
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Welcome to Harry Potter #6. We kick this adventure off with an amusing scene featuring our former Minister of Magic Fudge, his successor Scrimgeour and ‘The Other Minister” for the muggles. As with all the others, this one is packed with wisdom. Big Ideas we explore include: the importance of friends (Dumbledore and scientists agree!), liquid luck (remember the U Curve—too much of a good thing *isn’t* a good thing), cleverer than most? expect correspondingly huger mistakes, the placebo effect and Ron’s goalkeeping, and walking into the arena with your head held high.
Big Ideas
- FriendsWe need them.
- Liquid luckHi, Felix Felicis!
- Cleverer = mistakes are correspondingly huger= Mistakes correspondingly huger.
- Ron’s Goalkeeping + The PLacebo Effect+ Ron’s goalkeeping skills.
- Walking into the arenaWith our heads held high.
“‘Well, that’s really all I had to say. I will keep you posted of developments, Prime Minister — or, at least, I shall probably be too busy to come personally, in which case I shall send Fudge here. He has consented to stay on in an advisory capacity.’
Fudge attempted to smile, but was unsuccessful; he merely looked as though he had a toothache. Scrimgeour was already rummaging in his pocket for the mysterious powder that turned the fire green. The Prime Minister gazed hopelessly at the pair of them for a moment, then the words he had fought to suppress all evening burst from him at last.
‘But for heaven’s sake — you’re wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out — well — anything!’
Scrimgeour turned slowly on the spot and exchanged an incredulous look with Fudge, who really did manage a smile this time as he said kindly, ‘The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.’
And with that, the two wizards stepped one after the other into the bright green fire and vanished.”
~ J. K. Rowling from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Welcome to Harry Potter #6.
We kick this adventure off with an amusing scene featuring our former Minister of Magic Fudge, his successor Scrimgeour and ‘The Other Minister.” :)
Hard to believe we’re already near the end of our adventure with Harry and Hermione and Ron and our other magical friends but here we are.
This book was just as good as all the others. (Get a copy here.)
I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas so let’s jump straight in!
Friends
“‘Then you will have seen that there have been not so much leaks as floods concerning your adventure in the Hall of Prophecy?’
‘Yes,’ said Harry again. ‘And now everyone knows that I’m the one —’
‘No, they do not,’ interrupted Dumbledore. ‘There are only two people in the whole world who know the full contents of the prophecy made about you and Lord Voldemort, and they are both in this smelly, spidery broom shed. It is true, however, that many have guessed, correctly, that Voldemort sent his Death Eaters to steal a prophecy, and that the prophecy concerned you.’
‘Now, I think I am correct in saying that you have not told anybody that you know what the prophecy said?’
‘No,’ said Harry.
‘A wise decision on the whole,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Although I think you ought to relax it in favor of your friends, Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger. Yes,’ he continued, when Harry looked startled, ‘I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them.’
‘I didn’t want —’
‘— to worry or frighten them?’ said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. ‘Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.’
Harry said nothing, but Dumbledore did not seem to require an answer. He continued, ‘On a different, though related, subject, it is my wish that you take private lessons with me this year.’”
Welcome to the stone outhouse on the Burrow where the Weasley’s keep their broomsticks.
The adventure begins!
The first piece of wisdom Dumbledore drops on us in this book? “You need your friends, Harry.”
Alas, our wise wizard confirms what we all know to be true and what science unequivocally echoes. How about a few thoughts on the subject?
We’ll start with a recent Note on Stick with It in which Sean Young tells us about the importance of Community in changing behavior and says: “In the 1930s, a team of Harvard researchers began a study that tracked the life choices of a group of Harvard undergraduates. They continued this study for seventy-five years. One thing they found was that strong social connections were the most important factor in achieving happiness.”
In Pursuing the Good Life, another leading Positive Psychologist, Chris Peterson puts it this way: “‘Other people matter.’ I say that in every positive psychology lecture I give and every positive psychology workshop I conduct. It sounds like a bumper sticker slogan, but it is actually a good summary of what positive psychology research has shown about the good life broadly construed. It is in the company of others that we often experience pleasure and certainly how we best savor its aftermath. It is through character strengths that connect us to others—like gratitude—that many of us find satisfaction and meaning in life. It is with other people that we work, love, and play. Good relationships with other people may be a necessary condition for our own happiness, even in markedly individualist cultures like the contemporary United States.”
Plus: “The happiest places on earth are not the internal ones. They are not the geographical ones. The are the places between us, and the closer they are and the more comfortable, the happier they are apt to be. [Eric] Weiner apparently agrees. He ends his book [The Geography of Bliss] by observing, ‘Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It’s a conjunction.”
Then we have George Valliant, psychiatrist and Harvard professor who, for 35 years, led Harvard’s 70+ year Study of Adult Development (that same one Sean referred to above). In Spiritual Evolution he puts it this way: “Modern ethology and neuroscience make clear that all mammals are hardwired for love. Of all the fauna on earth, however, Homo sapiens is the most radically dependent on love. Thus, ethologist Konrad Lorenz called love ‘the most wonderful product of ten million years of evolution’; psychoanalyst Erich Fromm wrote, ‘Without love humanity could not exist even for a day’; and Saint Paul concluded, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’”
Plus: “Love is the shortest definition of spirituality I know.”
I’m also reminded of Brené Brown and her wisdom on vulnerability when I read Dumbledore’s words. In The Gifts of Imperfection, she tells us that “ordinary courage” (and our Gryffindor’s are certainly courageous, eh?!), requires the willingness to be vulnerable: “I realized that courage is one of the most important qualities that Wholehearted people have in common. And not just any kind of courage; I found that Wholeheartedness requires ordinary courage. Here’s what I mean…
The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, the definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage. Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary.”
In sum: Friends matter. A lot.
How can you share yourself just a little more with your loved ones today?
Liquid luck
“‘Oho,’ said Slughorn again. Harry was sure that Slughorn had not forgotten the potion at all, but had waited to be asked for dramatic effect. ‘Yes. That. Well, that one, ladies and gentlemen, is a most curious little potion called Felix Felicis. I take it,’ he turned, smiling, to look at Hermione, who had let out an audible gasp, ‘that you know what Felix Felicis does, Miss Granger?’
‘It’s liquid luck,’ said Hermione excitedly. ‘It makes you lucky!’
The whole class seemed to sit up a little straighter. Now all Harry could see of Malfoy was the back of his sleek blond head, because he was at last giving Slughorn his full and undivided attention.
‘Quite right, take another ten points for Gryffindor. Yes, it’s a funny little potion, Felix Felicis,’ said Slughorn. ‘Desperately tricky to make, and disastrous to get wrong. However, if brewed correctly, as this has been, you will find that all your endeavors tend to succeed . . . at least until the effects wear off.’
‘Why don’t people drink it all the time, sir?’ said Terry Boot eagerly.
‘Because if taken in excess, it causes giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence,’ said Slughorn. ‘Too much of a good thing, you know . . . highly toxic in large quantities. But taken sparingly, and very occasionally . . .’
‘Have you ever taken it, sir?’ asked Michael Cormer with great interest.
‘Twice in my life,’ said Slughorn. ‘Once when I was twenty-four, once when I was fifty-seven. Two tablespoons taken with breakfast. Two perfect days.’”
Say hello to our new potions master: Slughorn. And, say hello to liquid luck, Felix Felicis!
I laughed out loud at the effects of the potion when taken in excess when reading to Emerson and again as I typed that out.
“Too much of a good thing, you know”!
First, I’m reminded of our friend, the Inverted U. In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell tells us: “That’s what is called an inverted-U curve. Inverted U curves are hard to understand. They almost never fail to take us by surprise, and one of the reasons we are so often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget when we are operating in a U-shaped world.
… * The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant argue, in a brilliant paper, that, in fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U: ‘Across many domains of psychology, one finds that X increases Y to a point, and then it decreases Y. … There is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.’”
Yep. Too much of a good thing—like a feeling of invincibility in this case—can be a bad thing: causing “giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence.”
For our purposes, we’ve gotta know that our hope and optimism and confidence is absolutely essential to Optimizing and Actualizing. Yet, although it’s certainly necessary, on its own its insufficient. We need to ground that hope and optimism and confidence in reality, lest it turn into recklessness and dangerous overconfidence.
How do we do that? We’ve discussed many ways!
How about Ray Dalio’s 1st Principle? “Embrace Reality and Deal With It.” Be a “hyperrealist” and learn to love your problems rather than ignore them recklessly.
Have Stockdale’s Paradoxical confidence such that you KNOW you will ultimately prevail AND you are willing to embrace the harsh facts of your current reality.
WOOP your vision board by rubbing it up against reality so you can make an effective plan.
Be Antifragile by embracing a “barbell strategy” in which you’re simultaneously super aggressive *and* super conservative. Dreaming big while playing small.
Yep. That’s the way to have fun with our own liquid luck potions!
(We’ll come back to our friend Felix Felicis in a moment.)
Cleverer = mistakes are correspondingly huger
“‘You said, at the end of last term, you were going to tell me everything,’ said Harry. It was hard to keep a note of accusation from his voice. ‘Sir,’ he added.
‘And so I did,’ said Dumbledore placidly. ‘I told you everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. From here on in, Harry, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron.
‘But you think you’re right?’ said Harry.
‘Naturally I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being — forgive me — rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.’”
Reading that last line was another laugh-out-loud moment that required me to get up out of bed where Emerson and I were reading to grab a pen and highlight that section. To review:
a) Dumbledore reminds us yet again that he is human and, therefore, makes mistakes just like the rest of us; and,
b) He happens to be “rather cleverer” than most men and, therefore, his mistakes “tend to be correspondingly huger.” (Hah!)
May we all have the playful humility and audacity to embrace such truths.
btw: That passage also reveals another aspect of Dumbledore’s awesomeness we talked about in a prior Note: His COMPLEXITY. He’s simultaneously humble and not so humble.
And, he pulls it off with a wonderful, endearing panache. :)
btw: Quick vocab + etymology lesson. Panache means “flamboyant confidence of style or manner.” It comes from the late Latin pinnaculum, diminutive of pinna ‘feather.’
Here’s to your endearing panache today! :)
Ron’s Goalkeeping + The PLacebo Effect
“‘So Harry — you going to use the Felix Felicis or what?’ Ron demanded.
‘Yeah, I s’pose I better,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t reckon I’ll need all of it, not twelve hours’ worth, it can’t take all night. . . . I’ll just take a mouthful. Two or three hours should do it.’
‘It’s a great feeling when you take it,’ said Ron reminiscently. ‘Like you can’t do anything wrong.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Hermione, laughing. ‘You’ve never taken any!’
‘Yeah, but I thought I had, didn’t I?’ said Ron, as though explaining the obvious. ‘Same difference really . . .’”
I might’ve laughed out loud reading that scene as well. (Am I easily amused? Very well then, I’m easily amused.)
But that spectacular performance of Ron’s during the Quidditch match after he *thought* he had a little liquid luck in his belly was epic. His goalkeeping skills went up about ten notches with the proper amount of confidence aided by just *thinking* he had a dose of Felix Felicis.
Alas, science would like to confirm the power of this wisdom as well. Enter: The Placebo Effect.
It’s actually CRAZY powerful. Joe Dispenza wrote a whole book on it called You Are the Placebo and we talk about it in Harvard researcher Ellen Langer’sCounterclockwise. Plus another Harvard researcher named Herbert Benson shares some nutty stats in his book The Relaxation Revolution.
Check out our Notes on those books for some astonishing examples rivaling Ron’s goalkeeping performance. (The most mind-boggling might be a carefully controlled study in which people who THOUGHT they were getting an arthroscopic surgery on their knee showed the same benefits as if they actually got the real surgery when all they got was a pretend surgery. Nuts.)
For now, know this: According to Benson: “Many hundreds of scientific studies have shown that an inner conviction, which the medical community has linked to the phenomenon called ‘the placebo effect,’ can help produce healing for scores of diseases and medical complaints. The placebo effect is a mind body mechanism that may bring about healing through a person’s expectation and belief that a certain treatment will work.”
Langer says: “When we see mind and body as parts of a single entity, the research on placebos takes on new meaning and suggests we can not only control much of our disease experience, but we may also be able to extend our ability to gain, recover, or enhance our health.
Placebos often come in the form of a single word that captures a richer mindset. In one study I conducted with my students, we explored the mindset most of us have regarding excellent vision air force pilots have. All participants were given a vision test. One group of participants were then encouraged to role-play ‘air force pilots.’ They dressed the part and, in uniform, sat in a flight simulator. They were asked to read the letters on the wing of a nearby plane, which were actually part of an eye chart. Those participants who adopted the ‘pilot’ mindset, primed to have excellent vision, showed improved vision over those who were simply asked to read an eye chart from the same distance.”
A little belief goes a long way…
How’s yours?
Walking into the arena
“But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.”
There are two ways to walk into the arena that is our lives: Like we’re being dragged in or with our heads held high.
Makes me think of the Threat vs. Challenge response we talk about all the time—most recently in The Telomere Effect. And, David Emerald’s Victim vs. Creator distinction in The Power of TED*. I also think Seneca’s line: “There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.”
Then, of course, there’s Brené Brown’sDaring Greatly which is named after that man in the arena Teddy Roosevelt described in 1910: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
What challenge is beckoning you into the arena today? Let’s walk in with our heads held high and hearts full of courage! (And, perhaps, a mouthful of Felix Felicis!!! :)