[MUSIC] Hi there!Welcome back! You know the main reason for divorce? You'll never guess it, it's marriage. It's true, I don't know a singledivorcee who wasn't married before. >> [LAUGH]>> Welcome back, in this video, I'm going to have Katherinegive you the instructions for the penultimate happiness exercise, whichwe call three good things with a twist. This exercise has to do with recognizingthat for even everyday, small events, that's thought out seemingly negative,they trigger positive outcome that would not have occurred unlessthe negative outcome had occurred. I recently had this happen to me. I kept trying to book theseflight tickets for my family, and the credit card kept getting rejected. This happened forall the credit cards that I have. Then I suddenly realized that I was tryingto book tickets for an official trip and that it would be much simpler andwould save me a lot of hassle. If I just ask the administrativeassistant to book the tickets directly. So what started out as a negative outcome,my credit cards not working or not being accepted,turned out to be a positive outcome. Even now, Katherine is trying to push meout and it seems like a negative event, but I'm sure that it's gonnatrigger something positive. I'm really not sure what the positivething is going to be, but, I'm gonna keep my eyes open forwhatever positivity happens. See you soon. >> It always makes me a little happy todisplace Dr. Happy Smarts from stage. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it helps mewith connect with you guys, and fulfill the need to belong. Anyways, this will bethe last exercise for which I will be givingyou the instructions. The next exercise is somethingcalled mindfulness, for which we have a guest speaker, Mr.Vijay Bhat, giving the instructions. That exercise is awesome. As you will see, so is this one whichwe call three good things with a twist. Let me start with a littlebackground about this exercise. There's a very powerful happinessboosting exercise called three good things that Prof.Seligman of U Penn, who's often called the father of positive psychology,is credited with inventing. The exercise involves noting downthree good things that happened to you during the day in a journal. These three good things need not besomething major like winning a lottery, or going on a date with Rudy Koshin orJennifer Anniston. They can be something simple like, I received a positive commenton the Aloha discussion forum. Or, it finally rained andmy plants got free water. Prof. Seligman found that as many as 94%of those who recorded 3 good things for a mere 15 days showed significantimprovement in happiness. The exercise even lifted someout of severe depression. The exercise we have in mind for you now is adapted fromthe three good things exercise. Like that exercise, this one tooinvolves making a note of three good things that happened to you,but there is a twist. We want you to start with three badthings that happened that eventually lead to good things. This can be a little tricky to understand. So let me give you somespecific details now. In this exercise, we will want you to think of threethings that started out on a bad note. For example, perhaps on your wayto work you realize that you had forgotten to take your phone,because of which, you drive back. You may feel frustrated initially, but asyou enter your house to pick up the phone you may have realized that you had alsoforgotten to pick up your USB drive that has an important documenton which you wanted to work. So what initially seemedlike a negative event may have ended up savingyou a lot of time. Here's another example. You may have been stuck in heavy traffic,but because of that, you may have gotten to hear a favoritesong that you hadn't heard in ages. The idea is to connect the dots. As Steve Jobs might have said,"From mundane, everyday events, so that you recognize that fewevents are unambiguously negative. Of course it's important that you don'tpick extremely negative events for this exercise. For example don't pickgetting fired from work or your kid falling violently ill,although as Professor Raj discussed, even intensely negative events could, inthe long run, lead to positive outcomes. It will be difficult for you to getpast the negativity of these events, to see the positive outcomes they trigger. Plus, positive outcomes from big negativeevents usually take some time to unfold, which means you won't be able to thinkof any positive consequences from them, so focus only on mildly negativeevents for this exercise. Events like failing to find yourfavorite brand of cereal, or having to fill in gas when youare already a little late for work. I should mention that,even from mildly negative events, you may find it difficult tofind any positive consequences. The reason is because when wethink of something negative, our mind immediately thinksof other negative things, something that Professor Rajwill touch upon next week. These negative thoughts will blind youfrom seeing the positive consequences triggered by negative events, butif you persevere, you will see that almost every negative event triggersat least one positive consequence. The way to persevere is to use the emotionregulation tactic of attention deployment. That is, use the power of your mindto stop thinking negative thoughts. Instead, take your mind back tothe original negative event and retrace everything that happenedas a consequence of it. You can close your eyes as you'redoing the retracing of the events, if that helps. When you do this, you are bound to identify at least onepositive consequence that came out of it. For example, in the process ofsearching for your cereal box, you may have discovered really old foodrotting in the back of your cupboard. Throwing out that food,may have made you feel good or having to fill in gas whenyou were already late for work, may have given you the opportunityto grab a much needed cup of coffee. These types of positive consequences,may not fully compensate for the original negative event,but that's okay. So long as you are able to think ofat least positive consequence for each negative event,you are all set as for this exercise. This is, in a nutshell, the threegood things with a twist exercise. With that let me give youmore specific instructions. At the end of this videoyou will see a link, clicking on that link willtake you to this website. As you can see,the exercise involves four main steps. Step one, is to think of three mildlynegative events that happened, and write about them in sentence ortwo in this space. For example,I'm going to write I didn't get enough sleep last night,got into a mild argument with my dad. And my computer took ages to start upas my three mildly negative events. Then when you click the next button, it will take you to the next pagewhich is step two, Connect the dots. As you can see, the three negativeevents that I came up with earlier, are listed here. My task now is to thinkof at least one and as many as three positive consequencestriggered by each negative event. I'm going to write one positivething that came out of not getting a good night sleep is that,as I lay awake on my bed, I heard my neighbor humminga really nice tune. He seemed so happy, andthat made me happy. Another positive thing thatcame out of it is that, I feel kind of a little woozy today. Normally I wouldn't find it pleasant but somehow today I find the woozinessto be an interesting experience. Okay. I can only think of thesetwo positive things, so I'm going to move tothe next negative event. For this one,getting into an argument with my dad, I can't think of anything positive,so I'm going to skip this. For the third one,my computer took ages to start up. I can think of so many positives. Excuse to call that good looking ITengineer to fix my computer, chance for a coffee break with friends, and have amore solid case to request a new computer. Now as you can see here, if you weren'table to come up with even one positive consequence for a negative event, you have the option of replacing thatnegative event with a positive one. You can do this by clickingon the previous button. Since I'm not able to think of anythingpositive that came out of the mild tiff I had with my dad,I'm going to hit the previous button and replace that event with this. The coffee this morning was heavenly,right mix of ingredients. I can then come back to the same page. And I'm fully satisfied with everythingnow, which I am, I just click next. This will take you to the nextscreen where you can see everything that you typed so far,the negative events that led to positive consequences andor the purely positive events. You can hit the previous button tochange anything if you wish to, but if you don't want change anything,you just click Next, which will take you to stepthree of the exercise. In this step, you will provide yourfirst and last name and email ID, and then when you click on the same buttonat the bottom, two things will happen. First, you will get an email witheverything that you have written so far. Second, you will startreceiving an email everyday for the next seven days witha link that will take you to a website where you can do the threegood things with a twist each day. So each day for the next seven days,you will need to think of three mainly negative events that happened,that triggered the positive consequences. At the end of the seventh day, you willhave received seven emails, one each day. Of the list of negative things that led topositive consequences, don't delete these emails because they will come in handy forstep four which is the last step. On the eighth day,after you start the exercise, you will receive an email like this one. Click on the link whichwill take you to a website on which you will be askedthese three questions. Overall, how easy ordifficult was this exercise for you? Why? How much more or less confidentdo you now feel that no event or outcome is purely positive or negative. Why or why not? Typically, those who do thisexercise can more spontaneously see the positive consequencestriggered by negative events. Did this happen to you? Please elaborate. Answering these threequestions is step four. Once you finish this step, click on the Done button,which will take you to the next page on which you can download a soft copy ofyour responses to the three questions. That's it for the exercise. It's a really simple exercise andconcept, but not so easy in practice, mostly because we are also stronglywedded to judging outcomes. But with practice you can becomeless judgemental of outcomes which will make it easier to becomea dispassionate pursuer of passion. Hope you have fun with this exercise andsee you next week. I won't be giving youinstructions next week but I will make sure to say goodbyeto you before the course ends. >> Thanks for watching this video folks. I hope you enjoyed this exercise andthat you find it to be useful. Give us your feedback throughthe discussion forums. And, by the way, I should let you knowthat something positive did come out of Katherine pushing me out. I got to see a bunch of people doingan impromptu dance and I joined them. I'm gonna play you that clip. [MUSIC]