Raising the Baseline on Being Our Best

By Sandi Smith

In the West, we are awesome at curing diseases. We have the latest technology, fancy teaching hospitals, incredible diagnostic aids, and drugs – wow do we have the drugs to cure anything and everything. We can help people who are sick get well. Got the measles; no problem. A broken arm – we can mend it. Even cancer; people are surviving in record numbers. We can cure sick people, and it’s a piece of cake for the most part. And at some point, that’s where we settled: at having people just feel OK and not be sick.

The East has taken a whole different approach. The human mind and thinking have been studied for thousands of years. But they have studied more than sickness; they have studied wellness. They know that optimism, success, and happiness are skills that can be learned by anyone. They know how people can live happy lives. They know how people can live with purpose and passion. And they are quite modest and shy about sharing their knowledge because that’s the way the culture is.

It’s useful to consider these differences between East and West. As I have traveled the world, I always go with a curiosity to find out if this culture knows something I don’t that will improve my life and that I can take back and start practicing. In 1998, some psychologists in the U.S. have caught on and developed a field called Positive Psychology. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, is a key driver behind this trend. He started teaching Positive Psychology at Harvard in 1999, and the course is now the most popular course at Harvard, enrolling 855 students and beating out Intro Economics, the previous favorite.

The first step is to understand what’s possible. Asians strive to be free of anger and fear, while Westerners don’t know they can be. They have learned to use emotions to perfect their inner nature, says emotional intelligence guru Daniel Goleman in his book Destructive Emotions.

Let’s raise the baseline in the West. The difference in personal power of a life that can control fear and be free of negative emotions in general and one that cannot is very clear and very drastic. In future issues and in our seminars, we’ll explore that power. For now, being aware that it exists is the first step toward gaining that power for yourself.

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