[Music]
I suppose if you asked what is the goal
which we're offering young people at the
moment it's basically personal success
make the most of yourself do as well as
you can compared with other people who
get better grades get a better income
and of course if your goal is a
comparative one and you look at the
effect of that at the level of society
its zero-sum because if somebody wins
somebody has to lose and that's not
great for the losers and but it's
actually not great for the winners we've
got from the Gallup World poll quite
good series now of stress do people feel
their lives are stressful and in spite
of the fact we're so much richer
previous generations we are also more
stressed and that doesn't make sense so
what we need is not a zero-sum goal we
need a positive some goal where we're
getting as much as we can of our
happiness from not being better than
other people but contributing to their
happiness and that means that for each
of us the goal has got to be in our
lives to create as much happiness as we
can in the world I think that's a
wonderful goal for everybody from the
youngest to the oldest and I think we've
got a great idea that has been
established by modern psychology or
reinvented you might say that the way to
make ourselves feel better is to work on
changing our thoughts that because
they're accessible directly accessible
to us and what we have to do essentially
it's just we all have negative thoughts
constantly it's to separate ourselves
find a ways of separating ourselves from
our negative thoughts and creating space
for positive thoughts and positive
actions so that's what modern psychology
positive psychology is telling us it's
also of course what was said centuries
ago in the east and so we are getting
also the same message carried on the
practice of mindfulness and other
Eastern practices which can also be very
very helpful but
I want to talk mainly about the care of
others and of course that's partly in
your personal life but it's very
importantly in your work life so of
course we've got to know what are the
most important things it affect people's
happiness and they are in particular
mental and physical health and human
relationships family work in community
income is also important but less than
theirs and how do I know this because
we've done a lot of work on it
and here is the main diagram so this is
from Britain but actually we've done it
for a number of advanced countries it
comes out the same everywhere the top
factor explaining the spread of
happiness this is a very simple question
have you ever been diagnosed for anxiety
or depression next is quality of work
which is also of course to do with it
with relationships and next is your
family life are you partnered and
physical health
then income it turns out that the best
predictor of whether somebody will have
a happy life as an adult as well as they
were happy when they were a school child
that's much more important than the
great shakeout that if you asked what
the teachers think they're trying to do
they will also tell you that whether or
not they want to they have to focus on
getting on the grades this is not a good
scene is producing a lot of mental
stress for young people we need to get
the well-being of the children
established as a goal of equal
importance as it is in the Netherlands
for example with that academic
achievement we need to encourage schools
to measure how the school is doing with
the well-being of his children to teach
life skills weekly then people go to
work and here's the shocking fact that
the least happy time in the day is guess
when when you're with your boss we've
got to have managers
chosen for their ability to inspire are
not just to Dragoon and we've got to
give workers more control over how their
work is organized and there are good
methods of doing that then of course
this is a community where people live
incredibly important to have good
services but also because those good
services create social connections which
are very important to people's sense of
belonging services for children as you
know have been cut in our country
services for youth have been cut
services for old people have been cut
their benefits have been cut of course
even if we got them better we would
still have some mental health problems
that work in Serapis is very important
and it can go beyond depression anxiety
and it should be available obviously for
children including behavior problems for
children which are not properly treated
at the moment but also for family
conflict domestic violence drug and
alcohol these are all psychological
problems so we need the better society
we need to help people personally as
well who can lead the charge well I'm an
economist and I do think that I actually
came to economics later in life because
it had decided that basic ideas you've
got to have a clear objective and then
you've got to think of what you do on
the basis of how do you maximize the
objective using whatever resources you
have and so I think economists can lead
the charge but we need that that's in
getting happiness established as the
objective we need politicians to listen
and of course we need to have scientists
who are thinking about future
generations being as important as the
present generation so I think we had at
the beginning of our happiness
revolution and I think that all of us
can play a great part and we'll get
there
[Applause]
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