How about some good news?
Leadership Tulsa's Good News Summit on Thursday let representatives of 24 different groups give five-minute, rapid-fire presentations about great things they're doing.
The event aimed to do more than give the audience a temporary mood boost. Psychologist Kevin David said research shows happiness can be felt through three degrees of separation.
"So, if you're happy, you become happy, that affects your friend and their friend and their friend," David said. "It's really pretty fascinating from a community perspective because if we can raise the level of well being in Tulsans, that's going to spread."
Good things happening in Tulsa include expanding business loan access through community-funded micro loans, helping troubled residents become productive citizens, teen pregnancy prevention, arts access for kids, addiction recovery services, and job training for homeless youths and high school students at risk of dropping out.
If you hadn't heard of those, that's OK. David said it's human nature to focus on the bad.
"But, we also know there's research showing that by focusing so much on negativity — especially negative media — it drains us," David said. "Not just physiologically, not just psychologically, but our immune systems get beaten down and we're actually more likely to get sick."
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum opened the event and said he hopes knowledge of the programs talked about spread far and wide through word of mouth.
"If we can empower more Tulsans to have the knowledge of all the good things that are happening in our city right now, that's going to help us promote this city far better than any sort of marketing campaign or advertisements that we could do as a city," Bynum said.
