Are You Following Your Inner Compass?

The Science of Happiness

PRX and Greater Good Science Center

Science, Social Sciences

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if you had a magic wand and could better the world in any way? What would you do? We explore a practice shown to help you find your purpose and feel more motivated, resilient and fulfilled in life.

Link to episode transcript: https://tinyurl.com/bp7wv7ft

Episode Summary

What’s your greater purpose in life? It’s a tough question, especially if you’re feeling uncertain about your future. In this episode, our guest explores that very question—and gets handed a magic wand with the power to make the world a better place.

How To Do The Magic Wand Practice

Set aside 15 minutes to reflect and write.
Think about the world you live in – your home, your community, and the world at large.
Imagine you’ve been given a magic wand, and you can change anything you want to change in the world. What would you want to be different? Why? Describe your ideal world in writing.
Now, reflect on what it would take to change the world in this way. Is there anything you can do to help move the world closer to this ideal? If so, explain how; if not, explain why not.

Guest: Selina Bilal is a UC Berkeley undergraduate student who is studying psychology, and a Fellow at Greater Good Science Center, where we produce The Science of Happiness

Expert Guest: Kendall Cotton Bronk is a professor of psychology in the Division of Behavioral & Social Sciences at Claremont University.

Learn more about Bronk’s work: https://tinyurl.com/3s9sjp2d
Connect with Bronk: https://tinyurl.com/3p5cepy3

Science of Happiness Episodes like this one

How to Find Your Spark in Life: https://tinyurl.com/yc8j9a4u
What’s Your “Why” in Life? https://tinyurl.com/2vnaswpt

Happiness Break Related Episodes

A Meditation to Inspire a Sense of Purpose: https://tinyurl.com/54uuvh7z
Visualizing Your Purpose, With Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/3jvnv35y

Message us or leave a comment on Instagram @scienceofhappinesspod. E-mail us at [email protected] or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness!

Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I haven't been very expressive growing up. After my mom got divorced we had some
0:07.2	rough years where we weren't able to communicate very well and my defense
0:11.3	mechanism just became shutting down.
0:14.0	The fact that I was an only child and all her attention was on me
0:18.0	really, you know, amplified the problem.
0:21.0	And along with that, I feel like I wasn't able to see her
0:23.9	perspective a lot of the time I wasn't able to humanize her for me she was just
0:29.1	mom who doesn't understand me and wants to argue with me and I wasn't able to understand a lot of why
0:34.4	she did what she did. I would just get numb and just shut down and you know just not
0:40.3	express any love. I cannot understand for the life of me why out of all the things
0:45.2	we can choose to shut up about, we choose words of love. You know, I love you, I care about you, I'm
0:50.4	grateful for you, these are all good things to say. Why in the world should we choose to regulate love?
0:57.8	So I feel like when I talk about my ideal world it really centers around compassion and the expression of love and trust, and thinking
1:06.0	about its implementation, I began reflecting on how I can bring about this change. Welcome to the science of happiness.
1:14.0	Welcome to the science of happiness. I'm Dacker Keltner. What would you do if you had a
1:26.5	magic wand and could better the world in any way? How would you change it? It may seem like a silly question,
1:34.0	but research shows that pondering it can make you feel more hopeful,
1:38.0	optimistic, and have a clearer sense of your own guiding purpose.
1:42.0	Our guest this week, Selina Bell, of your own guiding purpose.
1:43.0	Our guest this week, Selina Bilal, is an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley and my former
1:48.6	science of happiness student.
1:50.2	She asked herself this question while visiting her family in Pakistan during her summer break,
	...

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