with my twelve-year-old daughter in the
car she was sitting next to me we pulled
up at the traffic lights
and then notice that she was steering
out one of the windows she kept doing it
and after that she jumped she seemed to
turn around again and was looking a
woman in a red car next to us I said –
what’s the matter she said mom mom I’ve
just realized the vent woman in the car
thinks she’s the center of the world
just like I do I said well you’re pretty
young to have realized that did you
realize that there’s a whole lot of
people who get to be really old and they
never realize that it’s weird really
think about it isn’t it think about the
size of your own private mind just that
the big architectural structure we build
in the privacy of our life in which we
live is the University of me and the
universe of you and then are all of our
feelings all of our history everything
that’s happened everything we remember
everything we hope for all our dreams
the shifting sands and feeling it’s
quite a big architectural structure and
as I said I can see yours beginning to
show as I look out here at you so we
have there it’s bigger than our physical
self it seems more substantial somehow
from within the privacy of our own mind
but do we really know much about what
goes on inside that architecture and how
our mind works well philosophers
psychologists and psychiatrists have
been thinking about this for a very long
time people never tire of thinking about
this question about how does the mind
work Who am I what makes me happy what
makes my life worth living now it’s not
a new question as I think it’s not an
original question and yet for each
generation of person who’s born
that’s you and me right now at this
point we’re deeply concerned about that
because our lives matter deeply to us
it’s personal what’s going on in that
architecture that we build it’s our mind
that’s our self is personal it’s private
and we care really deeply about it
now the bad news is that the bonds of
love of being a human being they don’t
last very long after about two and a
half generations you’ll be forgotten I’m
sorry
it’s terrible news really the wheel of
life spin hard and we don’t get to be on
it for very long but then anything makes
it more important how we feel about our
lives and ourselves inside this
architecture of your mind that we create
for ourselves so who else cares about
this well if you think about it this
this living a good life and well-being
could be seen as a continuum of physical
and mental health from minus 10 units to
plus 10 just start to think about where
you might be if there are two sliders
running along on that continuum you’ve
got control both of the sliders say
where you live on them where do you live
a beckon to you on the continuum of
physical health and mental health I’m
not talking about mental and physical
illness by higher that’s maybe minus 10
to minus 4 people do experience that but
that’s not what I’m talking about today
I’m talking about the minus 4 plus 10 of
everyday life for most people in life
and the big population curve what do you
see to moment can you imagine moving
those sliders along does your mental
positioning change alibi hours sometimes
do sometimes wake up in the morning and
the mental structure by me was so heavy
you could barely get your head off the
pillow so just hold that idea about the
sliders were moment if you want to build
your physical health we know a lot about
them there’s good medical systems
available to us if we live in a country
like Australia and we know about that we
should have exercisable should eat well
that’s fairly well known
choose to build your general mental
health from – upon a +10 you can do it
you can do it if you’ve got the
motivation the will the time sometimes a
bit of money helps – but not only money
but mental health is a different thing
we don’t really know so much about how
to cope with mental health it’s not that
man understood
you see most of the research into the
mind and brain has been focused on
building and repairing mental illness so
for the 1 in 5 people who are mentally
ill sitting in the say minus 10 to minus
5 there are things that are available to
be developed out of this research there
are medications you can take there are
doctors you can see psychiatrist you can
talk to there are therapeutic
interventions sometimes like a cognitive
behavioral therapy but not only that
then to the mental illness type of thing
but what I’m most interested in today is
the mental health so the things for all
of us how do you build it what do we
know about it it’s interested in the
World Health Organization is interested
in it and about a couple of generations
ago it started talking about public
health and the started saying the public
health is a state of complete physical
mental and social well-being complete
physical mental and social well-being
not just the absence of illness and
infirmity sometime after them in the
1980s there emerged see change really in
the publishing industry
it was the self-help boom the human
potential movement when it turned out
that a lot of people started to become
quite interested in the inner life
particularly women this was a movement
and a pub
million dollar hospital oh really led by
the purchases of women who had this
started to become very interested in
that inner life in that inner
architecture sometime after that by
about 1998 dr. Martin Seligman who had
been focusing all of his research
generally on mental illness started to
take a keen interest in building mental
health he was joined by a number of
other psychologists and they launched
the movement of positive psychology
it was also moving on this on the
restaurant of emotional work that had
been done by other scientists in the
previous 50 years now one of these
people saw here dr. Sanyal is immerse
people she’s done some work on happiness
yes I have my happiness pie up there
their work show but if you want to if
you want to live a good life if you’re
interested in your happiness then 50% of
people’s general happiness is actually
established and set by the genetic
background there’s really not too much
that you can do about that 10% of it is
really influenced by your situation in
your circumstances and then in a lot of
cases if you can’t do too much about
your situation or circumstances
sometimes you can but often you can’t do
it at all but 40% 40% of the ability to
build happiness in your own life is in
your own control its produced by
intentional activities that you can do
so the thoughts that are walking around
and then architecture of self the
feelings that flow from those thoughts
and the actions that you decide to take
on the basis of their
very important in you and your happiness
and will be across the whole of your
life I was pretty stunned when I came
across that but in fact most of us many
of us when we think about that
architecture it does seem to be quite
that beautiful most people sort of feel
that we sit we citizen why we can’t
change now the science of erode
plasticity suggests that is not true at
all
it says really clearly than the brain
it’s not a computer store machine it’s
actually a bit more like a play don’t
mess with grooves running in it and if
you tip water into the play that map the
water will run on those grooves in a
very predictable way but if you start
making some new grooves in the play no
matter the water will run into new areas
of the playdough net and it turns out
the Play Doh net and the brain has quite
a lot of unused territory so there are
real possibilities about trying new
mental states learning them practicing
them and developing new grooves in the
playdough
length or new pathways in the brain with
which you can build a new architecture
if that’s what you want if that’s going
to improve your life but if you think
about my architecture and I’m thinking
about all of yours is it possible you
think to build the mental health of
everyone it’s one thing for me to
address it inside the privacy of my own
mind I’ve got a reason to want to do
that but what about the whole society
can you do it for a city can you do for
state could you talk for a country can
you build the mental health at scale
well that’s accepting what South
Australia is doing right now
the well-being and resilience centre and
you saw our great building up upon the
image back there a moment ago
who will be resilience
is taking a population health approach
to building mental well-being and
resilience in this South Australian we
were inspired by the business of dr.
Martin Seligman some years ago he came
he only spoke to 14,000 us South
Australians and professionals public
servants community members and he said
you know the science is showing that
well-being is measurable teachable and
learnable you put all those things
together then you can absolutely say
that you can build mental health and
scale and that’s what we’re doing here
we’re measuring and building well-being
of South Australians so how well
silicon’s and others research shows that
well-being is not just one item if you
want to adjust this structure and turn
yourself in the direction of a better
life according to how you define a
better life there are a number of
capacities that you might need to build
or pay attention to so the certain
dashboard of will be comprises the
following things
it’s called permit and it’s his proposed
a measure for wellbeing across a whole
population
his research shows that if you build
your positive emotion you deliberately
build it you try to improve the amount
of positive emotion you have any life if
you build and improve your engagement in
life if you pay attention to your
relationships and make sure that you
keep building those and improving those
if you wonder about what gives your life
meaning and you suddenly become
concerned and interested in that
question and if you also spent a little
time trying to accomplish things from
living a beautiful jumper to doing a
great day’s work playing very good golf
youmu build your permit you will improve
your will be you can do that it’s within
your power to do that for yourself now
we’re also interested in resilience and
the science of resilience is not quite
the same as the science of well-being we
think they need brazilians because we’re
human beings and then the life of the
ordinary human being there is illness
there is loss there is sadness there’s
exclusion there’s trouble and then
there’s dead and we share them that
happens to every one of us there’s no
possible escape from it so it’s normal
actually that we can expect challenges
and problems and that we need to be
prepared to be able to deal with them so
resilience we think is really important
and we also think that physical activity
nutrition and sleep is very important
because after all the brain sits within
the body and there’s plenty of research
which talks about how important physical
health is if you want a good mental
health
so perma plus is our measure and we
started measuring South Australians
we’ve measured about $35,000 so far
without collaborators
we’ve also began looking at and
introducing a train-the-trainer model
because we want to be able to push out
information about well-being and the
science of well-being and resilience
into the community so we’re taking a
distributed network approach we’re
taking a victory project we’re looking
for groups in community and
organizations and workplaces all over
the state and we energize them and
information from the science of positive
psychology and well-being research into
the society that way and so far we are
communicating with and delivering will
bring skills into the whole of the
prison system nearly the whole of the
education system in South Australia
we’re working closely with the whole of
the TAFE system that’s the significant
major group in vocational education
we’re working with many aging
organizations and we’re working in many
different workforces so you can see we
are taking that thing
right and in each case we’re not
interested in delivering programs that
we’ve forgotten we’re interested in
culture change we’re interested in
turning all of our architecture in the
direction of mental health by
introducing more and more people to the
knowledge and the science that can do it
mental health so we take an approach
that’s a little bit like slip slop slap
slip slop slap and that campaign about
skin cancer in the ordinary the science
of how to do that
into the whole population and it’s
entered the culture of Australia that’s
what we want to achieve with mental
health and introducing that knowledge so
as I said we have mentioned 35,000
people we’ve trained over a thousand
people in the skills of positive
psychology and well-being in resilience
science and we have reached over 38,000
people in seminars trainings or lectures
so we’re serious about scale we’re
absolutely serious about scale I’d like
to introduce you to a couple of young
people who’ve been receiving information
about positive education at their school
I find that I treat my friends a lot
better and I pay it forward a lot I use
the power of yet I have a lot of perma I
use mindfulness and I harness my
character strings and normally I would
just freak out and do something else
before positive education came along and
now I’m learning to just can’t my anger
and not take it out on my sisters when I
go home I really think it is brilliant
it’s a brilliant program I think it
should be in every school every I think
they should bring it into workplaces as
well it’s brilliant it’s helped my kids
help me I relate to better to my kids
now and we have a better relationship
now than what we used to so now I think
it’s a brilliant program and I’m really
glad that I did it I’m really glad that
and now Martin Martin’s manufacturer is
in the car industry the car industry is
leaving Australia and we’ve been
introducing resilience training into his
particular organization this is what he
says about the psychological skills that
he’d never heard of before he’d never
come across this information before me
the most important thing is it is
something you can learn it’s not you
don’t have to be born a certain way you
can actually you know learn those skills
doesn’t matter where you’re educated
what your education level is so at any
level you can learn those skills and
they will learn you know help you in
life so these skills and this
information are simply tools to give you
the opportunity to have a think about
that structure of self that University
you that sits over your head
are you happy with your life are you
satisfied with where you’re going
do you like the direction of if you want
to make some modifications it’s really
good to understand that you’re to build
on that architecture and you can have
tools and capabilities to make changes
in that if you choose to now you may
want to do that for yourself but this is
important not just for you this is not
just about the you or me this is about
families who need more resilience and
more strength and better relationships
it’s also about communities who need to
bond together I need to work together to
be safe them content in their
environment
it’s about workforces who need to
respond to digital disruption and the
other pressures belong the economic life
of the society and who need flexibility
and growth mindset and finally it’s
about political units organizations
nations cities etc where people need to
know that their governments care about
the world
of everyone in their mobilization or
their country so this is this
conversation of this building mental
health of scales not just about you it’s
about everyone it’s about the whole
society and we’ve shown that it can be
done and it can be done anywhere by
copying what we’re doing here and we’d
like to see that happen and when I look
around the world and I feel myself to be
part of the 21st century glorious chaos
that’s going on around us it’s about the
only thing I can think of that might
make a difference and that may become
part of the next scaffold to build the
next evolutionary capability of we humans together thank you sir