first
59:15 little that's strange but if you make
59:17 the effort and keep making the effort at
59:20 every naturally occurring opportunity
59:22 what happens is the neural connectivity
59:24 for the new pathway gets stronger and
59:28 stronger until at some point you pass a
59:31 developmental landmark a neural landmark
59:34 where you do the new habit you perform
59:37 the new habit effortlessly without
59:40 thinking about it becomes automatic and
59:42 what that means is that the connectivity
59:44 for the new habit has now become
59:46 stronger than the old one it's the
59:48 brains now the brains default choice but
59:52 takes work takes more work my question
59:55 is about the three focuses that you
59:58 mentioned the inner the other and the
01:00:00 answer I won I'm wondering whether they
01:00:04 exist in isolation or whether they exist
01:00:07 in a hierarchy and if so is there a
01:00:10 method of moving through them well I
01:00:14 think they each can be improved I don't
01:00:16 think there's a hierarchy because for
01:00:18 example in research on leaders we found
01:00:20 that some leaders can be very good at
01:00:25 any two or one of them and bad
01:00:27 any of the others right in other words
01:00:29 every combination is possible you can be
01:00:31 really emotionally intelligent manage
01:00:33 yourself well manage other people well
01:00:37 but be absolutely blind to systems and
01:00:40 to the larger context in which your
01:00:43 organization is operating or you can be
01:00:46 very good at managing yourself and very
01:00:50 bad at reading people there are actually
01:00:53 a lot of in the workplace there is a
01:00:55 whole class of people who are
01:00:57 outstanding individual contributors
01:00:59 often very good at systems and work very
01:01:03 hard computer programmers for example
01:01:05 who have zero empathy I was talking to
01:01:08 someone here in Europe who was with the
01:01:13 company and he said we have a guy who is
01:01:16 absolutely brilliant at systems and we
01:01:18 can't put him in front of a client
01:01:20 because when we do he just starts
01:01:22 talking non-stop
01:01:23 he never stops to you know meet the
01:01:26 client to find out what's on their mind
01:01:28 to understand the problem from their
01:01:30 point of view so here's someone who's
01:01:32 very good at inner and managing himself
01:01:34 and its systems but not people
01:01:42 is you mean is attention handled
01:01:45 differently within different or value
01:01:47 differently absolutely sure oh yeah I
01:01:54 mean culture that the culture makes an
01:01:57 enormous difference particularly for
01:01:59 example in valuing attention attention
01:02:00 training most of the attention training
01:02:03 methods we use now come from Eastern
01:02:06 cultures because because Eastern
01:02:08 cultures like Bhutan for example many
01:02:11 people in Bhutan and meditators may be
01:02:15 to some extent almost all of them all of
01:02:17 the citizens it's part of the culture
01:02:19 it's part of the background and so the
01:02:23 methodologies they have were quite
01:02:25 sophisticated they've been developed
01:02:26 over millennia and people like Richard
01:02:29 Davidson who I mentioned who do research
01:02:31 in this area are using expert advisors
01:02:35 from those cultures to help him
01:02:39 understand what is what the potential is
01:02:42 for us to train attention because in the
01:02:44 West we're rather stunted in our view of
01:02:47 how to train attention so I think when
01:02:51 it comes to to a mental faculty culture
01:02:55 makes an enormous difference the same
01:02:56 thing just true by the way of emotions
01:02:58 every every culture values and expresses
01:03:02 emotions differently everyone
01:03:04 universally has the same wiring for
01:03:06 emotion our our emotions are contagious
01:03:12 yes therefore should we spend more or
01:03:15 less time with our angry colleagues
01:03:17 should we be the American bus driver or
01:03:20 the French monk should we save the world
01:03:22 or save ourselves
01:03:23 hahahahaha well the French monk is
01:03:26 actually good at saving everyone that's
01:03:29 his mission but apart from that I think
01:03:31 that it's important to understand the
01:03:34 dynamic of sending and receiving
01:03:36 emotions so there are several factors
01:03:39 that determine in any given interaction
01:03:41 who sins and who receives there are
01:03:43 studies done for example where two
01:03:45 strangers come into a lab they fill out
01:03:47 a questionnaire mood questionnaire or
01:03:49 how do you feel right now
01:03:50 then they sit facing each other in
01:03:52 silence for two minutes then they fill
01:03:54 out the same
01:03:55 genera turns out the person in that diet
01:03:58 who's most emotionally expressive
01:04:00 transmits his or her emotional state to
01:04:02 the other person in two silent minutes
01:04:04 so expressivity is very important on the
01:04:07 other hand power matters in any human
01:04:10 group it's natural to pay most attention
01:04:13 to and put most importance on but the
01:04:16 most powerful person in that group says
01:04:18 and does so emotions tend to spread from
01:04:22 the person who has power outward what
01:04:25 this means for example these are
01:04:27 experiments done on Keynes if the leader
01:04:29 of a team is in a very bad mood people
01:04:32 on the team catch the mood and
01:04:34 performance goes down if the leader of
01:04:36 the team is in a very good mood a
01:04:38 positive mood people catch that and
01:04:42 performance goes up and this is true for
01:04:44 business decisions for creativity for
01:04:47 physical coordination like putting up a
01:04:49 tent so that's a second factor is the
01:04:52 power relationship the third factor has
01:04:55 to do with Mathieu Picard and that is
01:04:57 how stable are you if you are going to
01:05:00 go and be with your angry colleague are
01:05:03 you stable enough in a positive state
01:05:05 that like him you can bring or the bus
01:05:07 driver you can bring him into that state
01:05:09 are you gonna end up angry yourself so
01:05:12 those are at least three factors that
01:05:14 might determine the answer fascinated by
01:05:19 the advocacy of social emotional
01:05:22 learning yes and it would appear that
01:05:24 there are many Western parents today who
01:05:27 have glommed onto the same focus in
01:05:29 prescribing ritalin for many of their
01:05:31 kids can you take a minute and talk a
01:05:33 little bit about you've described an
01:05:35 organic approach to improving focus and
01:05:38 I look forward to reading more about
01:05:39 those but what are the impact of the
01:05:42 over prescription of Ritalin
01:05:44 what are the effect in this long-term
01:05:46 effects right so ritalin which of course
01:05:50 is given to children who have so-called
01:05:53 ADHD attentional deficit hyperactivity
01:05:56 disorder you know 50 years ago they used
01:06:00 to say well he's just a little boy he'll
01:06:02 outgrow it but now it's a become a
01:06:05 diagnostic category and there's some
01:06:07 kids who have genuine
01:06:08 problems paying attention they're not
01:06:10 being helped by digital media as they
01:06:13 are today they would be very helped by
01:06:16 these lessons in cognitive control which
01:06:18 are very new and are just now being
01:06:21 studied so they're people like Davidson
01:06:24 are studying the ways in which we can
01:06:27 use attentional training think about it
01:06:29 why has this culture had as its default
01:06:33 buying a drug and giving it to our
01:06:36 children for something which is a skill
01:06:40 deficit it's a skill deficit tension is
01:06:43 a skill I think the reason is there are
01:06:46 drug companies who are making a lot of
01:06:47 money selling us those drugs and
01:06:50 convincing us that this is the better
01:06:52 alternative this is my personal opinion
01:06:53 when in fact what we have not done is
01:06:56 basic research on the attentional
01:06:59 mechanisms involved in ADHD and what
01:07:01 kind of training would help children get
01:07:05 better at it and I think within the next
01:07:07 five years we're going to see a set of
01:07:12 very direct interventions that are
01:07:15 non-pharmaceutical in those conditions I
01:07:18 just wanted to ask your opinion is to
01:07:21 what extent do you think our emotional
01:07:24 reactions are learned or innate well our
01:07:29 emotions are innate I think and our
01:07:32 particular emotional reactions are
01:07:34 largely learned I have to recommend my
01:07:37 wife's book here it's called mind
01:07:40 whispering her name's Tara Bennett gomen
01:07:42 she's a psychotherapist because she
01:07:44 talks about the way in which emotional
01:07:46 patterns of reactivity are learned in
01:07:49 childhood and how you could use
01:07:51 mindfulness cognitive therapy a number
01:07:54 of interventions to change the habits
01:07:56 that are self-defeating the name of the
01:08:01 book is mind whispering and her name is
01:08:03 Tara Bennett goleman I found it very
01:08:05 useful actually find her even more
01:08:08 useful
01:08:15 actually there's data on that if you're
01:08:17 a pessimist can you learn to be an
01:08:18 optimist and there's research done by a
01:08:21 fella named Martin Seligman at
01:08:22 University of Pennsylvania who developed
01:08:26 a field called positive psychology he
01:08:29 developed the field because psychology
01:08:31 for 80 years only studied pathology so
01:08:35 there was a problem we hadn't noticed
01:08:38 that there was a positive spectrum of
01:08:39 emotion and experience but any rate
01:08:41 Seligman took kids who were prone to
01:08:45 depression
01:08:46 turned out that they tended to be
01:08:48 pessimists and to see if they had
01:08:51 something that didn't work out or a
01:08:53 setback in life they'd say it's because
01:08:56 of me and I'll always be like that and
01:08:58 he taught them to think differently well
01:09:00 it was the circumstance circumstances
01:09:02 can change and I can do something to
01:09:04 change them it's a more optimistic
01:09:06 outlook and he found that actually after
01:09:10 about a year their thinking patterns had
01:09:12 changed but it's what I said
01:09:14 as with any such behavior we have to
01:09:17 keep at it and keep at it at every
01:09:19 naturally occurring opportunity and
01:09:21 catch ourselves when we go back to the
01:09:24 you know the old pattern so yes optimism
01:09:28 can be learned
01:09:29 I actually know the the gentleman who
01:09:32 invented cognitive therapy cognitive
01:09:34 therapy looks at our thinking distorted
01:09:37 thinking patterns and helps us see more
01:09:39 realistically and it's very effective
01:09:41 for depression his name is Aaron Beck
01:09:44 he's 93 now he had a terrible accident
01:09:48 that put him in a wheelchair and
01:09:51 happened to speak to him after that and
01:09:53 he was very upbeat he's supposed one of
01:09:55 the most optimistic people I know then
01:09:57 he lost sight in one eye and I was
01:09:59 talking to me said well you know my
01:10:00 right eye works perfectly fine I can
01:10:02 still run and then he went blind in his
01:10:04 right eye and I said you know I can
01:10:05 still listen to books on tape in other
01:10:07 words he had the capacity to see what
01:10:12 was right instead of what's wrong which
01:10:14 is what you're talking about yes hi I
01:10:19 just had a question about the
01:10:20 performance graph that you have there
01:10:22 yeah you mentioned two extremes you have
01:10:25 the
01:10:26 motivated performance and and then you
01:10:28 have the frazzle and yes what can you do
01:10:31 if you're one of those types of people
01:10:33 what can I do how can you improve it
01:10:35 well we can do with this type of person
01:10:38 and with this type of person yeah well
01:10:42 let me ask you in this hypothetical
01:10:44 question are we this type of person are
01:10:47 we managing this type of person or a
01:10:49 friend of this who are we are we the
01:10:51 person a friend of this type of person
01:10:53 today talking I have a friend here that
01:10:59 all the days so what the person needs
01:11:07 who is under aroused who's disengaged is
01:11:12 involvement to get more motivated more
01:11:16 passionate more engaged and there's
01:11:21 something there's a literature now on
01:11:23 something called good work good work
01:11:25 combines three things it combines what
01:11:28 we're really good at our excellence with
01:11:31 what we're really passionate about what
01:11:34 engages us and what we value with our
01:11:37 ethics if you align those three things
01:11:40 you're naturally going to go up from
01:11:43 here to there in fact you'll you'll get
01:11:45 into flow much more easily so one
01:11:48 question to ask our friend is what would
01:11:52 be good work for you and what could you
01:11:54 do to make it a larger proportion of the
01:11:56 time in your day or your week or your
01:11:58 month or over the course of the next
01:12:00 five years of your career so that's a
01:12:03 kind of individual strategy for that if
01:12:07 you're here if you're frazzle in frazzle
01:12:12 what you need is calm so which is very
01:12:16 related to cognitive control but there
01:12:18 are many ways to calm down however if
01:12:22 you can't well there are there two
01:12:24 strategies if you're say frazzle because
01:12:27 you have a boss that asks you to do too
01:12:30 much in too little time and give too
01:12:31 little support you might get your boss's
01:12:34 CV and send it out to a headhunter but
01:12:37 that's
01:12:38 not an immediate solution so instead you
01:12:42 might manage your own world better by
01:12:44 finding something that works for you
01:12:46 that gets you physiologically relaxed it
01:12:50 might be meditation it might be yoga
01:12:52 might be deep muscle it might be working
01:12:55 out at the gym everyone is different do
01:12:58 it every day
01:12:59 and do it before you go to work or
01:13:02 whatever is frazzling you because what
01:13:05 happens is that over time your body set
01:13:08 point for stress changes and you'll be
01:13:12 able to manage better or to be in a more
01:13:16 relaxed state in in the circumstance two
01:13:19 general strategies yes I've got two
01:13:23 quick questions the first one might be a
01:13:25 silly question so I apologize if I've
01:13:26 missed this but do you see focus as an
01:13:30 extension of emotional intelligence or
01:13:32 is it cognitive or is it is it both
01:13:36 right so what I think is that attention
01:13:40 was embedded within emotional
01:13:44 intelligence because the brains circuits
01:13:47 for emotions for empathy and for
01:13:50 attention intermingle I just never
01:13:52 thought about it I didn't realize I had
01:13:55 to write a whole new book about it and
01:13:56 tonight okay the second question is I've
01:13:59 got a two-year-old son oh when he's four
01:14:02 I fully intend to do the marshmallow
01:14:04 just wandering between now and then are
01:14:07 there things that I could be doing for
01:14:09 him that will help him more be more
01:14:12 likely to wait you're probably doing
01:14:15 them already just being a good enough
01:14:18 parent is terrific yeah but pay
01:14:21 attention to you know your your child's
01:14:24 feelings needs that's very important I
01:14:28 wasn't entirely surprised to hear this
01:14:30 from my friend a little while ago who
01:14:32 works in a psychiatric resident hospital
01:14:35 and the difference between the emotions
01:14:39 of the sexes is absolutely enormous if a
01:14:44 woman comes in for a session the
01:14:49 psychotherapist will say how's it going
01:14:51 how are you
01:14:52 and I will come exactly how it's going
01:14:56 how they feel when a man comes in very
01:15:01 little is said so the psychotherapist
01:15:04 will say on the sofa over there are a
01:15:06 collection of soft toys pick why not
01:15:09 hahahahaha so the man will go and pick
01:15:12 up the Panda uh-huh and the
01:15:14 psychotherapist will say well how is mr.
01:15:17 panda today and then it will come the
01:15:21 difference of emotions between the sexes
01:15:24 however we like to think we are
01:15:26 basically all the same I think we are
01:15:29 hugely different so do I thank you well
01:15:37 I just wanted to make a response to the
01:15:39 gentleman with the two-year-old I have
01:15:41 three children and I'm sure that if all
01:15:44 three coming out of exactly the same
01:15:48 environment probably would react very
01:15:51 differently to the marshmallow test so
01:15:53 that goes back to my question is it
01:15:56 learned or innate and I think often that
01:15:59 some people just have a natural
01:16:01 emotional intelligence yes I didn't
01:16:04 answer question the answer is it's both
01:16:06 learned and innate in that each of us is
01:16:09 born with a particular range of set
01:16:14 points in the brain chemicals that
01:16:18 manage emotion that's our temperament
01:16:20 and as you know if you have more than
01:16:22 one child kids differ from day one on
01:16:24 the other hand epigenetics tells us that
01:16:30 it's not the genes you have it's which
01:16:32 genes turn on and off that will make the
01:16:35 lasting difference and the behavior in a
01:16:39 child is very malleable so if a child is
01:16:41 very impulsive that child can learn
01:16:43 cognitive control
01:16:44 if a child is too constricted that child
01:16:48 could learn to loosen up there's data on
01:16:51 children for example who are what are
01:16:54 called behaviorally inhibited this is
01:16:56 work of Jerome Kagan at Harvard he finds
01:16:59 that about 15% of children are anxious
01:17:04 of
01:17:05 new stimuli new playground new friend
01:17:07 new food and when they're very young
01:17:08 these are the kids who at school-age are
01:17:11 identified as shy and it had been
01:17:14 thought that this was just genetic but
01:17:17 what they he realized wouldn't he
01:17:19 followed a group of these kids was that
01:17:20 some of them by school-age weren't shy
01:17:22 and he looked at the parenting may God
01:17:25 and he noted he found that the
01:17:27 difference was this if your parents
01:17:29 identify you as she's shy and protect
01:17:33 you those are the children who don't
01:17:34 change if parents say to a child well
01:17:38 you may feel a little timid about it but
01:17:40 go ahead and try it anyway that child
01:17:43 learns I'll feel little scared at first
01:17:45 but if I go ahead I'm gonna have a good
01:17:47 time and those are the children who
01:17:49 don't end up shy so it's it's a
01:17:53 malleable mix of both yeah and I think
01:17:56 we've reached the end of our time Daniel
01:17:59 I think you've them held our attention
01:18:01 brilliantly peace will you join me in
01:18:03 thanking him for a really fascinating
01:18:04 stimulating
01:18:09[Applause]
🎥 Related Videos
Wife asks 6,16,300/ month From Husband , HC Judge Shocked, #lawchakra #legal
How Luckin Coffee Bounced Back and Beat Starbucks in China
Gaza: Fighting continues despite UN Security Council resolution calling for ceasefire | BBC News
Poilievre claims Trudeau is "losing control" with "screaming and hollering" while answering question
38 million Californians under flood alerts due to atmospheric rivers
