[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hello, [FOREIGN]. It's great to see you again my friends, one last time. But hopefully this is not the end or even the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning. [LAUGH] I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope that we stay in touch and that our association has just begun rather than just ending. The main thing I want to do in this video is to thank a bunch of entities. People, events, circumstances etc.,that were instrumental in making this course come together. I actually have a whole list of people to thank and I feel like one of these Oscar Speech givers. Anyway here goes. The first set of people that I want to thank are those at Coursera. In particular Mark Peterpan, Ren Lou, and Kim Salona. I'm sure that we gave you guys a lot of heartburn and stomach churn, but it was all so the students could have the best possible experience. And I hope that you will not only forgive us, but also continue to work with us in the future. The second group I wanna thank is the ISB Team, Dr. Arun Pereira, for opening up his purse stings. And Reema Gupta, for being the cool coordinator of seven things from liaising with Coursera, and the marketing and promotions team, to handling the copyright issues, and so on. Speaking of marketing and promotions, I would like to thank Bershal, Nabid, and Tiki for marketing the course on social media and in the media outlets. I would also like to thank Coursera's marketing team including Shelby and Charlotte. Finally, Charlie Chung and Dylan Shaw of Class Central for saying great things about this class in their reviews. Let's hear it for them. Among the administrative assistants, gets a huge shout out. He was the quiet guy working in the background handling all the shooting and editing and video uploading logistics, among many other things. And of course what can I say about she's been the backbone. The enthusiastic busy bee who handled the least fun but perhaps the most important aspects of the course, including designing the surveys and reading the instruction videos for the happiness exercises. The third group I would like to thank is my friends, not just for emotional support, but also for being a sounding board for a lot of the course materials. So a big thank you to the dude. Franklington Hoffstead, Andy Gershof, and of course my happiness partner in crime, Neilish Mardik. Coming to my family, I would like to thank my parents and my in-laws and also my super sweet and patient wife for being a constant source of support and encouragement. And oh yeah, I just remembered somebody else that I need to thank, my kids. I'm really blessed to have such super awesome kids. I know this sounds like a cliche but they embody the habits of the highly happy much more fluently and gracefully than I can ever manage. And I hope that they stay that way so that I don't have to look far to see what happiness looks like. The next set of people on my list are those who did the heavy lifting for the course, the shooting, the editing, etc. Yuri Ileko, my trusty Ukrainian technical guy comes first on this list. He not only handled my happy smarts website, but also helped out a lot with the surveys and the happiness in societies. Thanks Yuri, you're a solid, dependable guy, and I really appreciate having you on my team. I'd also like to thank the videographer for the course, and his team of and who often went well beyond the call of duty coming to shoot at very short notice, so thank you, guys. And where there are videographers can the editor be far behind? I'd like to thank Shando Mac Urubut, who did a super fabulous job of editing as I'm sure you guys noticed. Shando by the way was introduced to me by my good friend Satish, creator of an awesome documentary, and also of a wonderful website. That features short interviews with several top leaders including some of our guest speakers like Shrik Marau, Sonja Libamersky, Marshall Goldsmith, Mijal Mikshan Mihad, and also some other world famous people like Ben Zander, Naran Mutia Finfusis, Talman Kahn of the Kahn Academy. I have provided his website in the reference for this video please check it out when you get a chance. The next set of people I'd like to thank have absolutely no extrinsic reward to gain from this course, but they nevertheless helped me out. They are the guest speakers. Believe it or not, we had over 20 guest speakers for this course. I think that's a record for any MOOC. And that's not even including a few like of UT Austin, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University, Melanie Rudd from the University of Houston, and Phillip Shaver from UC Davis. I haven't included them in interest of time, but perhaps we could include them in version 2.0 of this course. Without all these guest speakers, the course wouldn't have been half of what is was, so let's hear it for them. There they are in alphabetic order of name. Art Markman from the University of Texas at Austin. Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dan, the man, Ariely from Duke University. Ed Diener, Dr. Happiness, from the University of Virginia. Jamie Pennebaker from the University of Texas at Austin. Jerry Burger from Santa Clara University. Ken Pargaman from Bowling Green State University. Krista Neff from the University of Texas at Austin. Christina Durante from Rutgers University. Marshall Goldsmith, the world-famous CEO coach. Melanie Rudd from the University of Houston. Mike Norton from Harvard University. Nihi Shitza/ Nihai from Claremore University. Nipin Metta from Service Space. Philip Sherver from the University of California at Davis. Brad Radley from the University of Pennsylvania. Richie Davidson from the University of Wisconsin. Sonjia Lebomeshki from the University of California at Riverside. Shauna Shapiro from Santa Clara University. Of the Institute. Check out his awesome syllabus for his creativity and personal mastery course if you get a chance. Steven Tomlinson, of the Atkins School in Austin, Texas. Sunaina Chugani of the City University of New York, one of the most awesome people that I know. Swati Desai, Mindfulness Consultant from Los Angeles, who's going to lead this six-week Mindfulness Camp for which I hope you sign up. Tom Gilovich of Cornell University. And Vijay Bhat of Roots and Wings in Mumbai, India. Whew. That was quite a cast of characters, huh? I consider myself super lucky to have had them on the course. But that's not the only reason I'm lucky. I'm also lucky to have had the circumstances, like maybe even the universe, play a huge role in making this course a possibility. Think about it. Til a few years back, there wasn't even a field of research on happiness. And now It's huge. There are many factors that have contributed to this tremendous growth of this field of positive psychology and happiness. But perhaps the most important factor is that a critical mass of everyday people, people like you and me as opposed to kings, queens, presidents, and dictators, have become much more interested in happiness than was the case, say, even 20 years back. This is because a much larger number of people now know as a matter of personal experience too. So rather than some abstract concept the more money, more fame, more power, most etc, etc., don't necessarily lead to more happiness. A few decades back if you had told people, you know, money can't buy you happiness, they would have said yeah, maybe you're right. But you know what? Let me try and figure that out myself. But now, I think people have figured it out for themselves. It's this massive growth of the segment, the smart and successful and yet not as happy as they could or should be segment, that is a big reason for the tremendous growth in the interest in happiness. And while I'm on this topic of the happiness, or should I say, unhappiness, of the smart and the successful, I'd like to put in a little plug for my forthcoming book, If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? The book will be out in the Summer of 2016, and you can sign up to receive updates for it on www.happysmarts.com. In the book, I will cover much of the material we discussed in the course, and much, much more. I would like to add that the book is not so much for you now that you have taken this course and you are super happy, as it is for somebody else that you may know, someone who's smart and successful but not as happy as you know they can be. So do sign up on my web site and gift them the book. And, of course, while you're about it, keep a copy for yourself. With that, let me turn to the most important group of people that I need to thank, which is, of course you guys, you guys have been absolutely incredibly awesome. Without your support I wouldn't have had the energy to pull this off and I sincerely hope that you got something useful out of this course. I also hope that we continue to stay in touch. This brings me to something I said at the beginning of the video. Which is, I hope this is not the end or even the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning. I guess what I'm trying to say is better captured by the lyrics of the song, A Beatle Party. >> One second, guys. Sorry. Yeah, what is it, Catherine? >> Sorry to interrupt, Professor, but there are some people here who want to meet you. >> But I'm just finishing this up, can't it wait for a couple of minutes? >> This will just take a minute, Professor, so please come out. >> Sorry, guys, one second, I'll be back. [MUSIC]
