A couple of weeks ago I had a coffee with Jesus.
Now, before you think I’m crazy,
Jesus is actually an old acquaintance of mine,
back from the days when I was studying economics in university.
His real name is pronounced [Hay-soos], he is from Spain,
but if you have a friend called Jesus, you call him Jesus, right?
He sent me an e-mail asking me
if I wanted to catch up after quite some time and I said, “Sure, why not?
Let’s have a coffee in a coffee place called ‘Daily bread’.”
So yeah, I had a coffee with Jesus in the “Daily bread”.
(Laughter)
You know how these conversations go, after some chitchat he asked me,
“So, what have you been up to, what have you been working on?”
And I must admit, even though that’s quite an easy question to ask,
I had to scratch the the ample hair I have left on my head,
and after a few moments of intense silence I said, “I think you could call me
an enterpreneural happiness economist.”
And when I said that, he started laughing,
he was like, “What, what?! Have you turned into a softy?”
I kind of get why he said that, because back in the days I was this guy.
(Laughter)
You know him: a little bit too brainy, a bit out of touch with his emotions.
But obviously I had changed.
I told him about an encounter I had with a diplomatic representative of Congo
back when I was working at the United Nations,
who, after a meeting stepped up to me and said,
“Belgium, what do you think of this?”
I was struck because at that time I realized
that we’re all looking for the same:
We are all looking for a little piece of happiness
independent of culture, race, age, or religion.
And also we are looking for the acceptance of others to be different.
I told Jesus about the sheer joy I felt when I started my first company.
But also I told him about the sorrow when, after only a few months later,
both my parents died, leaving me orphaned
and having my start-up and their business to manage.
Basically, I told him stories about things
that are not in the playbook, things that university didn’t teach us.
But since then I was still a little bit of this guy, I wanted a new playbook.
So, for over two years I immersed myself
in the latest science of behavioral economics,
positive psychology, cognitive science, and even some parts of medicine.
Because I wanted to understand
how economics and happiness are linked together.
That journey brought me here today.
I am coordinating an initiative called “Happonomy” which can be described
as a movement of entrepreneurs, creatives, scientists, and technologists
who all believe that happiness and economics are not mutually exclusive.
We organize lunches, workshops, we execute scientific research,
and we also make some noise like I do today.
I’m sure, you can find a story that tells how difficult it is
to properly combine happiness and economics.
I could tell you plenty of stories.
Let me tell you the story of Dan Price.
Dan is an idealist entrepreneur, and at a certain moment in time
he decided to give his employees a minimum wage of 70,000 USD,
only to find himself left by his own management,
and sued by his brother who was also a part of the company.
I could tell you the story of Martin Shkreli,
maybe you know the guy,
he’s a bit of a poster boy for “Capitalism gone wrong”.
What he did was: he distributes some medicine,
and at the moment he has the license to it, he raises the price 50 fold,
only to find himself in the US Congress having to explain himself.
Closer to home, I could tell you the story of an acquaintance of mine
who does not speak to his own brother and sister anymore
because of inheritance issues.
I’m sure you can find a story close to you that actually shows how difficult it is
to properly balance economics and well-being.
And if we want to understand what’s happening here,
we need to ask ourselves two questions.
The first one is not a sexy one.
It is, why do we have an economy in the first place?
Well, there’s a lot of fancy talks being told about economics, right?
But at the core, economics is simple:
we need a system to exchange value between each other.
I have something you want, you give me money,
I find money valuable, we exchange it, done. Nothing spectacular.
If you felt your heart beating a bit faster,
you’re either an economist, or you should see a doctor.
(Laughter)
So, value.
But the question that stems out of this is a much more interesting one.
It’s probably the most important question we can ask ourselves in our entire lives.
It is, what do we find valuable?
If I’d asked this, chances are you may say,
“Well, I find happiness valuable, or success.”
But if I’d asked, “So what does that mean?”
Chances are you won’t have a concrete answer
because we don’t give it that much conscious thought.
Luckily, scientists have thought about this,
and – long story short – there are 21 pieces to the puzzle.
21 things that drive the quality of our lives.
I’m not going to go into the 21, obviously.
The good news is, you can bundle them into five large groups.
The first one is simple: you want to survive. I hope.
The second is already more interesting.
We want to feel at ease, even though we’re all insecure beings.
Number three: we want to connect, we value social relationships.
We also want to grow. We want to get the best out of ourselves.
And we also, finally – last but not least –
we want to contribute to something bigger,
we want to let go.
I could end my story here
because if you’re wondering why people today
are feeling left behind, stressed out, and increasingly frustrated,
it’s because we have crafted a system that does not truly support what we want.
I want you to let that sink in for a second.
One of our most important systems
to drive our society and our well-being forward
has been devised in a way that does not deliver
what you and I exactly are looking for.
I’m from Belgium, so I’m used to a healthy dose of surrealism –
after all, we invented the Smurfs –
(Laughter)
but even to me, that’s just bananas.
And if we take a look at the two main components of our system, work and money,
things become quite clear.
Let’s start with work.
If I’d ask you why you go to work,
chances are you may say, “Well, I go to work to pay for the bills.”
And it’s obviously true,
because we have linked money and work together.
And the security that comes out of the money as well.
But there are also three other reasons why we go to work.
I already named them,
because they are linked back to what we are looking for.
We also go to work to connect.
We like to have a talk over a coffee
about the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” with our colleagues.
We also go to work to grow.
We like to have a job that challenges us
where we can learn things and where we can apply our talent.
We also go to work to let go, to contribute to something bigger:
to the mission of the organization.
The problem with today’s system is that we have overemphasized
the individual growth part, the efficiency, the competition.
But we have forgotten about the security part.
Our current system is increasingly incapable
of providing us with the security we are all looking for.
And at the same time
we have thrown connection and transcendence under the bus.
The symptoms are abundantly out there.
A recent survey showed that over here
50% of people expect to burn out during their lifetimes.
That’s either you or your neighbor.
Over the last ten years, in the EU alone,
the number of people who have been working
but are still poor,
and the number of people who just cannot find a job
for quite some time, even though they have been looking quite well,
has increased by almost a third.
So, let’s say the alarm signals are there.
Now, up to the second part: money.
Money is not neutral.
This was going to be the pinnacle of my talk
because I planned to rip a note of 500 euros in front of your eyes –
I actually have it with me, it’s this, look, a real one –
to show you that money is not neutral, that you’d feel something,
that it would be like, “What is this guy doing?”
But the problem is, my wife’s a lawyer and she told me yesterday
it’s actually illegal to do so.
So, I’m going to leave the honor of being the first person to commit a crime
on a TEDx stage to somebody else.
(Laughter)
The point I want to drive home is that money is not neutral,
it impacts our happiness, our motivation, even our health.
That’s because our system is debt based and scarcity based.
It seems that we don’t have enough money, right?
The examples that illustrate that this has an impact
on our biology and psychology are abundantly out there.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
In Europe alone over the last ten years over 10,000 people have committed suicide
because of financial problems.
A study from South Carolina shows
that students with large amounts of student debt perform cognitively worse
than those who don’t have such a debt.
And the most striking one to me was the research from researchers
from Stanford and Berkeley that showed that toddlers of not even two years old,
their memory is impacted negatively, their language development is hindered.
So basically, what this shows is that our current system –
causes brain damage.
You may wonder, where does that leave us?
I mean, it sounds like we’re stuck, stuck in a system where people
have to work more and more to achieve less and less.
And at the same time we have this big bag of debt on our backs.
Well, the good news is that it’s going to be our generations
that have the ability to choose whether we’re going to deploy
economics and technology for the sake of our well-being,
or whether we’re going to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of economics.
There are plenty of solutions out there. We don’t need a revolution.
I’d like to provide you with four types of solutions.
The first one: We can reset the place we give work in our lives.
I want to do a very short survey here.
How many people have checked their work e-mail today?
It’s a Saturday. Let me see some hands.
I already see quite some.
And how many have checked their work e-mail during their last holidays?
Come on, don’t be shy. Even more.
Can you imagine that a company would forward and delete your e-mails
from your inbox when you’re on a holiday?
You would have zero reason to still check them,
and as an added bonus when you’d come back,
well, no e-mails waiting for you.
This may sound improbable,
but that’s exactly what a company like Daimler does today.
So, it’s basically an e-mail policy with a software feature.
Solution number two.
We can upgrade our monetary system.
Obviously, this is going to take time but we can get rid of this debt monster.
And this can start today by using the complementary currencies
that are popping up everywhere in the cities we live in.
We could take an example of Croatia,
a country that said to its 60,000 poorest citizens,
“You don’t have to pay your utility bills anymore,
you don’t have to pay your taxes anymore.”
Because they knew, the government knew that those poor people wouldn’t be able
to pay it back anyway, and it caused troubles in the organisations involved.
Or we could step out of the box.
Can you imagine that a doctor would say to a patient, “Look, your loan,
you don’t have to pay it anymore because I noticed that you have
an overdose of stress from it.”
Can you imagine a system where doctors prescribe debt relief for medical reasons?
Solution number three: We can use our rewards –
I’m talking about wages, I’m talking about bonuses –
to make sure that all reasons why we go to work are restored.
It could be as simple as being transparent about how much we earn.
If organisations are transparent about this, studies have shown,
that the differences between the wages become smaller.
So, it’s kind of social correction.
If you want to take it a step further
you can link the lowest wage with the highest wage.
If the CEO gets a raise so does the entry level employee.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to make a plea for communism, far from it.
People don’t want equality, people want fairer inequality.
If you’re wondering what’s fair,
would it surprise you that there is a scientist who studied this already?
An interesting study from Dan Ariely showed
that in Denmark it’s a coefficient two,
and in Taiwan it’s a coefficient 20.
So, it means that it is culturally determined.
I realize that the majority of the solutions I’ve provided
are mainly related to work and money,
and people who can impact us: I’m talking about HR managers,
CEOs, entrepreneurs, politicians.
But there is one solution that everybody can work with.
It’s the most important, but it’s also the most difficult one.
We can upgrade the perspective we have on work, money, and happiness.
And I’d like to leave you with two invitations.
The first one is, I would like to invite you
to think really hard what gives color to your life.
See how money and work impact this.
And have the courage to decide for what increases your quality of life,
and not necessarily only the numbers on your bank account.
Finally, I’d like to ask you to dare to speak up.
Because it’s only by speaking up that we will be able to upgrade
a system as important as our economy.
Discuss this with your friends, family, colleagues, even your boss.
Because if we have enough voices, we can cure capitalism.
And one day we will be able to wake up in a world
that puts happiness first.
That’s all I have.
(Applause) (Cheers)
”
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