The Negative Path to Happiness and Success

"Get motivated!" and "stay positive!" are common bits of self-help advice. But have we gone too far in our penchant for positivity? Leaning on research (including a story about Mount Everest climbers), reporter and author Oliver Burkeman shares the counterintuitive insight of how abandoning goals and allowing some negativity in can actually be helpful. "Theres a real benefit to find ways to loosen our grip as goal driven people. When you look at successful entrepreneurs...you find they don't follow this stereotype." We should instead remain ready to adapt where we are heading and embrace uncertainty. !

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The Willpower Instinct

Neuroscientists talk about how we have one brain but two minds. We have a mind that acts on impulse and seeks immediate gratification, and we have another mind that controls our impulses and delays gratification to fulfill our long-term goals. We face willpower challenges when the two minds have competing goals. Learn what influences us to procrastinate or why we fail to resist temptation, and learn about small interventions that can have large, positive outcomes.

And as a bonus, this video is going to give you a bit of a test in this area of your life - as the video is 54 minues long!

The key to success?

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

Progress is not a zero-sum game

Author Robert Wright explains "non-zero-sumness" — the network of linked fortunes and cooperation that has guided our evolution to this point — and how we can use it to help save humanity today.