# Miller Templeton on Happiness
## August 19th, 2020
- Watching a video with 500 views by Miller Templeton, a GT professor...it's quite clear no one has watched this video except for class
- ...and he talks VERY enthusiastically
- Also, Allie's one of the students in the audience! Cool!
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- "Georgia Tech scored as the college with the 2nd lowest happiness in 2019 - that's not all bad, since it shows we're not a party school, but WHOA"
- Dr. Templeton was a Nuclear Engineering grad from Tech in the 1960s, became a professor in 1968, and then realized he needed psychological training when he became the Assistant Dean of Students
- Dr. Templeton later became the full Dean, and retired from Tech in 1998
- While there, he helped form ORGT, developed study abroad efforts like the Oxford program, hiked the entire AT on sabbatical, led rafting trips down the Colorado River, and saw hundreds of students who were happy AND unhappy
- So, Dr. Templeton retired on a Friday, June 12th, 1998, and on Saturday what did he do? He started hiking the AT AGAIN!
- "I should've written Miller's guide to the East Coast's Bed and Breakfasts"
- Dr. Templeton, while retired, still serves as a member of Tech's board and still helps out with several clubs, as well as serving as a speaking coach
- "So, you should've taken those personality assessments and have reference to them, right? Meyers-Briggs, locus of control, satisfaction with life score? You should know those metrics to appreciate the content of this lecture"
- LONG ago, Dr. Templeton was leading a backpacking trip for ORGT, and as they were coming back to the car one of the freshman said "Miller, you seem pretty happy but you're not married - why's that?"
- Dr. Miller made it a "teachable moment" - he knew plenty of married friends who were happy and some who were married and miserable, and he knew people who were rich and happy and rich and miserable ("will I lose my assets tomorrow?"), and he knew poor people who were miserable and poor people thankful for everything they had, and he knows students with a 4.0 who are happy and students with a 4.0 who are MISERABLE and have no life!
- So, all of these CRAZILY different people can be happy or miserable, so what does that tell us about happiness? That happiness seems like something INTERNAL - it's not dependent on your circumstances!
- Now, some psychologists named Meyers and Deter (?) gave people that same happiness score survey you took ALONG with another survey, and they found that the most happy AND the least happy people almost always had the same traits
- "Now, this is less a lecture than it is a course syllabus - happiness is a complex thing to talk about, so I'm going to talk about the summary of happiness, and it'll be up to you to fill in the details through the rest of this class (but I'll give you a TON of references)"
- Random point: students with the same SAT scores tend to score better when they take notes, and those students who WRITE their notes by hand score better than the ones who type their notes out!
- Now, what comes first: the chicken or the egg?
- "What does that mean?" Well, it seems a lot of characteristics have genetic tendencies, like loneliness - is happiness like that? Probably, somewhat - but whatever your level's out
- Alright, what are those characteristics of happy people? Let's look at them, although not in any particular order
- You've gotta love yourself
- In psychology, this is basically high self-esteem, and this has 2 pieces: mentally and bodily
- One part of this is POSITIVE SELF-TALK, where you just tell yourself "wow, I did pretty well!" If you get a 100%, say - out loud - "Wow, I did great on that test! I know how to get good grades, and I'm glad I'm that kind of person!"
- Similarly, you might have a GREAT conversation with someone for n hour and decide to meet them again for Starbucks, and say "well, I guess that's evidence I do have good social skills!"
- Bodily, you can do that in a ton of ways
- A BIG one: get enough sleep! The University of Pennsylvania has a "sleep lab," and they've found that sophomores who get just 4 hours of sleep a night score 40-60% worse on MULTIPLE capabilities, like the ability to remember, recall, analyze, or think creatively, compared
- I've seen that creativity part emphasized DRAMATICALLY in computer science students; one student has 100 lines of code, another has just 10 lines, to do the exact same thing
- Another big one: feed it right! Learn nutrition and USE IT!
- Another one: EXERCISE! We've got one of the best CRCs in America
- Another: DON'T abuse substances!
- "Here's a freebie: DON'T get stressed out at Georgia Tech, because stress makes you shut down on ALL of these bodily things, as well as making yourself less social"
- Happy people love other people
- Your Meyers-Briggs score is made up of 4 letters, 4 "preference pairs;" everyone is introverted or extroverted at some point, but they have a PREFERENCE for them
- Introverts can be MASTERS of 1-on-1 talking, and still love other people
- There's something called the "7 principles of bonding," and it's 7 psychological things that
- Dale Carnegie wrote about 6 of these 7 in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in the 1930s
- The last one, "self-disclosure," was popularized in the 1960s
- So, if you've got lots of friends, check that you use these 7 bonding principles and know how to use them! If you don't, ESPECIALLY learn how to use them!
- There are 4 big levels of acquiring any skill:
- First off in "unconscious incompetence," where you're bad at something and don't know you're bad at it!
- Next is "conscious incompetence," where you know you can't do something but don't know how to do it
- Next is "conscious competence," where you know what to do AND how to do it
- Finally is "unconscious competence," where you don't even have to THINK about what you're doing!
- So, what are those bonding principles? Let's list 'em all out:
- You've gotta like people - that's the ONLY "attitude" principle, as opposed to behaviors
- "If you're a misanthropist, you're not gonna do well at making friends, typically"
- You've gotta smile
- There's a lot of psychological ramifications to smiling; it says to the world at large that it's okay for them to interact with you, and that you're probably a nice, enjoyable person
- Use the person's name
- It's simple, but HUGE! Just sprinkle your conversation with their name, and again, that's a huge bonding tool!
- WHY? Because whenever you hear your name spoken, it's usually with your friends or family, so saying their name tugs on that connection
- I'm sure you've heard people say "Oh, I can't remember names at all!" What they ACTUALLY mean is "Oh, I'm bad at short-term to long-term memory transfer" - but our own psychology lab at Tech found that a 5-7 syllable word or concept that's thought about for approximately your age in seconds ("that's 20 seconds for most of y'all") AUTOMATICALLY transfer to long term memory, where the decay time is on the order of weeks!
- So, whenever you meet someone at a conference or a party, just say their name 2-3 times when you start talking, and it'll stick!
- "Now, short-term concepts will decay within 10-15 seconds of most people, so make sure to say their name a few times in the beginning"
- Self-disclosure
- This is a more recent one, but the idea is that to build a bond with someone, you share yourself in bits and pieces WHILE letting them share THEMSELVES in bits and pieces
- So, you don't want to yack at them for 20 minutes OR only ask them questions
- Be a good listener
- There are biological arguments that MEN are worse listeners than women - "so if you're a guy, practice your listening skills and MAN, you'll be a hot-ticket item"
- I remember visiting a study abroad location in Australia, and a self-help book came out in Australia called "Men Can't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" - a bit provocative, but it makes the point!
- So, how can you be a good listener? There are 5 big components:
- Eye contact
- Look them in the face! This is HUGE!
- Interjection
- These are just short acknowledgements without knowledge content, to let someone know you're paying attention to them - "uh-huh", "oh, wow!", "they didn't!", "oof!", "yeah!", "cool!"
- Saying it in an appropriate tone, too, let's them know you're actually paying attention
- Non-verbal communication
- Eye contact is important enough to get its own category, but changing your facial expression to match the conversation - looking shocked or excited - or moving your head, or gesturing, are huge
- Make comments about what they're saying
- This lets them know that you're listening and paying attention - "Really? Windsurfing sounds like a really interesting sport!"
- Peppering this with self-disclosure helps build connections, too - "I've never learned how to do it, though; could you tell me more?"
- Asking questions
- Asking questions about what they're talking about is another big one
- "Those last 2 listening pieces are less intuitive, but they're still important to learn"
- Talk in terms of the other person's interests
- This comes in 2 big flavors: when you KNOW all about the topic they're interested in (in which case you're both interested in the same thing), or when you know NOTHING about what they're interested in (in which case you can ask them to explain all about it)
- Affirmation
- This one doesn't come up often, but when the chance does come up, JUMP ON IT!
- "Wow, you made a 4.0 last semester, that's awesome! You must've worked really hard on that."
- This is usually a good chance for
- So, bonding is one big way of loving other people, but another way is to think about Harry Sack's behavioral definition of love: "to love another person is to be TOTALLY committed to helping the other person become EVERYTHING they want to be now and in the future"
- The most important bit: love is NOT about me, it's about the OTHER PERSON - "and when two people feel this way towards each other, that really is a whole more than the sum of its parts"
- This is a deeper sense of love, but if you want to look more at this I'd recommend a book called "The Road Less Traveled" by Scott Peppin, which has a chapter on what love is and what love is NOT
- "That one chapter would cut the divorce rate in half, in my opinion; I'd make this book required reading to get a marriage license (I mean, you have to take a test to get a driver's license, and aren't stable families more important?)"
- Within the University System of Georgia, we also have a research group focusing on Centenarians, people who live to be 100 - and across the board, EVERY Centenarian has groups of friends and family, they've been surrounded by other people that they love for most of their life
- One last comment about loving other people: ALL the great musicals of the 1940s and 50s was written by Rogers and Hammerstein, and it's said Rogers wrote the following poem to a friend:
```
A bell's not a bell 'til you ring it
A song's not a song 'til you sing it
And the love in your heart wasn't put there to stay
Because love isn't love 'til you give it away
```
- Love's one of the few things in the world that you get more of the more you give away ("the other 2 I can think of are hate and anger - I vote for love")
- The 3rd characteristic of happy people is a HUGE one for Tech students: Happy people believe they're in control of their own life
- You took the Locus of Control test, and if you scored as an internal locus person, that means that you think your efforts have a high degree of influence on your success in life; if you're an external person, you don't think that. You believe that no matter how much effort you put in, the outcome's ultimately due mostly to chance.
- You can see why people with an internal locus do better academically - they think their studying actually matters!
- Now, suppose we take 2 students, one with an internal locus, one with an external, and they both make an A - the internal student says "Y'know, I EARNED this A", while the external person looks at it and says "Well, look at that, I got lucky enough to study the stuff the professor put on the quiz"
- Now, sometimes - not always - a person's speech patterns reveal their locus of control; instead of saying "I'd love to go to the movies, but I'd like to study", an external person might say "I CAN'T go"
- Similarly, saying "I HOPE this works out" - NO! "Hope" isn't a strategy! Put in your effort!
- This is a big one for sophomores: your GPA affects your happiness
- Mackenzie, the most famous consulting engineering firm in the world, won't interview a Tech student with less than a 3.8 GPA
- GPA is NOT just a question of intellect - everyone at Tech is smart - but the behaviors they practice, the habits they practice
- Why are you at college? To master a subject to get a good job so you can support yourself, your family, and thing important to you
- There are ~9 things I've seen as a dean called the "ABBS Form" that pretty much guarantee you a 3.5 GPA or higher if you practice them consistently
- Filling out this form is like going in for a weekly academic physical, showing you which academic processes you need to do
- "Georgians, ignore this at your peril; you'll certainly be happier if you keep your HOPE scholarship"
- So, the 9 behaviors are:
- Never skip class
- Always do 90-100% of the homework
- Study 2+ hours each week for each class hour you're taking
- Use the college help sources (tutoring, study groups, old quizzes, etc.)
- Have good time management skills
- "This is the most important one, in my opinion; have a daily, weekly, monthly, and semester schedule (especially the weekly one)"
- Most students give me a deer-in-the-headlights look when I tell them that if their daily calendar has 24 slots, EVERY SLOT should be filled!
- "Use iCal or Google Calendar, and it'll make this easy and let you make a generic calendar"
- Make a generic calendar, and then fill out
- "What about free time?" YES, that's good, but still PLAN your recreation, too!
- The 2 items on your calendar you NEVER skip: 8-hours of sleep ("if something comes up, take an hour nap the next day!"), and 2-for-1 study hours each week
- 10% of your effort goes into making the calendar, 90% into following it
- Follow your schedule
- Task management
- You've got a task list - learn to prioritize it
- "If you're like me, you NEVER finish your tasks for the day, so what do you do? You don't drop those things; you move them to tomorrow's schedule, then re-prioritize"
- Avoid computer-aided distractions
- Some Tech students, when they get to Tech, delete all their video games as a student, and I approve that
- Social media, non-academic videos, etc., are problematic as DISTRACTIONS
- Now, if you use them for RECREATION, and average less than 45 minutes of such distractions a day for the week, that's okay - but keep those distractions inside their box
- 8 hours of sleep, every day
- "Why 8, when some psychologists advocate 7.5?"
- Well, 7.5 is the ADULT sleep cycle (of 1.5 hours per circadian rhythm cycle), while young adults ~15-25 years of age need something more like 8-10 hours for peak functioning (due to a 1.75 hour rhythm cycle)
- One final comment about being in control of your life ("ESPECIALLY you seniors - you have much more control over your financial security than you realize"): invest in investment literacy!
- Warren Buffet has touted the advice Peter Lynch wrote about in 1992: let the market do your investing for you, since they fluctuate but long-term always go up
- So, if you want to be safe, just invest in a market index fund (since it follows the market AND they're cheaper, since they don't have to be managed)
- That means you REJOICE when the market tanks, since you get more bang for your buck - you can purchase more stock!
- (...don't like how he says happiness as a retiree depends on this)
- The 4th happiness trait: be an optimist!
- The optimist's mantra: "I'm great, you're great, and tomorrow's going to be great!"
- ...okay, he's sliding into dangerous territory for me here (I prefer T.S. Eliot, whom he was in turn quoting: "All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", but perhaps not yet)
- "If you don't know how optimistic you are, ask your friends; they'll tell you if you're a ray of sunshine or a wet blanket"
- If you don't trust your friends, then instead read the book "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman
- Optimism is a big deal in our society; research has found over and over again that optimism is associated with longer life (by 7.5 years), have less health problems as they age, etc.
- The 5th trait: Happy people focus on the world outside themselves
- "That's almost the definition of an extrovert; introverts still do this, it just takes more emotional effort"
- There are JILLIONS of ways to do this, but there are 3 that are very important for Tech students
- Get a job
- Psychologically, a job gives some much-needed structure to your life, and your life NEEDS structure
- Beyond that, though, having a job is part of our identity in Western society; we introduce ourselves as "oh, I'm an engineer at X!"
- (Very true, but not sure this is a good thing)
- Your grandparents certainly know people who worked for XYZ for 40 years, retired, and then died a year or two later
- Enjoy the power of touch
- Now, we have to be CAREFUL with this because of sexual harassment, but back in the early 1900s babies in orphanages in London were dying en masse - why? The ones who died were the ones who were never touched, or hugged, or picked up. Otherwise, they were healthy - but they still died.
- In our society, touch is a BIG darn deal. Touch is acceptable both as RITUAL touch, where trust is there (hand-shaking, hugging, pats on the back, arm on a friend's shoulder, etc.)
- "Your handshake should touch the skinfold between the index finger and thumb; that's a powerful handshake. Don't dead-fish it."
- The American Dairy Association have hard-working lives, and because of that, they've got a special bond, and have a special handshake...*cue joke*
- Give in ways big and small
- As a Tech student, you can do this in TONS of way! You can give up hours a week to tutor high-school students in Georgia, or help build a house in Habitat for humanity
- You can give in small ways, too, giving a friend a chocolate-chip cookie from your grandmother, or asking "hey, I'm going to the store, can I get you anything?"
- The 6th: Happy people search for meaning until they find it
- For many people, this is their religion, for others it's their philosophy; the critical thing is that you have SOME BASIS for morality in your life
- Contemporarily, this is called "spiritual wellness," and finding meaning in life makes it possible to do the other things
- Those 6 things ALWAYS appear in happy people; there are 5 more that, while not always present, still appear with very high frequency, as follows
- First, they live one day at a time
- Psychologists call this "present-moment living," of living in the moment
- This does NOT mean ignoring next week's physics quiz, but of doing the work required of you TODAY, including work today to prepare for the future
- They laugh and smile a TON
- "I'm a great believer in my grandmother's sayings, and one I still remember is 'the time you need to laugh and smile is the time when you don't feel like doing it'"
- It makes you happy, and the people around you happy
- A BIG one: they avoid self-defeating behaviors
- Psychologically, this is something that has a short-term payoff but is detrimental in the long term
- There are 5 big ones (remember with the ABC + GW):
- Anger ("if your hostility score was higher than a 7, it needs to come down")
- Typically, we get angry at someone who did something we didn't want; it's used to manipulate people, but there's ALWAYS better ways to do that
- It's self-defeating, though, because anger ALWAYS makes people like you less, and if you REALLY had a tantrum, they'll hate your guts forever
- "If you want to get less angry, you have a few options. One is counseling (they shouldn't show you how to MANAGE anger, but ELIMINATE it). There's another book I'd recommend called 'Your Erroneous Zones' (not erogenous; that's something quite different), especially chapter 12."
- Blaming others
- "Oh, that was you fault!" "No, the dog tripped me up!"
- The longer you spend blaming people, the less time you're spending fixing the actual problem
- Complaining
- "Oh, complaining was my NEMESIS on the ORGT trips!"
- Again, it doesn't fix the problem and just takes energy away from tackling the problem!
- Guilt
- This is just wasting emotional energy on something that already happened; a healthy response is to say "wow, I shouldn't have done that; I'll try not to do that anymore," remember it, and move on from your life
- Worrying
- This is the same-thing as guilt, but forward-looking instead of backwards-looking
- Another one: happy people take time off!
- Again, Meyers-Briggs plays into this; you should be able to drop things and have fun!
- If you're an "INTJ" or an "ENTJ," though, you probably have to schedule your leisure time instead, which is still fine - but try not to bite off more than you can chew
- If you have NO leisure time, well, you'll get sullen or boring very quickly indeed
- Finally: happy people are thankful/grateful
- "There are 3 big ways to do this, and most people are not doing all 3"
- You're thankful to your friends and family
- When's the last time you told your parents "Mom, Dad, thank you so much for supporting me here at Tech, thank"
- You're thankful to God or some higher power through prayer for your blessings
- You're thankful for your state of being
- "This one is NOT intuitive"
- This is being thankful that you have clothes on your back, that you're healthy, that you live in a free country, that you have friends, that you're intelligent enough to be at Georgia Tech - that even though you're not perfect, you're still glad for what you have
- "Now, philosophically, there's something important I have to say: do NOT let your DOING determine what your BEING is"
- What does that mean? A big example is academic achievement: "because I got an A on a test, that means I'm an intelligent person"
- NO, it should be the other way: "Because I'm an intelligent person, THEREFORE I got the A"
- If you get this backwards, you're going to be unstable and constantly question yourself; intelligent people sometimes fail, too
- That doesn't mean to brush off failures or things not going well, but it DOES mean that you put them in their proper place, instead of basing your happiness on what's going on around you
- So, this is drinking from a firehose, but what've we learned?
- Happiness is internal, meaning we take it WHEREVER we go - and, by the same turn, unhappiness is internal
- We're free to choose these characteristics and be happier, whatever our genetic predisposition
- Happiness is not a destination, but a journey
- "This is less obvious, but you should be doing these things throughout your LIFE! You don't stop doing them!"
- So, 3 parting tasks I give to you:
- Decide if these 11 factors will work for you
- Decide which ones you already have
- Decide if you want to develop the ones you don't have
- "In these days of mental duress, I think it's important to take whichever ones you can get"
- Thank you for listening, and good luck out there!