start with his conception of eudaimonia
as a form of success that has to do with
a purposeful well-being right so living
a values driven life knowing what it is
you want and being able to strive for
that and move for that we all know who
this is legendary John Wooden and his
definition of success is peace of mind
in knowing you did your best
and when I first read Woodend and I I
saw this I was very comforting because I
thought this is great success is now in
my control all I have to do is do my
best and whatever else happens around me
not a big deal right it’s kind of
simplifies things I just have to work
hard and do my best but as I tried to
make that a part of my life I realized
there’s a puzzle here and the puzzle is
that knowing you do your best really
means knowing what is your best
what is that limit right so if you get
an a on every test is that your best
like you really know if you’re doing
your best if you win every race that you
run are you really testing your limit
right so in some ways we need to ask
ourselves how do we find that limit how
do we know if we’re actually doing our
best so think about that for a minute
but I want to point out that I think
failure is important as part of success
so I want folks to leave here today
feeling like failures not something to
fear it’s something to move towards if
we don’t fail we don’t know what could
have been right we don’t know what our
best could have been the Bjork’s have
done decades of work on something called
desirable difficulties so desirable
difficulties my misrepresentation of
that is that it is specific challenges
that make us learn better so this is in
the area of learning and memory and what
they’ve shown is that if you introduce
specific challenges in learning and
actually make learning feel harder and
more complicated people remember things
longer so the way we learn the way we
approach academics courses and so forth
is actually better if we force people to
struggle a little bit and even things
like giving
a quiz and having them get questions
wrong that’s better than having them get
all the questions right in terms of
long-term memory what’s interesting
about this work to me and what makes it
a metaphor for many aspects of life is
that if you judge how you’re doing by
your current performance you may feel
like you’re failing but in the context
of desirable difficulties you might say
this struggle this momentary failure is
preparing me to be better in the long
run
and so the Bjork’s point out don’t
confuse your immediate performance with
whether you’re learning or changing over
time and in fact a struggle now may be
an indicator that you are going to be
performing better over time right so it
may be a positive thing so we can change
our brains we can change our bodies for
the better by facing failure by taking
on challenge and by struggling don’t
leave here thinking success is one way
failure is another if you see failure
coming you’re probably going in the
right direction Wooden has even said
himself if you’re not making mistakes
you’re not doing anything right so so he
has also said we need to be taking
chances taking risks now you might be
thinking okay so this recipe for
eudaimonia he’s just telling us to go
out and fail or just struggle right so
there’s more to it than struggling
effort is extremely important if we fail
without effort it’s just failure right I
could just go out and do all kinds of
things I’m not prepared to do and fail
and that’s not what we’re talking about
right so effort is very important and in
fact I’m going to talk about another
body of literature in psychology called
the basic health Lex worth work called
the growth mindset and what Direct has
shown is that children who encounter
difficulty in school differ on how they
interpret those difficulties so some
people attribute those things to their
own attributes there it’s called a fixed
mindset so they might say I’m really
smart I got a good grade on a test I’m
not so smart because I didn’t get a good
grade on this test or I’m not smart
enough but there are these other
children who have a growth mindset who
say I didn’t do well because I didn’t
try hard enough and she uses the phrase
not yet
of thinking and those kids when they
don’t do well they said I didn’t do this
yet but with effort I can do it in the
future if I challenge myself this is an
opportunity to get better what she’s
found is that those kids do better over
time academically this may be more
important than how smart you are is how
you would attribute your success or
failure whether you tribute that to
effort or not and the really nice thing
about Dweck’s work is that she’s shown
you don’t have to be a fixed mindset
person you can choose how you interpret
challenging experiences and if you
attribute them to effort you’re going to
look at every tough moment in your life
as an opportunity to get stronger to get
better to move towards those goals
here’s a kid who’s read all of Drex work
and he’s choosing the big wheelbarrow
I’m going to give an example from my
life in my work we do work with
children’s mental health and I’m going
to tell you a story of how my laboratory
we stared failure in the face and we
went through this kind of thinking about
you know what are we going to do so we
try to help children have better lives
how do we do that we did our treatment
programs we implement those in
communities and we do studies to see if
they work so we set out to do a study
now I don’t have any colorful pictures
of brains but I do have bar graphs and
that’s like the next best science I
think it’s one step down so there’s a
bar look at that it just doesn’t have to
have any numbers or anything it’s it’s
already science right there so the test
program what we were testing you in a
typical study you want to test it
against the control group right and you
want to you want your test program to be
better than a control group so our test
program right that’s what that’s what a
real scientific histogram looks like
when something’s better so our program
was called match it was about helping
children with anxiety depression
traumatic stress and conduct problems
and there’s a variety of ways to test
things right you can test against a
control group that has a waitlist
condition right that just simply means
you’re showing your treatments better
than nothing
well that’s not very challenging right
we’re we’re kind of growth mindset
desirable difficulty kinds of people we
want a bigger challenge than that so you
can test your study your
program against a placebo and that means
it did well if it wins it means it do
well not because people believe in it
but because it has a specific ingredient
that actually works right but we’re
tougher than that right our team we were
like well we can do better let’s go out
and see if we can beat what’s already
happening in the community let’s take
the the services that are going on in
the community and see if we can do
better you see these bars are getting
closer so this is a tough challenge this
is a tough test and this was all fine
now we went to launch this study in
2008-2009 when the housing market
crashed and long story short this
allowed the state of California to tap
into an emergency fund because mental
health services funding was threatened
they tapped into this emergency fund and
these sort of ironic thing that happened
was they they were able to spend this
money if they invested in new shiny
brand new gold standard best things you
can find in the world so what happened
to our control group it became this
monster 50 of the best treatments in the
in the country as I mentioned this was
based on a state law so this was
actually signed off by our then Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger so we were now
finding ourselves in a position where
this was our study right this is where
we were headed and now I’m going to tell
you another technical scientific term
when you’re in this situation your
control group is actually referred to as
an out of control group
so I’ve set this up to look like we’re
gonna get steeled we didn’t no of course
I can you can talk to my students we
said we still think we can do it and we
also think apropos to what I said
earlier if we don’t we’re all going to
learn something everybody we’re going to
learn something about helping children
right so this is the right thing to do
we’re not going to quit we’re not going
to back down and the good news is we
were kind of wrong we did about twice as
well as that collection of gold standard
programs this is a five-year study took
us five years to get to this answer so
five years I wasn’t sleeping at night to
wait for this bar graph right that’s how
slow science is so for years our field
thought that more is better and we
learned from the study better is better
and it sounds simple but it’s not what
we thought so this was a surprise to all
of us but it wouldn’t be fair if I just
said ho yeah I just pulled a story of
success in a talk about failure right
what we did after this is we said is
that what could we have done better
because we’re not going we didn’t find
our limit right we need to look for the
tough thing where are we failing now so
we have spent the last several years
looking at how this program was failing
even when it in the context of success
two things I can tell you is that many
I’ll confess our failures I’m not hiding
them many families dropped out of that
treatment even though it was successful
we’ve spent the last few years working
on how to fix that problem and many
crises came up during treatments that we
were completely unprepared to solve it
led to worse outcomes for families we
think we can do better if we go after
that so so another corollary here is
even when in the context of our success
it’s good to focus on where could I have
done even a bit better so I’m going to
end by saying don’t be determined to
fail but be willing to fail don’t be
afraid if we had been afraid we never
would have learned what we did in that
study and be determined to learn your
own limits and to be determined and be
determined to learn when you do fail
learn why and maybe it will make you
stronger in that desirable difficulties
kind of way so I want to leave people
thinking there’s probably something you
came into this room thinking you can’t
and I want you to think today what
impossible thing that you thought was
out of reach that you might try to do
this year and I hope I’ve convinced you
that if you approach it right and you
think about it right no matter what the outcome you’re going to be successful
as a form of success that has to do with
a purposeful well-being right so living
a values driven life knowing what it is
you want and being able to strive for
that and move for that we all know who
this is legendary John Wooden and his
definition of success is peace of mind
in knowing you did your best
and when I first read Woodend and I I
saw this I was very comforting because I
thought this is great success is now in
my control all I have to do is do my
best and whatever else happens around me
not a big deal right it’s kind of
simplifies things I just have to work
hard and do my best but as I tried to
make that a part of my life I realized
there’s a puzzle here and the puzzle is
that knowing you do your best really
means knowing what is your best
what is that limit right so if you get
an a on every test is that your best
like you really know if you’re doing
your best if you win every race that you
run are you really testing your limit
right so in some ways we need to ask
ourselves how do we find that limit how
do we know if we’re actually doing our
best so think about that for a minute
but I want to point out that I think
failure is important as part of success
so I want folks to leave here today
feeling like failures not something to
fear it’s something to move towards if
we don’t fail we don’t know what could
have been right we don’t know what our
best could have been the Bjork’s have
done decades of work on something called
desirable difficulties so desirable
difficulties my misrepresentation of
that is that it is specific challenges
that make us learn better so this is in
the area of learning and memory and what
they’ve shown is that if you introduce
specific challenges in learning and
actually make learning feel harder and
more complicated people remember things
longer so the way we learn the way we
approach academics courses and so forth
is actually better if we force people to
struggle a little bit and even things
like giving
a quiz and having them get questions
wrong that’s better than having them get
all the questions right in terms of
long-term memory what’s interesting
about this work to me and what makes it
a metaphor for many aspects of life is
that if you judge how you’re doing by
your current performance you may feel
like you’re failing but in the context
of desirable difficulties you might say
this struggle this momentary failure is
preparing me to be better in the long
run
and so the Bjork’s point out don’t
confuse your immediate performance with
whether you’re learning or changing over
time and in fact a struggle now may be
an indicator that you are going to be
performing better over time right so it
may be a positive thing so we can change
our brains we can change our bodies for
the better by facing failure by taking
on challenge and by struggling don’t
leave here thinking success is one way
failure is another if you see failure
coming you’re probably going in the
right direction Wooden has even said
himself if you’re not making mistakes
you’re not doing anything right so so he
has also said we need to be taking
chances taking risks now you might be
thinking okay so this recipe for
eudaimonia he’s just telling us to go
out and fail or just struggle right so
there’s more to it than struggling
effort is extremely important if we fail
without effort it’s just failure right I
could just go out and do all kinds of
things I’m not prepared to do and fail
and that’s not what we’re talking about
right so effort is very important and in
fact I’m going to talk about another
body of literature in psychology called
the basic health Lex worth work called
the growth mindset and what Direct has
shown is that children who encounter
difficulty in school differ on how they
interpret those difficulties so some
people attribute those things to their
own attributes there it’s called a fixed
mindset so they might say I’m really
smart I got a good grade on a test I’m
not so smart because I didn’t get a good
grade on this test or I’m not smart
enough but there are these other
children who have a growth mindset who
say I didn’t do well because I didn’t
try hard enough and she uses the phrase
not yet
of thinking and those kids when they
don’t do well they said I didn’t do this
yet but with effort I can do it in the
future if I challenge myself this is an
opportunity to get better what she’s
found is that those kids do better over
time academically this may be more
important than how smart you are is how
you would attribute your success or
failure whether you tribute that to
effort or not and the really nice thing
about Dweck’s work is that she’s shown
you don’t have to be a fixed mindset
person you can choose how you interpret
challenging experiences and if you
attribute them to effort you’re going to
look at every tough moment in your life
as an opportunity to get stronger to get
better to move towards those goals
here’s a kid who’s read all of Drex work
and he’s choosing the big wheelbarrow
I’m going to give an example from my
life in my work we do work with
children’s mental health and I’m going
to tell you a story of how my laboratory
we stared failure in the face and we
went through this kind of thinking about
you know what are we going to do so we
try to help children have better lives
how do we do that we did our treatment
programs we implement those in
communities and we do studies to see if
they work so we set out to do a study
now I don’t have any colorful pictures
of brains but I do have bar graphs and
that’s like the next best science I
think it’s one step down so there’s a
bar look at that it just doesn’t have to
have any numbers or anything it’s it’s
already science right there so the test
program what we were testing you in a
typical study you want to test it
against the control group right and you
want to you want your test program to be
better than a control group so our test
program right that’s what that’s what a
real scientific histogram looks like
when something’s better so our program
was called match it was about helping
children with anxiety depression
traumatic stress and conduct problems
and there’s a variety of ways to test
things right you can test against a
control group that has a waitlist
condition right that just simply means
you’re showing your treatments better
than nothing
well that’s not very challenging right
we’re we’re kind of growth mindset
desirable difficulty kinds of people we
want a bigger challenge than that so you
can test your study your
program against a placebo and that means
it did well if it wins it means it do
well not because people believe in it
but because it has a specific ingredient
that actually works right but we’re
tougher than that right our team we were
like well we can do better let’s go out
and see if we can beat what’s already
happening in the community let’s take
the the services that are going on in
the community and see if we can do
better you see these bars are getting
closer so this is a tough challenge this
is a tough test and this was all fine
now we went to launch this study in
2008-2009 when the housing market
crashed and long story short this
allowed the state of California to tap
into an emergency fund because mental
health services funding was threatened
they tapped into this emergency fund and
these sort of ironic thing that happened
was they they were able to spend this
money if they invested in new shiny
brand new gold standard best things you
can find in the world so what happened
to our control group it became this
monster 50 of the best treatments in the
in the country as I mentioned this was
based on a state law so this was
actually signed off by our then Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger so we were now
finding ourselves in a position where
this was our study right this is where
we were headed and now I’m going to tell
you another technical scientific term
when you’re in this situation your
control group is actually referred to as
an out of control group
so I’ve set this up to look like we’re
gonna get steeled we didn’t no of course
I can you can talk to my students we
said we still think we can do it and we
also think apropos to what I said
earlier if we don’t we’re all going to
learn something everybody we’re going to
learn something about helping children
right so this is the right thing to do
we’re not going to quit we’re not going
to back down and the good news is we
were kind of wrong we did about twice as
well as that collection of gold standard
programs this is a five-year study took
us five years to get to this answer so
five years I wasn’t sleeping at night to
wait for this bar graph right that’s how
slow science is so for years our field
thought that more is better and we
learned from the study better is better
and it sounds simple but it’s not what
we thought so this was a surprise to all
of us but it wouldn’t be fair if I just
said ho yeah I just pulled a story of
success in a talk about failure right
what we did after this is we said is
that what could we have done better
because we’re not going we didn’t find
our limit right we need to look for the
tough thing where are we failing now so
we have spent the last several years
looking at how this program was failing
even when it in the context of success
two things I can tell you is that many
I’ll confess our failures I’m not hiding
them many families dropped out of that
treatment even though it was successful
we’ve spent the last few years working
on how to fix that problem and many
crises came up during treatments that we
were completely unprepared to solve it
led to worse outcomes for families we
think we can do better if we go after
that so so another corollary here is
even when in the context of our success
it’s good to focus on where could I have
done even a bit better so I’m going to
end by saying don’t be determined to
fail but be willing to fail don’t be
afraid if we had been afraid we never
would have learned what we did in that
study and be determined to learn your
own limits and to be determined and be
determined to learn when you do fail
learn why and maybe it will make you
stronger in that desirable difficulties
kind of way so I want to leave people
thinking there’s probably something you
came into this room thinking you can’t
and I want you to think today what
impossible thing that you thought was
out of reach that you might try to do
this year and I hope I’ve convinced you
that if you approach it right and you
think about it right no matter what the outcome you’re going to be successful
Please follow and like us: