Translator: Riaki Poništ Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Well, hi.
I didn't turn off my cellphone,
(Laughter)
which is really interesting.
I realize I just turned it on.
I gave a TED Talk last year at the United Nations
on compassion.
And it was an interesting experience
because it showed me the state of our world.
And I was going to talk about that for a few minutes
and then go into my talk.
But I came into the UN,
and I hadn't been in the UN since I was a kid.
I grew up in New York, and the UN was like this amazing place.
And now the UN is falling apart.
The paint is old, the carpets are ratty.
It looks like it hasn't gotten cleaned in about 20 years
because the world doesn't put any money towards peace.
And we have Facebook opening up with 20 gazillion dollars,
and the UN doesn't get a dime.
And the other thing that I saw at the UN, which was really remarkable,
is how much security there was.
And it was a little chilling
because you come into the UN,
where supposedly the whole world is getting together to try to make peace,
and you have to go through what feels like airport security
before you can even enter the building,
and then, probably about every 100 feet, is a security guard.
And I had to wear a badge and a patch,
and I had no sense that peacekeeping was going on there.
And it was an interesting thing
because it's so far out of our sight
that we as a culture, we let things like the UN decay,
and we have gotten so - whatever it is - violent and scared
that security felt like the most important thing at the UN.
And then right across the street -
this is the thing that was so interesting to me -
right across the street is a brand-new Trump Tower
that looked like it cost billions.
And it was in perfect condition, just absolutely perfect condition.
And the new construction was going up, and it was gorgeous.
And I'm looking across the street at Trump Tower, thinking,
"Wait a second.
We put billions towards Trump Tower
and almost nothing towards the United Nations,
and boy, what does that say about us?"
And so the talk that I wanted to give was,
are we doing that in our own lives?
Like, how much are we putting in our lives
to the deep values that help people get along with each other,
that make the world a better place,
and how much are we putting in our lives
to those things that are just showy, luxurious
and pretty useless at some very basic level.
You know, I teach the happiness classes at Stanford,
which is an interesting thing to do
because the students there are very stressed.
And it is a nice thing to be able to teach some things
about how to relax and chill a little bit and whatever.
But there is abundant evidence
that money doesn't make you happier
except when you go from no money to some.
So if you're dropped off in a desert somewhere,
and you have nothing, and you find like 1,000 bucks,
it's like, "Yes!"
But if you have enough to eat
and things that you need like a basic car and stuff like that,
then making more money has very little additive to happiness.
And so again, I'm thinking of Trump Tower,
and I'm thinking of the UN.
And we are starving the UN,
and we as a culture of building all of these luxuries,
and we, you as students and even me as consumers,
are getting lost in our need for luxuries and consumption.
And does it make us happy?
There was a study done - oh, I don't know - 20 years ago
that looked at people who made a certain reasonably low amount of money,
and it was like 25,000 or 30,000 dollars.
And they asked those people
like, how many of you had met your life goals?
And they estimated like five or six percent had said yes,
and then they asked people making 100 grand,
which 20 years ago was a lot of money,
how many of you had met your life goals?
And maybe two percent more had.
And it was shocking information
that we are taught almost from birth
that money and luxury and things that you want will satisfy you.
And the evidence continues to accumulate that that's not true,
but because we're in a culture that does that,
we have the UN in one part and all the other things in another part,
and I believe -
and this is the sadness that I see -
I think we're doing that inside of ourselves as well.
I think we are training ourselves out of listening to other people,
I think we are losing sight of what's really important in life,
and I think, culturally, we're all being brainwashed
that consuming stuff is the purpose of life.
As an adult - and many of you are children and students -
I walk into like Whole Foods, and I think to myself, like,
"In the whole history of the world,
almost nobody has ever had this much luxury,
ever,
that I can buy anything I want,
that food comes in from all over the world,
and it's just standing there for me.
And yet, I have been taught, at some level, to notice
whether somebody's at the express lane with too many items."
And I'm thinking to myself,
"How did we brainwash ourselves to be that crazy
so that we are impatient all the time and in a hurry all the time
and not stopping to see what we have?"
So I use Whole Foods as kind of a metaphor -
or whatever, Safeway, it doesn't even matter -
but we have so much, and we still need more.
And I look at that, and I think,
"OK, is that the way to create a good community?
Is that the way to create a good culture?
Or does that lead to the UN not having paint?"
Which is what I think it does.
One of the things that the happiness studies show
is that the people who are happier,
the thing that separates them mostly from other people
is the quality of their relationships,
that if you're going to put your effort in one direction for a good life,
it's towards other people and yourself.
You may have been taught all sorts of things in your home,
you may have been taught all sorts of things in school
about how achievement and status and being the best and on top
is going to make you happy,
and it's not.
People - well, I mean,
it's not going to make you happy to be the worst either.
But people matter.
One of the things that separates happier from less happy people
is they know how to appreciate their friends.
And they know how to pay attention to them.
And they know how to honor them.
Unhappier people tend to see friends as kind of accessories or commodities.
You know, oh yeah, he's my buddy,
but I don't have to really nourish that.
And they treat themselves, in some ways, the same way.
And I think to myself,
"Why isn't that being taught in school?"
Like how to be nice to people,
how to be nice to ourselves.
Because that's the strongest link to a happy life.
There are very, very, very, very many happy people
who don't have PhDs or master's degrees
or are not doing fancy occupations.
You live in Silicon Valley here,
and you know there are very, very many unhappy people
who have every material and achievement thing nailed.
Because all you have to do is watch them drive
and you know they're not happy.
Because an unhappy person is impatient.
That's an unhappy sign,
which is "Wait a second.
I can't wait 10 seconds for somebody to go a little slower
or not know where they're going to turn?
Like, what is it that has me so crazed
that I can't wait or that I can't relax?'
So it's interesting.
One time I was at the Whole Foods in Los Altos here
on Thanksgiving, or the day before Thanksgiving,
and I was buying stuff for my Thanksgiving as was everybody else.
And you would think
that the people in that store had just come out of starvation
because they were so grim and tense,
like, "Get out of my way because I'm in a hurry.
I have to cook Thanksgiving dinner."
And there was such tense, hostile energy there
as opposed to
"Wow, we're the wealthiest people in the history of the planet.
A billion people go to bed without food at night,
every night.
And all I have to do is wait a little bit
at this temple of abundance.
And I can't even do that with graciousness."
And I think, "Wow, what a world!"
So the things that lead to happiness:
people -
purpose is the other one.
Like, is what you're doing valuable?
And will it help people? Will it help the world?
The UN will help the world.
Trump Tower will probably not.
But we put better resources to Trump Tower than we do to the UN.
I think we do the same with all of our professions,
but that's too big of a brush.
So the teachers teaching here make barely liveable wages.
And yet, all over Silicon Valley
are people making products that will have limited value
making huge wages.
But within our own lives, we can ask ourselves,
"What are we supposed to do here?"
For students, that is particularly relevant.
What can you do that will help the world?
What can you do that will make a difference?
When, in your mind, you think, "Who can I help?"
like, "What talents do I have?"
not just, "What's the best for me to get ahead?"
not just, "How can I make the most money?"
"How can I have the most status?"
"How can I be the top of a pyramid?"
All that's fine, but it won't make you happy.
It won't make you unhappy per se, but it won't make you happy.
What makes happy
is people who get up in the morning and have a good purpose to their day:
you know, my work is going to help people,
or I'm making it easier for somebody,
or I'm going to build the best of something.
It matters.
And again, it directly leads to happiness.
People who have some sense
that there's something bigger than themselves.
There's a lot of data that shows
that people who try to make a lot of money to make a lot of money -
what's so interesting about that
is they make the money, and then they need more.
People who try to do good or make a difference and make money,
they appreciate the money.
The third thing and the simplest thing to lead to a happier life
is at some level just be a nice human being.
The simplest exhortation of all:
just be pleasant.
When the Dalai Lama was asked what's his religion,
he said, "My religion is kindness."
Basically because that's all, he said, that he can understand.
You know, I don't know the big picture.
I don't know how it is the world's supposed to be,
but I know that I can be kinder.
When you are kinder - and this is broadly applied -
when people are nice to you, you say "thank you."
When people have been nice to you,
you let them off the hook when they make a mistake.
When people have been kind to you, you would cut them slack.
When, say, somebody is wrong,
you don't rip them apart to make yourself right
if they have been nice to you.
That's kindness.
Kindness is when you screw up,
you know how to talk to yourself
so you learn from the lesson, not just beat yourself up.
Kindness is huge.
But it includes gratitude
because you can't be kind
unless you notice what's been given to you,
which is one thing that people don't think about
when they think about kindness.
Gratitude is a huge part of kindness.
Who's been nice?
Who's reached out to me? How can I pay that back?
You know, again, you don't want to belabor the point,
but many of us are unable to see who it is that's been good to us
because we pay so much attention to who hasn't been good to us.
The opposite is the way to happiness.
Who's been good to you?
One of the things that you can do
to make yourself happier almost immediately
is just think,
Today, did anybody say a nice word to me?
Did anybody listen to me?
Did anybody offer me anything?
If so, it's been, in part, a good day.
Let me pay that forward, let me pay that back or let me use it
so that when somebody's not nice
or somebody cuts me off on the freeway
or somebody's impatient with me,
I give them a break.
And so the bottom line of all of this - and it's very interesting - is:
"Do we want to build like temples to our greed?
Or do we want to build temples to trying to get along,
trying to work things out
and trying to accommodate people's differences?"
That's the UN versus Trump Tower,
but I think the question is more relevant for our own lives.
So when you come home or when I come home,
how agreeable are you?
Do you come in as if the world owes you everything?
Or do you come in, like mellow, chill, "Let's work something out."
That's a decision that any of us can make;
the minute you make that decision, you're happier.
So I'm going to ask you in the audience,
as I talk, just to practice this for a moment.
Just think of one person that you could be nicer towards.
Just think about that for a moment.
What would be one person
that you could in your mind envision being nicer towards today
because they've been particularly kind or nice to you?
Just one human being.
And as you think of that, you will notice that your body relaxes
and more positive emotion comes in.
Because you're thinking about what good you can do.
When you're thinking about what's owed you
or when you're thinking about
how much more you need to grab for yourself,
you don't have the same physical reaction.
Your body gets tight.
Because the world or that person or everything
is a threat to your well-being.
But when you think of "Wow, who's been good?
and how can I use that to be good myself?"
then there's almost no threat.
And your body relaxes.
At the end of the day,
those kind of decisions are what lead us to our happiness.
It's those kind of decisions:
do I be nice, do I be generous, can I give somebody a break?
rather than just a daily kind of obsession
with how much is on my plate,
am I getting ahead?
And now the last thing I will say about this
is there is absolutely nothing wrong with success.
I've been as successful as anyone.
The question is -
and this is the UN-Trump Tower thing -
how do you evaluate your own success?
The happier people tend to do so by having a bigger us,
and not just them.
I thank you.
(Applause)