in March of 2017 I was in San Francisco
as part of a class learning about the
Silicon Valley tech industry on our last
day in the city
we had some free time and so I sat down
and had lunch with the nearest man
I passed sitting on the street his name
was Troy and he was experiencing
homelessness after becoming addicted to
medications he was prescribed after a
car accident our conversation was
wide-ranging and engaging but what
really struck me was how happy Troy
seemed despite his obvious material
poverty I asked him what he thought of
the people passing by on the way to
their high-tech jobs and his only wish
was that they lived happy and fulfilled
lives not something you’d expect to hear
from a man with many reasons to be
bitter about the world as he went into
our next company visit I couldn’t help
but compare Troy’s attitude with that of
my classmates and the people we were
meeting in many cases I found that my
peers and these working professionals
were actually more unhappy than the man
experiencing homelessness on the side of
the street I think this is a glimpse
into a much larger problem that plagues
us in many different stages of our lives
but the easiest to see it is in the
transition between college and the
working world all through college
students bounce around from major to
major until they panic and settle on
something for a couple of years but then
according to a study from the New York
Federal Reserve just a few years out of
college only 27 percent of students have
a job in the field that they majored in
I think this creates a significant
amount of cognitive dissonance and
unease that the direction in which life
goes for people I think that unease
stems from not having a solid definition
of personal values and a vision for what
success and happiness looks like a
mentor once told me that fear of the
future comes from believing will be a
failure in the eyes of ourselves and
others
but what even is failure or success I
think often we feel lost in our life
path because we don’t have a good
way to define and measure if we are
succeeding or failing now defining
failure and success starts with asking
hard questions that in turn creates a
written statement of values which many
people have called a personal mission
statement now there isn’t a single
question or even set of questions that
will completely change your life but I
do think there are three good questions
to explore further which will inevitably
lead into more questions so the first
question I have is what is an experience
that has made an impact on me and how
could I live that out every day and
thinking about Troy I started to think
about his life spent day in day out on
the streets of San Francisco one of the
other questions I asked Troy was if he
ever got bored on this street he said of
course but then I just pack up and moved
to a new street that sounds a bit lonely
to me but it also amazed me at how easy
it was for him to just get up and move
it was because of this experience that I
started to think about living a simple
life I thought about all the stress I
put on myself because of my desire to
own more things and as dr. Donald found
that led me down the tedtalk rabbit hole
of minimalism which I encourage you all
to lose yourself in it was a great
opportunity to learn but I’m not lying
to you when I say it’s a deep rabbit
hole the next question I asked was what
am I most happy and how can I maximize
those opportunities now this wasn’t hard
for me I pull a lot of my energy from
spending time with people I care about I
have a mild obsession with board games
and this picture is of a weekly board
game night that makes Thursday nights
the best night of the week for me now
when you’re thinking about this question
on your own there is an idea backed by
study after study to keep in mind that
is that wealth only makes you
significantly happier when it pulls you
out of poverty I’ve created my own
representation of the data here as you
can see there’s diminishing returns
don’t connect your happiness with the
amount of money that you earn and don’t
put opportunities to earn before
opportunities to do things that you
enjoy uh-huh in the seventy-four
year-long study on health and happiness
conducted by Harvard friendship and
connection were the two best predictors
for a longer happier life wealth is
important but not as important as it
seems at first so don’t fall into the
trap of believing that in order to
maximize opportunities to be happy you
must first be wealthy finally you’re
ready to ask yourself what does success
mean to me after thinking about
significant life experiences and where
you find happiness and meaning then you
can start to write down these values as
a way to judge your success and failure
by the questions I just put forward make
up the basis for my personal mission
statement which is I will live a simple
positive life seeking community with
others I will continually learn I will
connect with things unfamiliar now we
reflect on my experiences now why does
this matter
asking hard questions and writing down
the answers gives you a set of values
that you can use to judge your success
and failure by and then measure your
actions and decisions against the daily
grind
especially after college can be easy to
lose yourself in this statement of
values gives you a way to actually see
if you are succeeding and failing and
how you have defined success for
yourself this is also an important thing
because it gives you the conviction that
comes with understanding your values and
the strength of knowing what you are
willing and unwilling to compromise on
that’s why this has been an important
tool for great leaders such as Ghandi
and Oprah now well I love these
questions they only represent the
beginning
of understanding yourself and if you
would like to dive deeper then I
encourage you to look at my blog project
humanized stop blog thank you for
joining me in this journey of tackling
unease with hard questions [Applause]
as part of a class learning about the
Silicon Valley tech industry on our last
day in the city
we had some free time and so I sat down
and had lunch with the nearest man
I passed sitting on the street his name
was Troy and he was experiencing
homelessness after becoming addicted to
medications he was prescribed after a
car accident our conversation was
wide-ranging and engaging but what
really struck me was how happy Troy
seemed despite his obvious material
poverty I asked him what he thought of
the people passing by on the way to
their high-tech jobs and his only wish
was that they lived happy and fulfilled
lives not something you’d expect to hear
from a man with many reasons to be
bitter about the world as he went into
our next company visit I couldn’t help
but compare Troy’s attitude with that of
my classmates and the people we were
meeting in many cases I found that my
peers and these working professionals
were actually more unhappy than the man
experiencing homelessness on the side of
the street I think this is a glimpse
into a much larger problem that plagues
us in many different stages of our lives
but the easiest to see it is in the
transition between college and the
working world all through college
students bounce around from major to
major until they panic and settle on
something for a couple of years but then
according to a study from the New York
Federal Reserve just a few years out of
college only 27 percent of students have
a job in the field that they majored in
I think this creates a significant
amount of cognitive dissonance and
unease that the direction in which life
goes for people I think that unease
stems from not having a solid definition
of personal values and a vision for what
success and happiness looks like a
mentor once told me that fear of the
future comes from believing will be a
failure in the eyes of ourselves and
others
but what even is failure or success I
think often we feel lost in our life
path because we don’t have a good
way to define and measure if we are
succeeding or failing now defining
failure and success starts with asking
hard questions that in turn creates a
written statement of values which many
people have called a personal mission
statement now there isn’t a single
question or even set of questions that
will completely change your life but I
do think there are three good questions
to explore further which will inevitably
lead into more questions so the first
question I have is what is an experience
that has made an impact on me and how
could I live that out every day and
thinking about Troy I started to think
about his life spent day in day out on
the streets of San Francisco one of the
other questions I asked Troy was if he
ever got bored on this street he said of
course but then I just pack up and moved
to a new street that sounds a bit lonely
to me but it also amazed me at how easy
it was for him to just get up and move
it was because of this experience that I
started to think about living a simple
life I thought about all the stress I
put on myself because of my desire to
own more things and as dr. Donald found
that led me down the tedtalk rabbit hole
of minimalism which I encourage you all
to lose yourself in it was a great
opportunity to learn but I’m not lying
to you when I say it’s a deep rabbit
hole the next question I asked was what
am I most happy and how can I maximize
those opportunities now this wasn’t hard
for me I pull a lot of my energy from
spending time with people I care about I
have a mild obsession with board games
and this picture is of a weekly board
game night that makes Thursday nights
the best night of the week for me now
when you’re thinking about this question
on your own there is an idea backed by
study after study to keep in mind that
is that wealth only makes you
significantly happier when it pulls you
out of poverty I’ve created my own
representation of the data here as you
can see there’s diminishing returns
don’t connect your happiness with the
amount of money that you earn and don’t
put opportunities to earn before
opportunities to do things that you
enjoy uh-huh in the seventy-four
year-long study on health and happiness
conducted by Harvard friendship and
connection were the two best predictors
for a longer happier life wealth is
important but not as important as it
seems at first so don’t fall into the
trap of believing that in order to
maximize opportunities to be happy you
must first be wealthy finally you’re
ready to ask yourself what does success
mean to me after thinking about
significant life experiences and where
you find happiness and meaning then you
can start to write down these values as
a way to judge your success and failure
by the questions I just put forward make
up the basis for my personal mission
statement which is I will live a simple
positive life seeking community with
others I will continually learn I will
connect with things unfamiliar now we
reflect on my experiences now why does
this matter
asking hard questions and writing down
the answers gives you a set of values
that you can use to judge your success
and failure by and then measure your
actions and decisions against the daily
grind
especially after college can be easy to
lose yourself in this statement of
values gives you a way to actually see
if you are succeeding and failing and
how you have defined success for
yourself this is also an important thing
because it gives you the conviction that
comes with understanding your values and
the strength of knowing what you are
willing and unwilling to compromise on
that’s why this has been an important
tool for great leaders such as Ghandi
and Oprah now well I love these
questions they only represent the
beginning
of understanding yourself and if you
would like to dive deeper then I
encourage you to look at my blog project
humanized stop blog thank you for
joining me in this journey of tackling
unease with hard questions [Applause]
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