“I realized that not only is happiness
contagious, but so is every aspect of our
life from our health to our altruism to
our creativity.”
P: You’ve previously written on happiness. What led
to your interest in writing about potential?
S: I realized that not only is happiness contagious, but so is
every aspect of our life from our health to our altruism to our
creativity. We are constantly changing others and being
changed by them.
P: How do others help us achieve our potential?
S: When we get fatigued, we can lean on a social support
network to help until we recover. Where two or more are
gathered, we have increased social influence to change those
around us who are negative or suffering.
P: What can we do to help others achieve their
potential?
S: For one thing we can change how we praise. Most praise is
just comparison: you are the best therapist, you were the best
speaker today, you are the fastest kid out there. Comparison
praise tries to lift one person up but it diminishes everyone
around them. So stopping comparison praise and focusing upon
praising a strength without comparison helps us stop hypercom-
paring and allows us to get more people to shine brighter.
November 2018
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PULSE
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