'Everything I Learned In Harvard Psychology' Can Be Summed Up In 2 Simple Sentences, Says A Graduate
GBJSTOCK | ShutterstockA Harvard degree, just like any other Ivy, costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes years to achieve. Still, it's possible that the profound things we average folks assume people learn there are actually pretty simple, as evidenced by one grad's ability to sum up her education.
People covet degrees from Ivy League schools, and some spend years trying to get the perfect combination of good grades and impressive extracurriculars that will result in an acceptance letter. But Olesya Luraschi, who graduated from Harvard with a psychology degree, explained in a video that everything came down to two short snippets of advice.
Luraschi summarized everything she learned from getting a psychology degree from Harvard in two simple sentences:
1. ‘Scarcity is stressful for the mind; abundance is healing.’
"What I mean by this," she clarified, "is that whenever we focus on things that are scarcity-inducing to the mind, whether it's time scarcity, financial scarcity, relationship scarcity, this is stressful to the mind, and it will run processes that are associated with this stress."
This is very much like the principle we all heard about repeatedly when growing up, that if you think about something negative, things only get worse. When you're in a rut and hyper-focused on what you don't have and what is wrong in your life, you make it significantly harder to grow and move forward. If you only concentrate on what you don'thave, you'll never get what you want.
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Luraschi explained that this type of thinking is "optimized for the short-term" and will hurt you in the long run, as there is an underlying belief that you will never achieve what you desire. "We actually wanna shift more to abundance thinking, ’cause that's more of a long-term approach,” she added.
Letting go of a scarcity mindset isn't easy, but it's possible. If you spend as much time as you can practicing gratitude, showing loved ones how much they mean to you, and acknowledging that, regardless of whether you've met your biggest goal or not, you've still come so far, abundance will be easier to come by.
This also means reframing thoughts like, "My career isn't going anywhere," into affirmations that invite more into your life. An example Luraschi offered was, "There's plenty of success out there for me." This change shifts your mind, and with it, your outcomes.
2. ‘Focus and perception are everything.’
The idea that our thoughts create our reality rules both psychological discussions and spiritual practices like manifestation. In the same vein, what we choose to focus on crafts our experience, especially as it relates to abundance.
“What we focus on is everything,” Luraschi explained. “We can focus on the scarcity or we can focus on the abundance. There’s always evidence for both, especially in today’s world.”
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“When you focus your mind on that abundance, then you get the repercussions of that, and those repercussions are typically a lot better for you psychologically,” she continued. “If you're able to train your mind [to] focus on the science and clues of abundance, then you're going to have a much healthier mind, and you're gonna be able to accomplish more.”
Luraschi acknowledged that humans tend to skew towards the negative, so it takes a conscious effort to make a mindset shift. This isn't the same thing as pretending nothing bad ever happens, but instead choosing to embrace both the good and bad with a positive attitude.
It can help to pause a few times throughout the day to think about the tone of your thoughts. If everything seems negative, you can actively work to turn that around. Not only will this benefit your well-being, but it will also give you better physical health and less pain.
Luraschi's advice is a reminder that we don't need to overcomplicate things.
It would be easy to think that there is a lot more to a Harvard psychology degree than this, and surely Luraschi did learn about more varied and advanced concepts. But by distilling what is most important into two short sentences, she reminded us all that no aspect of life has to feel too complex.
Sometimes it's the most basic things that are the most important.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
